Thrift and Consequences
Once upon a time, I went to Goodwill in search of a rolling pin. I found this table for $50 instead. It was love at first sight. While stationed in front of the table with a glare that said, “Move along, folks, nothing to see here,” I called my Bear to ask him to come up with the truck and give final approval on the piece. To my relief and delight, he acquiesced (I mean, how could anyone say no to those shapely legs?!) and we brought her home. I had been on the hunt for another table for about three years when this beauty came along, so if he hadn’t approved, it might have been a case of him or the table.
When we moved into our first house, my Bear’s parents gifted us the dining set that his paternal grandparents had owned. It was a lovely MCM oval table that had seen decades of Thanksgiving dinners and vicious games of Axis and Allies. As the number of people we wanted to host for dinner grew, however, it became painfully apparent that we needed something a bit roomier. Our guests were always good natured, but the hostess in me always died a bit at the sight of friends sitting in an awkwardly cramped position if they were in a chair near one of the legs. Because it has so much sentimental value, we have it stashed it in the spare room until I can come up with a creative use for the components that we could incorporate into our home. Once we figured out a game plan for the old table, we brought the new table top into the garage so I could get to work.
Two days of sanding with 80 grit, then 180 grit, then 220 grit got me here. I was sore and ridiculously dusty, but delighted with the blank slate.
I used Minwax stain in dark walnut and three thin, even coats of polycrylic to finish the top, but left the legs alone because they were still in good shape.
The next challenge was finding chairs. Rounding up ten matching chairs on the secondary market is no easy task. I like the idea of mixing and matching, but the Bear wasn’t on board. He had been so gracious in agreeing to get another table, that I had to give on his chair preferences. After scouring my usual sources for about a month, two sets of the same six chairs popped up within hours of each other on different sides of the metroplex. I drove three hours total to pick them up, but for less than $15 per chair, I consider it time well spent. When I picked up the second set, the sellers mentioned it came from an abandoned house and I “might want to brush them off before bringing them inside” because there had been roaches in the house.
Turns out they needed more than just a light brushing. The seats were completely infested and there were droppings and roaches of all sizes in every single crevice. I took off the seats and drenched them in roach spray. In the end, they had to be completely deconstructed and every nook and cranny scrubbed with bleach and an old tooth brush. The next bulk trash day, we put the old seat cushions on the curb and discovered to our dismay that they were gone before the garbagemen came.🤢 We really should have put a warning sign on them.
Once they were finally free of all traces of their roach-ridden past, I designated two of the chairs to be experiment chairs since I had twelve and only needed ten. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with them, but knew I wasn’t interested in stripping them given all the detail. I started by giving one a light sanding, two coats of home made white chalk paint, and then roughing it up with 220 grit sandpaper.
It didn’t stand out enough against the white wainscoting in the dining room, so I gave it a coat of brown wax. But then it didn’t standout enough against the bamboo shades or the oaky floor.
Cue a frenzy of testing different combinations of chalk paints, waxes, and glazes.
By the time I landed on a process, I had tried out 7 techniques, 2 chalk paints, 3 waxes, and 3 glazes in order to achieve a finish that played well in that space. The winning combo was the white chalk paint, followed by a coat of Folk Art antiquing wax, covered by a home made black glaze, and finished with two coats of polycrylic.
It was beginning to dawn on me just what I had gotten myself into. My obsession with thrift was going to cost me more time than I had bargained for. I had definitely bitten off more than I wanted to chew, but as per usual, the only way out of the chaos and discomfort was through, one chair at a time.
Notice how none of them have a surface to actually sit on? The seat saga continues next week . . . .