Dana's Table and the Year of the Dining Room

 So this is a post I started over a year ago. And I just finished it today. But I really like where I started and so just pretend that the last post you read from me was this one, the first time I went to the Lucketts Spring Fair and met Miss Mustard Seed.
__________________________________________________________________________________

I have been stripping in the garage lately. And using my pole too. Isn't that just so deliciously salacious coming from an overweight stay at home mom? I have to admit though, I have been stripping in my garage. Sometimes, I even leave the door open so the neighbors can watch. But that is the middle of this story. I better tell the whole thing from the beginning.

When our previous episode left off, Dana and I were driving home from a lovely day of shopping in Lucketts. But Dana was a changed woman. Since she found "The" table, Dana has become obsessed with Craigslist. For those of you who haven't discovered this amazing resource yet, Craigslist.com is an online local garage sale of sorts, where you can search for specific things like "wood dining table" and see pictures and read a blurb about the item before you truck to the person's house to look at it. As I was the one who suggested she look there for a table, it was only a matter of time (about 3 hrs after we got home from Lucketts) before she had me obsessing right along with her. I came home that same day and decided to reorganize my whole house. I am now in the process of refinishing a gorgeous mahogany buffet, but that is it's own story.

While I was looking for my stuff, I was sending her links to tables that could be just like her inspiration table. Oh, I forgot to tell you. Dana has an "inspiration room" for the dining room. Check it out here. She has hired a carpenter to make the long shelves with the thick molding that run along one wall. She is trying to decide if she's going to build the buffet table the same way, or get a darker antique or vintage piece. And she is totally married to the table in the pic, although she keeps changing her mind about natural top or dark top. Gotta love a pregnant woman's drive.

This gorgeous room is from The Old Painted Cottage Blog. It's fantastic. You should check it out.

So miracle of miracles, after a month of sending her about 10 Craigslist posts a day, Dana emails me and says, "I think this one might be it...." This is a rather ominous statement coming from Dana as she has a really, really hard time making up her mind about decorating stuff, especially if it involves a large financial or longevity commitment. She just wants to be sure she gets what she really wants. Because, you know, there might be something better next week.....

Anyway, after looking at listings for a month, the stars aligned and we took a lovely drive to Beltsville, MD, which is on the other side of the region from us. And Dana actually committed this table and chair set:

Nice legs, pretty rush seated chairs, solid construction, and the worse varnish job I have ever seen. Seriously. Varnish drips everywhere. Several gaps on the top where there simply was no varnish. It made me wonder if the man of the family tried a little varnish DIY, just to make it really, really shiny. And this table was shiny, like you could do your make-up looking in it shiny. But the price was right. $199 for the entire set, chairs and all. (The lady even gave Dana her $1 bill in change.) And the legs! Those gorgeous chunky solid wood legs had us at "hello".

So I got to work transforming the table. Initially Dana was going to leave the top and try to match the look of this table:

 The Bee Keeper's Cottage, a regular vendor at the Old Lucketts Store

I took the table apart, leaving the top as it was, dripped varnish and all. I started with a coat of French Linen Chalk Paint from Annie Sloan.

 

This is after one coat on those pretty legs.

First Coat of Pure White over the Linen.

The leg on the right has the second coat of Pure White. 

 I find that I often need two coats of Pure White or Old White.

I am always amazed at how the wax transforms things. Here is what the leg looked like after being waxed with clear wax and then selectively distressed.

Are you as in love with these legs as I am? 

I really, really love how curvy they are. And the finish on them feels smooth as glass. 

Sometimes I even surprise myself with the quality of my work.

I got the whole frame of the table painted and assembled and then I took the cover off the table top and was confronted with this:

 

This is the exact color of the finish. There is no unintentional yellowing due to artificial light. 

So after much discussion, which mostly involved me telling Dana that this was way too crappy to put with the pretty table I had just spent three days refinishing, "We" decided to strip it.

So here I am, back in the garage, stripping away.

I think I was wearing more clothes than all the other DC Metro Area strippers combined. 

I even have socks on. It was June. I wonder why I was wearing socks? 

