The Saga of the Kitchen Table

In April of 2000, when we moved into our house in WVC, we had no kitchen table. We had a few chairs, and a high chair, and five kids, but no table to seat them around.

Within a few days Bruce found a table listed in the classified ads: dining room table, seats ten, $100. Well! That sounded great! We could have a table that would seat our whole family and a few friends! (Little did we know that within four years that table would only seat our family...)

As we needed them, we accumulated more chairs—none of them matching each other or the table, but they did the job. (In 2017 we got twelve chairs for a fabulous price at an auction. They don't really match the table, but they match each other.)

But the table! It was lovely. Two removable leaves, drawers in either end, and a beautiful cherry finish. This would last us our lifetime! Except...

...Except that the legs were wobbly—really wobbly. They wiggled like loose teeth whenever someone leaned on the table, or whenever we had to move it. Whenever they felt too rickety we'd crawl under the table with  wrench, tighten them up, and say, "We need to find a way to fix this!"

The other problem was the finish. After four or five years I noticed that the table always felt a little sticky. Hm. Was I just not getting it clean? Eight little kids, after all...  Then, one day Jason was scratching the finish right off with his fingernails. Oh! The finish was bad. (Helped along by our swamp cooler, I suspect.) Well, one day I would have to refinish it. In the meantime, I kept it covered with a tablecloth All. The. Time. I suppose we could have spent $1000 on a new table. Or $500 for one the same size in the classified ads. But it had been in our family for five ...ten ...twenty years— It's practically an heirloom! ;-)

top: the tablecloth that is only a few years younger than the table
center: The table is covered with that rubber, non-slip stuff that you put under rugs. I did this so that the tablecloth
wouldn't stick to the table. It really was that bad.
bottom: That is what the finish looked like. Some of it was scraped—or scraping—off.  The cloudiness is the old varnish.
And if you can see the little white freckles, they are where tiny
food particles got through the tablecloth weave, and
through the mat, and stuck permanently. 

On May 20, 2020, I was in the covid-19 doldrums; nothing sounded fun or interesting. As I was taking the tablecloth away to be washed I thought, Why don't I finally do this table? So I went to the hardware store that evening and got some furniture stripper. (Citristrip, by the way. Less stinky than other strippers, and works marvelously!) By morning I was completely uninterested, but in the afternoon I made myself apply the stripper to the tabletop, and the rest is history.

I had put a dropcloth under the table (lifting it made one of the legs fall off...) and applied the stripper—in the house—in the afternoon. That night I covered the table with another dropcloth and went to bed. I was still pretty unmotivated at this point, but the stripper had to be scraped off within 24 hours of application. Bruce helped me. :-)

We moved it into the garage where we scrubbed off
any residue with mineral spirits. It looks terrible!
See my purple cup on the table?

top: Bruce helped me sand the table. (And, yes, I did work on it
—a lot! It's just that I took all the pictures, too.)
The purple cup is still there, by the way.
bottom: half sanded—the first time over

There I am! And do you see my purple cup?

See my purple cup now? See the working refrigerator?
I was sad that my water got so warm while I worked
in the garage all day long. I did figure it out, eventually.

Look what we found under all of that old varnish!
Lovely.

At first I was going to stain and varnish the whole table. Then I decided to paint the skirt and legs white instead. I'm glad I did.

We flipped the table over so we could reattach the legs, and hopefully make them sturdier. While it was upside-down, we found some interesting things:

How did the gum get there? I'm sure it wasn't the old lady we bought the table from, and my kids weren't allowed to have gum in the house...  Ohh! I see!

But this was, perhaps, the most interesting discovery of all:

I took this picture while Bruce was looking at how to make the table legs more sturdy. Then we went to the store to buy the right size screws. We left the garage door open while we were gone.

When we got back from the store, the table looked like this. 

Did some random child come into our garage and scribble on the bottom of the table? That seemed unlikely, but when we looked at the first picture I'd taken, none of us could see any scribbling. This whole situation tickled my funny bone.

But, when I loaded the pics onto the computer...

The scribbling was there all along.
(I Photoshopped it out of the first pic so that you
could enjoy the mystery just as I did.)

Well, anyway, it was time to repair the legs.

This is how crooked the legs looked like most of the time
when the table was standing up.

This is why: Those bolts are the only things holding that leg in place, and they don't fit tightly into their slot. So if someone moves the table or leans on it, the legs rock from side to side. Eventually the nuts work loose, which makes the legs get even more wiggly, and then the nuts and bolts get looser, etc., etc., etc.

That is the slot I was talking about. There's almost 1/8-inch on either side of the bolts that go through the slot and into the leg. Besides that, the green box is outlining an empty space between the leg and its brace. No wonder the legs moved so much!
We filled the empty space (not the slots) with hardboard.

Bruce puts some screws into the legs...

...lots of screws! (ten per leg)
Of course, this means I will have to fill over the screws and repaint. That's OK. This table is sturdy now!

