My latest ‘Nailed It’ was an attempt at bringing back to life, and health standards, a beautiful pine table and benches we purchased a number of years ago from a garage sale up the road for $225 (delivered).
I’d love to be able to tell you they were in the above state when we got them, but they were absolutely beautiful and golden. This is all us. Or more specifically, our kids. Paint, play dough, pens, food, drinks and a dog who went through a wood chewing phase. Plus a sizeable amount of weathering to boot.
It was either buy a new one or fix it up, and a new one of these wouldn’t be cheap. I looked – then looked away very quickly.
So I bought some mould killing stuff and gave it a coat, allowed it to dry, and then got to work.
Step One. Remove children from your life. If not they will insist on helping. And by helping I mean turning off the power point while you’re sanding and then squeezing the button on the sander trying to get it to work while you’re off turning the power point back on. Yell at them a lot, but not so loud your wife hears and you have to explain what’s happened. Insist your wife takes the kids to visit her parents.
Step Two. Sand as much of the surface area as you can in half an hour.
Step Three. Phone an out of work friend up who could probably do with a few extra bucks and employ them to finish sanding the remainder of the surface area. Allow five hours and a sixpack.
Step Four. Show your wife how clever you’ve been when she arrives home with the kids. Unless you’ve sent your mate home by the time before she drove up the drive, she will not believe you. I know that now.
Step Five. Apply a coat of clear and hope it’s thick enough you won’t need to do a second.
Step Six. Consider phoning your mate up again while applying a second coat.
Step Seven. Do a third bloody coat.
Step Eight. Don’t let the kids put anything on the table: not food, not drinks, not play dough and especially not paint. It’s perfect. You want it to stay that way as long as possible. Especially as my inconsiderate mate went and got himself a job.
Sadly, therefore, I can’t claim to have ‘nailed it’ because I didn’t do all the steps. Instead I really have to label this a ‘screwed it’.
But I don’t really care because it looks fantastic now.
Maybe I can claim managerial points, since I supervised – read as, drank beer at him.
At the same time, because my mate is clever and was here, I had him put a new top on Tracey’s Poppy’s old home brew table, which we keep on the balcony for when we have larger groups (read as, the kids and us plus one). I had him sand the legs on that down as well while he was here, and then I lacquered up the lot as once.
Couldn’t have done it without you, Jack. Or rather, wouldn’t have finished it without you.
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“Raising a family on little more than laughs.”
Good job! They look awesome!!!
Awesome!
What’s old is new again. We placed a layer of plastic (brought from spotlight) and covered the top of the table. We have done it for about nine years and it is still looking like new.