Today I would like to introduce one of the star players behind the scenes at the busy, bustling  Brendan Donovan Furniture & Cabinet Co., of which I am proud to be a part.  Meet Serf ( I won't mention his last name cause I can't spell it and you wouldn't be able to say it anyway).  Serf is our finisher in residence.  Not only does he finish all our custom cabinetry,  he is an artist as well.  I never really knew that until today when I visited him at work on site.  The project is to magically transform white painted wood doors into knotty pine to match an existing den.  At first I thought, why would anyone want to do that?  It can't look that good.  Wowzer was I wrong!  Check it out.It was one of those moments where I was just not expecting to find a blog post.  I only had my crappy cell phone camera but I think you can see what I mean.  It's simply amazing.  Serf starts by making a template, of sorts, out of nothing more than a piece of cardboard!  Here's the before.Here's the after where he's captured the wood grain, the depth and the knots of the knotty pine.

This door,  which started like this, took about three days to complete.First he lays down a base coat, then he paints in the knots followed by the graining and  two colors of varnish for visual depth. Whattayathink??