Oh, when will it end?!? Not until after Tuesday. Uck! This is just awful, cold, damp, boring, depressing, frustrating and just plain wet!
I went ahead and made the desert to take to the Thanksgiving meal. Brownie mix with nuts, chocolate chips and peanut butter added to the middle before baking. Umm! Doug is making his famous potato salad. The park will provide the turkey. I sure miss cooking my own and having leftovers. I love turkey and miss that wonderful aroma of cooked turkey. When we had our house, I was in charge of the turkey, ham, dressing, gravy, and mashed potatoes every year. Then the rest of the family would bring the side dishes and deserts. I would take out my Victorian dishes and crystal I had collected for many years, and set a fancy table on my antique East Lake 1800s table for 10 (using the leaf) that I refinished myself. I just loved using my things. They are still fond memories.
In regards to my table, I will NEVER again undertake refinishing a project like I did with that table and chairs! I went to an auction and fell in love with the style of an old table and chairs. My immediate thought was “I can refinish it!” I asked the auctioneer what he thought it would go for. He said about $1500.00! Yikes! That was out of my budget! But I thought I would give it a try and see what happened. Because of condition, I guess nobody was that interested. Well, guess what? I got that table and 6 chairs for $450.00!! I couldn’t believe it! It was delivered to the house and the work began. I had refinished smaller items and thought this would be just fine to do. Boy, was I wrong! It was layer upon layer of black finish. It had lots of decorative carvings all over the edges and legs. It must have taken about 2-3 coats of stripper before finally getting to the natural wood. What a wonderful surprise it was! The wood was gorgeous English Walnut with such rich brown colors running through the grain. I was thrilled! It took me 2 full months of steady work on this project after work and on weekends. So the table took up the first month. After applying clear polyurethane to protect it and bring out the color, it was shiny and beautiful just like it was when it was made over 100 years ago.
Now, the chairs were something quite different! They were the same dark finish, with red leather for the flat seats, and edged with those big ugly brass tacks. Just remember, I was looking past that although my imagination was getting weaker! I started removing the seats. “What the heck is this stuff! It feels course like hair”. It was original HORSE HAIR!! That is what they used in the 1800s. Those seats had never been redone since it was made! What a chuckle that was. I got down to the last chair and removed the leather when I was hit with this awful rotten smell that would just about knock you over! It smelled like the horse was already dead when they used its’ hair! I had to put it in a separate garbage bag and leave it outside until the next trash day! I stripped the chairs and got another very pleasant surprise. The center strip down the back of the chairs was English Burl Wood. It looks similar to a tortoise shell only with subtle swirls of different shades of browns. Gorgeous! Why on earth would anyone want to cover up that beautiful wood!? I couldn’t imagine. With all the different pieces and angles the chairs were very difficult to work on. That was the second month!
Finally! I was finished and had something I was really proud of. Then came time to upholster the seats. That project had me beat before I even started. I had the foam rubber, the material, and the nail gun. All set, right? Wrong! I tried everyway I could to get the material to stay put, get it tight, and grab the nail gun. It just was not meant to be. Want to know what the real kicker was!? It was Xmas Eve and I had everyone coming over Xmas Day!!! In tears, I call my parents. “HELP!!!” After arriving to help with no better results that mine, we panicked together! Whew, calm down! Mother suggested calling a local upholsterer she had used. By some miracle he was still open and after I explained the situation, this kind man and his mother immediately set to work on my chairs. I picked them up at 5:00 (nothing like the last minute!) and they were perfect! This man did a beautiful job! It works when you have the right tools. I just could not thank him enough! Xmas day came and I was so proud of my table. Everyone raved about the nice job I had done. I never told the rest of them how close they all came to either standing up or sitting in the floor to eat! We had a nice day after all.
That old table is now sitting in storage until we stop travelling. When we sold the house, I just could not bear to part with it. To this day every time I think about that table, I remember the hard work, but most of all those ugly red seats and that smelly old horse hair! A few months after that Xmas, I was reading the paper, and there on the front of one of the sections was a picture of MY table and chairs in a local restored house museum in town! Now I knew I had uncovered something special and all my hard work was worth it! That table is also now one of the things my daughter wants when I leave this earth.
We had sunshine today. Still chilly but getting better. So hopefully the sun is moving your way. Even though we are eating turkey at the clubhouse, we bought a small 10lb turkey that we're going to fix for ourselves because we love love love leftovers. I bet that table and chairs were gorgeous when you got done. But man, the work involved.
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