In any case, though the process, I learned that I LOVE the gel citrus stripping agent they sell at Home Depot. If you need something stripped, I highly recommend it. It actually smells good! It works really well and fairly quickly. And it's not nearly as toxic as most of the other stripping agents. I covered up, and kept track of my debris, but I wasn't worried about my fingers turning green or shriveling and falling off, which I had been worried about on occasion with other products.

Once it was all stripped and cleaned and put together, this is what it turned out like:

Dana was so happy with the table, she actually sat down and cried. 

No better compliment to the artist than that.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

OK, so that was then. Let's fast forward to now.

In the last year, Dana and her very hard working and handy husband Travis have completely transformed their dining room, and the table is the centerpiece of the design.

Welcome to their new dining room!

This buffet was a total gift from the universe. It is solid vintage pecan wood. 

She got in off Craigslist for $100. 

 This is the true color of the piece. I LOVE the handles!

Apparently the people she bought it from had just bought a house, and the former owners left it there. The new people just wanted it gone, so Dana gets to live happily ever after with it in her dining room. 

She has been collecting the white wear ever since Lucketts. I suppose we should say, I have been collecting the white ware for her as I bang around the countryside looking for deals for the barn sale.

This piece, however, she did buy for herself. From none other than Miss Mustard Seed herself. It was cherished and loved, until one day, one of her kids bumped it accidentally. It smashed on the ground into about 20 pieces. She sadly and lovingly put them in a bag and brought them over, asking if I could use broken pottery for any of my projects. It was so sad. So once she left, I opened the bag, and slowly rebuilt the chamber pot for her. Obviously, I did a less than perfect job, but with some Gorilla Super Glue, at least it is in one piece and holding firm.

I couldn't resist posting this one. This is one of my up-cycled coaster bud vases. Dana snapped this one up from me before the 2012 spring barn sale even started. I still can't believe how well those vintage science bottles fit!

As much as I love the table and the side board, I think the piece de resistance in this room is the Family Rules sign.

This is the real McCoy from Between You and Me. This little Etsy company, of Perfectly Imperfect and Thistlewood Farms fame (two of Dana and my favorite blogs), hand-makes the most gorgeous Family Rules signs either of us had ever seen. And we looked at  A LOT of signs together because Dana really wanted that to be a defining element of the room. In the long run, she decided to let this be her splurge. She even had a family council to let the kids weigh in on the rules that would be listed. I was just happy that Dana allowed herself to buy the thing that she most wanted, rather than making do with something lesser.

 

It just pulls the room together so nicely.

Another hand done element in the room was the wainscoting.  Travis put all of it in himself.

Sometimes I wish I had a handy husband instead of a handy self. 

And then I remember that it took a year for this room to get finished. 

 

But Travis is unstoppable. 

As I was shooting the dining room today, Travis was bead boarding the bathroom. 

Go Travis!

Here are a few more beauty shots, just for fun.

 

Almost everything in this room was gathered slowly and inexpensively or made by hand. And yes, it took a while, but I love that every piece in here has meaning for Dana. What better thing could you  surround yourself with, than beautiful things that remind you of the adventures you had getting them and people you loved being with? 

 

I really do love those legs. 'Sigh'

 

Didn't See This One Coming

I spend a lot of time in thrift stores. They are an excellent source for materials to be refinished and up-cycled at prices that allow me to make a bit of money, but not have to charge my customers an arm and a leg. Now while thrift shops may be exciting to me, especially when I find a true diamond in the rough, they generally do not max out my tolerance for mayhem.

Enter last Thursday and Friday.

Last Thursday I was D-O-N-E with everything. With artists, with my life, with the barn sale -mostly the barn sale- so I decided, "That's it! I am outta here today" and I left for Maryland. Isn't that where everyone goes when they are sick of being in charge of their barn sale?

source for flag pic

My particular reasons for this state being my choice involved it being the location of a particularly intriguing thrift shop, whose ads I had been watching on Craigslist all summer as I searched for pieces for my dining room. One of their most recent postings showed a short wooden filing cabinet, just perfect for my office desk redo.

That's right! I am making myself an office! It sounds so official, doesn't it? The office of CM Shaw, Artist and Director of Branches: the Barn Sale Without a Barn. Woot. My parents even "invested" in my company and sent me money for a new computer!

