So I am completely new to any kind of woodworking (as in this is the first thing I have attempted), and overall I am very newbie to doing stuff.
So right now I have a birch wood panel, with 2 pine planks on the side and a heavier wood plank on top (meant to be a sort of shelf to cover an area). I should have thought about keeping same type of wood but this won't be visible much and won't be used except to put some light things on top.
The front view will look something like:
_____________
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the | on each side are the pine planks
: are smaller birch wood peices
= are horizontal birch wood planks
and _ is the heavier wood (oak?) on top.
I am going to glue/screw stuff together. Will be sanding down the birch wood peices since they have wax/finish on them.
This brings me to my question - After I put all that stuff together, how do I put wax/finish on all of it. It will be covering an old/ugly radiator cover so it will be near radiator (but it won't be incredibly hot since it's not that close to it and there is plenty of space for heat to escape).
I am looking for minimum effort/cost but I want to make sure that the finish won't get ruined after 1 heating season.
Just to re-iterate there is already a metal radiator cover on top of radiator, so I am not afraid of wood burning or anything like that. This would sit on top of the metal cover ~half an inch space between metal cover and wood).