60 HOUR MAKEOVER...

I used to think my aunt and uncle's house was weird. It was built in the sixties and was completely different to any other houses I knew in my childhood. The ground floor living area was open plan with a wooden floor and a huge white modular shelving unit on wheels dissecting the middle of it. (Obviously "modular shelving unit" wasn't in my vocabulary back then.) All the furniture was straight and angular. The windows were huge and looked out onto a pretty little wood. I remember thinking that their kitchen looked like a spaceship. They had a huge terrarium and their bath was bright yellow. Now that I'm a grown up, I can see that their house wasn't weird; it was completely fucking amazing and they were way cooler than I ever gave them credit for when I was nine.*

When the house was sold, I came into possession of their Danish midcentury dining table, which I swiftly proceeded to destroy by spilling various beverages all over it. The varnish had also gone orange (cannot.stand.orange.toned.wood.) over time. I felt a bit bad about ruining the table, so I covered it with a tablecloth and forgot about it - once every few years getting quotes for refinishing it, which were more expensive than the cost of a new table. I put the tablecloth back on and my aunt and uncle continued to convey slight disapproval from the afterlife.

{The offending article}

Until yesterday the day before yesterday last Monday last week when I got a very strong friend to help me drag it outside. (In the pictures the leaves which make it roughly double the size are tucked in.) After many, many hours days of stripping off all the old varnish, then sanding the stains out, covering it with bin liners weighted with laundry pegs every time it rained, then oiling, then oiling again, then oiling again (had lost the will to live, never mind the instructions) and buffing, I completed my first only ever table restoration project. Then I had to get it back inside. Then sand it where a few drops of rain fell on it, then oil it again. Twice. And then it looked too perfect so I sanded it a bit here and there to fuck it up a bit.

{Ta da}

I kind of sort of know in my heart that I liked how it looked much better before I oiled it, when it was all stripped and raw, but I'm sticking my fingers in my ears and going LALALA so I can't hear those thoughts because I'm never doing that again.

{*In the interests of honesty when I was 9 I thought they were cool already because their cats were called Tabitha and Jessica and I had only met cats called things like Lucky and Sooty before. Tabitha was a boy.}

**Overuse of strikethroughs = what happens when you write a post in draft about something you haven't finished doing yet.