Here is what I am currently working with. Don't you love the phone books added to level the different heights of the filing cabinets?And the dent that makes it hard to open the rickety filing cabinet? And the floppy disk era computer that I am currently using?:

Hence the need for a new filing cabinet. And a new computer.

Still, I digress. The need for the filing cabinet was my excuse, These guys always have great deals on furniture, the good stuff, antiques, mid-century pieces, you name it. So I went up to check it out.  I walk in the door and the first thing I see is this:

(Obviously, I had to retake these photos. I had big plans to use the Craigslist photos taken in the shop, but due to technical difficulties, you'll have just pretend these first few are in a thrift shop)

 

 

 

 

Pretty isn't it? Solid wood, obviously well made, gorgeous lines, classic style that will never be outdated. This table is the reason that I go to thrift shops. There are just gorgeous, well made things there, things I could never afford otherwise, waiting to be discovered and taken home. There was only one problem here. I have a dining table. Now granted, it's not the one I want it to be, but the Amish have that one right now. At least until I can cough up the $2700 it will cost to have them make it for me. And the one I do have was a freebie hand-me-down from a friend who felt bad for me when we moved into my house and didn't have any furniture (or money to buy any furniture) in my dining room. And it works fine, even if doesn't match any of the new stuff I have added this summer.

So, I did something unusual for me. I used my "pause" button. You know, the thing you develop after years of getting unhappy looks by your husband for doing all kinds of insane things that no reasonable person would ever be tempted by? Like bringing home 6 bags of used and antique books and 6 lamp shades because you suddenly decided that you wanted to build book lamps? You know what I am talking about, right? So after years of my husband giving me his "Really?" expression as I walk in the door with totally unreasonable amounts of stuff, I have developed a "pause" button. I stop and think, "Hmmm......is this purchase going to get me the 'Really?' look? And if so, is it worth it?" This usually pulls me far enough out of my fervor, that I can make a more rational decision about the whole thing.

In the case of the table, I thought of a hundred reasons why I shouldn't do it, bought a pretty federal style mirror to chalk paint and my filing cabinet (for $7! after a buy-one-get-one-half-price deal), and quickly left, before I weakened.

Aren't you proud of me? I was SO proud of myself. I even called my husband when I got home and bragged about my "pause" button induced self control. And then I started to crack.....

 

 

I told my friends about the table. What it looked like, how much it cost, what I could do with it...

And then I pulled up the listing on Craigslist. It was even better than I remembered.....So I sent the listing to my sister and my best friend, both of whom live in other states, (but neither in MD), just so they could see what I'd left behind. And I went to bed.

 

 

My first thought when I woke up was "I have to have that table!" I checked my email and saw that both my sister and my friend had said, "Ummmm....You need that table. GO GET IT!" So I gingerly walked up the stairs and asked my guy what he would do if he happened to come home to a new dining room set.

He looks at me with this very patient expression and, thinking out loud says, "Now you know that you are going to be talking to all your friends about this table. And then you'll want to tell me all about the table again, and then, if it sells, you'll be all sad about someone else getting 'your' table and this will all go on for weeks.....So it seems that I will suffer far less if I just tell you to go get the table. Frankly, I really don't have an opinion one way or the other. Happy table shopping Honey." My sister's comment on this conversation was "He has obviously lived with you for a very long time."

So I immediately called the thrift shop in MD and asked them to put it on hold, which they agreed to do, for 1 hour. Well, it takes almost an hour to get there if traffic is even marginally slow. And DC traffic is always at least marginally slow. So my business partner, Sharon and I took the seats out of the van at lighting speed and blazed up there as fast as our little tires would take us.

As we walk in the door-and I am not making this up- one of the store employees is eating their lunch on MY table. She is sitting about 18 inches from the shop's glass front door, eating something out of a bag and some Tupperware. She doesn't even budge as I start climbing under that table to look for cracks and damage. And two little ladies were sitting in MY chairs, sorting scarves at the other side of the table. Keep in mind, the store manager knows we are coming. Right on cue and to his credit, he walks up and says, "Um...someone has this on hold until 12:30." I smiled brightly and said, "That's me. Thanks for protecting my table" and continued climbing around, turning over leaves and sitting in chairs, just to be sure this table was worth the fervor it was putting me through. "Lunch lady" still keeps eating as if no one else was in the room.

