Happy New Year

The one and only art show that I've done this spring is over, and that frees up a lot of time to work on the backlog of projects piling up around here. As one of my co-workers put it, "Wow, the day after the show is like New Year's for you." An apt description.

So I got the studio cleaned up, mostly, and the show stuff put away, and most of the bookkeeping done, and I sat down at the drafting table. Gaby came in and asked what I was doing, and I said, "Just trying to figure out what to do next." He asked me what kinds of things I needed to be doing, and I started on the list. When I mentioned staining the tables for the living room, he said, "Ooh! Do that one!"

The tables in question are a trio of tables (an occasional table, a coffee table, and one of those tall skinny tables that goes in the entry or behind the couch) that I picked up at a garage sale last summer for $50. They have beautiful styling, but when I found them they were painted with a two tone finish, the paint on the tops of the tables was scratched, and they smelled like cat piss.

Last October, when my friend Ted was staying with us, he worked on stripping the tables and managed to get two of them done. After it got too cold to work outside, the project was put away. Ted got a job, his own place, and then moved to Oregon to escape his ankle-biting girlfriend, leaving us with doubts that he would finish this project.

Yesterday, I went to the Wally-world and got a can of dark walnut stain. My new framing table in the studio provided a lot of space to work, and I managed to get the occasional table coated twice, and the top of the coffee table coated once. The underside of the coffee table has one coat as of this morning, as well as a second coat on the top. They look good.

Staining furniture is a messy job.

I'm not sure when my next day off will be, but that's the day I'll be applying the polyeurethane, weather permitting. I'll give that a week to dry, and then we'll move them into the living room.