October 17 – “Wood is good”

Chris has been back in creativity mode again.  We got a new (to us) dining room table that can open up with two large leaves to serve a ton of people, so we decided it was time to retire the table we tried for so long to salvage after Hurricane Ike.  It was Mom’s table, so it was pretty old and had some sentimental value as well.  It just wasn’t in very good shape.  The guys who tried to restore it right after the storm had it screwed here and nailed there in a kind of hodgepodge way.  The finish layer was peeling off, and neither of the leaves was in any condition to be used, except maybe for extenders of my Black and Decker workmate out in the garage (which, by the way, they have done an excellent job at).  In a nutshell, it was time.  The only decision was in how to let it go.

And that’s where Chris and her legendary creative mind rose to the surface.  She immediately saw something in there that I had no capacity to imagine.  And that has always been a source of amazement to me.  It took some doing and more than a few attempts at drawing, but I finally got an idea of what she was talking about.  So we dove right in.  First order of the day was to take the old one apart.  That was fairly easy.  I have always liked demo.  We were trying to save as much of the wood as possible, though, also a plus from my standpoint.  Wood is good.  See?  It even rhymes.  We didn’t have as much trouble with all the rusted screws as I expected, so before long we were lifting the top off of the leg support piece.  Then came the fun part.  Power tools.  Her idea was to create a long, skinny table to fit behind the couch.  I think it probably has a name, but that has never been essential information to me, so I will never remember it.  She wanted one side to have curved edges and the other squared off, so all we had to do was cut off each end of the table, and we were in business – twice.  Yep.  She realized that we could make not one but two tables.  See, there were actually four leg support pieces.  The second one would be a bit tougher than the first, though, because there would be no horizontal support pieces running between the legs.  But that was a concern for another day.  If we could get one done, then the second would just be gravy.  Meaning, of course, that if I messed it up, it wouldn’t be that hard to just pour it down the drain and use ketchup.  OK.  I’ll leave that image for now.  I’m not sure what that means, anyway.  Never claimed to be a cook.  Making the first cut worked well.  I had a brand new blade for my jigsaw, and it performed admirably.  The new tabletop was ready.  Then we attacked the legs. 

On the original table the two legs on each side emerged in a kind of Nike swoosh from what looked like something you would see on a musical scale.  The idea was to keep the musical scale part and cut the swoosh into a semi-level bottom.  Do you know how hard it is to make a straight line out of an arc?  I felt like I was back in Catholic school kindergarten, trying to color inside the lines with Mrs. Pate hovering over my shoulder.  And to top it off, the blade on the jigsaw was already getting dull.  Needless to say the cuts were not … straight.  We ended up having to make some “adjustments” in the final product, but hopefully they aren’t too noticeable.  The last stage of building was adding four nine-inch leg pieces we found at Home Depot.  Of course the way they had been built required more hardware that of course was not available at the time.  So I again had to improvise.  I figured out a different way to screw them in using two-sided dowel screws.  Never mind.  I didn’t know what they were called either.  I just looked until I saw what I was looking for.  The legs attached with little difficulty, and the structure was complete.  The only thing left was staining. 

The darkest stain I could find short of one called “ebony” (which I learned from crossword puzzles is a poetic way of saying “black”) was some kind of walnut.  It was no trouble to put on, but when it dried Chris immediately noted that it didn’t match.  It was obviously not as dark and much redder than what was already on there.  Guess my task for today will be a trip to Home Depot for some ebony wood stain.  The table itself looks good, though.  It’s sitting behind our couch with a doily on it that Mom made to spell out the word “Vaughan.”  Oh, and table number two?  The cut didn’t go so well on that one, so I had to grab a new blade for the jigsaw.  I still haven’t come up with a plan for bracing the legs that I’m totally satisfied with.  But we will go again.  Wood is good.

Genesis 1:31 says, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning — the sixth day.”

Father, thank you for the beauty of the grain in a piece of unpainted wood.  Thank you for the smell of freshly cut wood.  You were right.  Wood is good.  Amen.