There had been a pile of trashed out furniture on the curb in front of a recently vacated house for a few days. I kept trying to get a view of it, but every time we drove by my husband would speed up and say something like, "nothing to see here, folks". Well, I did catch sight of a huge dining table, that just reeked of ugliness, but also of pure potential.
The finish was dirty, chipping and peeling. There were several water marks and scratches. It was a medieval monster, but after a thorough examination I convinced Hubsy to help me lug the thing home.
It took up residence on our back porch, which slowly began to resemble the set of This Old House, with sawhorses, orange extension cords, sanders and sandpaper, foam paint brushes, plastic sheeting, a pile of old rags, and various cans of wood finishes. Feeling much like Norm Abram, I set to work. (Yes, that's a Christmas coffee mug, that I use year round).
It took up residence on our back porch, which slowly began to resemble the set of This Old House, with sawhorses, orange extension cords, sanders and sandpaper, foam paint brushes, plastic sheeting, a pile of old rags, and various cans of wood finishes. Feeling much like Norm Abram, I set to work. (Yes, that's a Christmas coffee mug, that I use year round).
Hubsy disassembled it, and Punkin and I began to scrape and sand ... and sand and sand. Even Hubs and Princess joined in occasionally, while The Boy watched. It took a solid week to remove the old finish and get down to the beautiful bare wood. And that's when Hubsy really began to believe that we could make something out of this thing.
Using a Colonial Maple stain, something we had left over from our coffee table years ago, I started adding some color to each piece. Believing that the table top was a solid piece of oak, like the base, we were surprised to find that it was covered with a pine veneer, which was peeling in several small sections. So, we peeled up the loose sections, and sanded down the uneven edges. During a brief lapse in brain function, I filled in two of the spots with wood filler, which didn't take the stain well. While the peeled and sanded sections took the stain differently, but nicely. Oh well, a mistake I can live with, because it was still definitely not the same table that we had hauled home. The sides of the tabletop were a beast of their own. Again, I had used a wood filler to seal some gaps, and it didn't stain well. I ended up having to paint the sides in a brown color that matched the darker knots in the pine. It soaked up the stain like a sponge, and needed four coats of poly ... but it came out beautiful in the end!
In order to make room for the table, we had to turn our office space back into a dining room. In order to do that, we had to rearrange the furniture in the living room to make room for the computer desks. Then we had to paint and patch the walls in both the living room and the dining room!
Next week will lead me into a whole new project. We've had to take down Hubsy's Star Wars collection from the living room, so now I have make room for it in the bedroom. Of course, when I rearrange the shelves for that collection, I'll have to patch and paint! ... and then...