The manager finally had to tell her to move when I asked to see how the leaves fit and to see how smooth the table mechanisms worked. Oh baby! They were like butter. And worked off a gear and teeth made of steel. Love it! Obviously, this was the table for me. And then I looked at what was written on the wood below the gear, "Ethan Allen." Score! Beautiful, functional, well made and originally expensive!

So we close everything back up and the little ladies look up and go, "Are you going to buy the chairs?" I said, "Yes, I think they are included in the price of the table." And the ladies went back to sorting scarves. I wandered around the store for a few minutes, as it was "buy one get one half price," to see what my half price item would be. When I walked back by the table again, the ladies asked me again if I was going to buy the chairs. "Um....yes, they go with the table" I replied, for the second time. I smiled politely and went to find Sharon and to keep looking at stuff. I thought long and hard about this gorgeous Wedgwood dish set and an empire dresser. But there was damage to the veneer on the dresser and I have no idea how hard dishware is to resell, so they stayed at the shop for some other lucky girl. The only thing I could find that I could justify getting was a $4 turned wood candlestick. What a waste of a good buy one get one deal, but it couldn't be helped. As I am walking up to pay for my candlestick and table, one of the little ladies walks up to me and says (and I am totally not making this up), "So will you be taking the chairs?" At this point, wondering if I am being punked, I smile at the lady, assure her that yes, I would be taking the chairs momentarily, and quickly sprint to the register to pay and tell Sharon that I am loading up the stuff.

The table weighs a ton, so they had to call the a guy from the back room to help bring it out to my car. As I pull the 20 ft or so to the loading area, I hear this odd grinding noise and notice a slight tilt to my car. I get out and go around to the side where I heard the sound, and my rear tire is completely flat. I'm talking "down to the rim" flat. This what not what I had expected would happen.

The manager quickly pointed out that right next to us was an Advanced Auto Parts store and talked about "fix a flat" in a can. I had never heard of this product, but was game for anything that would get us back on the road, so I bought a can to try out. Sharon and I took turns holding the knob down for the 10 minutes it took the stuff to empty into my tire. Then we started talking about our options. This whole time, Table Guy is trying to impress Sharon with his private DC high school education and his dedication to the Redskins, rather than helping us with the flat. Ultimately, we decided that while, this spray stuff would be good for short distances on local roads, we had to go 60 miles on high speed, high traffic freeways, and would be better off using my full size spare.

 

Just as we found a lug nut we couldn't seem to get off, up walked a friend of Table Guy's who happened to know his way around a car. He popped that last lug nut off in 2 seconds and put the spare on for us. We thanked him profusely as he helped Table Guy load the huge table into the car. He disappeared before we could tip him, like magic, when we went in to get the chairs. 

 

 Once everything was all loaded up (and thankfully, it all fit!), we headed for a gas station to give the spare just a little more air. The road we took was a different one than we had come on, and while we did find a gas station with an air pump, we also managed to get lost while trying to find the freeway. Lucky for us the neighborhood we were in was full of all these grand old houses. So we enjoyed the view while looking for the freeway. Just as we found the road we needed and headed into the turn lane for the freeway on ramp, Sharon at me and said, "Where are the leaves for the table?" We quickly got out of the turn lane, and headed back to the store. Thank goodness we were still only about 5 minutes away.

 

As we walk into the shop, the manager, who is in his cubicle on the phone yells, "Thank you so much for coming back!" Obviously he has been stuck with other people's leaves before. The little old ladies had found themselves some other chairs and were sorting again. They looked up and said, "Oh, we were going to remind you to take those." I wonder if that was their subtle vengeance for me taking away their chairs?

 

By this time, Sharon and I were bursting out in maniacal laughter intermittently. It was 1:30pm and way past our lunch time, so we stopped at a local kabob place and chowed down. During our meal, between uncontrollable fits of laughter, we decided that this was the most mayhem we could have at one time and still think was funny while it was happening.

 

You'll be happy to know that the drive home was completely uneventful.

  

And the table looks amazing in my dining room.