Well, after all of that, we only had to stand the table back on its legs and finish the top. One more light sanding, a coating of stain, and Bruce sprayed several coats of spar varnish on it. The varnishing took a long time because we had a week of high winds, cold weather (into the low 30s), and rain. So dirt was blowing into the garage, and it was too cold for the varnish to cure anyway. But, at last, it got the final coat of varnish just this past Tuesday, June 23, about a month after I started the whole project.

And here are the "befores" and "afters":

before

after!

You know, when I spend a month working on a project like this I almost forget how bad it was before I started. I know it was bad, but seeing the before and after pics reminds me just how bad. Wow!

before-ish
(This is after we started stripping the top—
I almost never remember to take "before" pics.)

after!

and after!

I am soooo pleased with the way it turned out!

But now...

...the chairs. 

Lovin' my lemon-lime wreath!
But... the chairs...

What do you think? Leave them black? Paint them to match the table? Every color of the rainbow?

Ma cuisine est bleue

At least my dining room is.
One wall is.
Blue.

(Is it weird of me to call the part of my kitchen where the table lives "the dining room"? Like my house is soooo fancy? I call it that because that's what my mom called her table area, and that's what I'm used to. Although in Mom's case the table really was in a separate room...)

Anyway, on May 21 I decided I would finally refinish my dining room table. (That's just what I'm going to call it.) It was in pretty bad shape. So we took it out to the garage, and almost as soon as it was out of the house I said, "Hey! We ought to paint the dining room while there's no furniture in the way!" Which, I think, was a very good idea.

Here's what it looked like way, way before.

This is also before...
just not as long before.

And this is the real before picture—after the table was moved, but before anything else started.

Of course, with me painting never means just painting. First I had to remove the ugly 6-inch baseboards and, in turn, they removed some of the drywall that was behind them. So then I had to re-plaster the bottom six inches of walls all the way around. I also had to patch up some nail holes, and one big hole that the doorknob had knocked into the wall. And then I had to sand all the drywall that I'd plastered on, and re-texture it to match the rest of the walls.

This stuff looks like pressed paper—like bookboard—that's been molded into this lovely shape. It's not waterproof, and obviously it's not scrape-proof either. Really, who puts this in a kitchen?! Also, it doesn't match any moldings in the rest of the house. It had to go.

When all of that preliminary work done, then I could paint. But first, since I was doing drywall and painting, I decided to texture the area formerly known as "coat closet" in the living room too. (I don't know what that space is called now that it's not a coat closet. Hmm.)

coat closet, before-ish
(after I textured and sanded the walls)

After the painting, before removing the tape.
You can't really tell the difference on the computer screen, can you?

Jason and Adreanna came up to visit us in the middle of all this fun. :-)  Adreanna models the missing door. She also helped paint the door moldings and the door. 

Bruce hung the door back up, and put the hardware back onto it.

After I'd dribbled spackle and paint all around the edges of the floor, I had to scrape and scrub it off. While I was doing that I couldn't help noticing how nice the floor where I'd been working looked and felt. Lovely!

Oh! And I also had to have Bruce change all the outlets and light switches in the room too. (I can do it myself, but I don't like to wrestle with the electrical wires.) The outlets had to be done because they are the ancients ones that plugs just drop out of. Or drop halfway out, leaving the electrified prongs exposed, which probably doesn't meet anyone's safety standards. And the light switches had to be done because they are ugly.

before      and      after

With the help of the miter-saw ...chop-saw? ...that Gregory gave me, I got all the baseboards cut and dry-fitted in one afternoon. Thanks, Greg! (When I did the great room I cut the baseboards with a handsaw and a miter-box.) I got the boards nailed in place, caulked them, and touched up the paint. And then I scrubbed the rest of the floor.

Which spot is dirt, and which is the pattern on the tile?
Yeah. I couldn't tell either—which meant
lots of futile scrubbing). I hate this tile.
(Turns out the spot on the left is dirt, the right one is the tile.)

Now, one month later, it's all finished!
Well, the dining room is.
Except for wall decor.
I'm working on that.

before

after
(If you've heard me saying that my kitchen is too dark, you may be wondering about my choice of color. The blue wall—which you can see from the living room and from the great room—is very similar to the blue chairs in the living room, and works nicely with the blue carpet in the great room. I think it will work. Especially after I redo the rest of the kitchen. ;-) )

I guess the table is pretty much finished too; it's just drying after the last coat of varnish that Bruce applied yesterday. And I wonder how long we should let it cure before we do things like put hot dishes on it.  ?  Well, hopefully it will come back in the house within the next couple of days, and then I'll tell you The Saga of the Kitchen Table.

Can you guess?

Today I nailed the baseboards to the kitchen (dining area) walls. Yay!

Here is a Loralee's Hammering Skills quiz for you to take. Write down your answers!

1.  Does Loralee use her feet (like an ape) to hold things in place while she's hammering in the nails?
A. Yes
B. No

2. How many times, on average, does Loralee strike a nail before it goes all the way in?
A. Three
B. Seven
C. Twenty-two
D. Fifty-three

3.  How many times does Loralee have to hit a nail before it even breaks the surface of the board she is trying to nail in place?
A. One
B. Ten
C. Three

4.  How many nails did Loralee bend beyond usefulness, and maybe beyond recognition while trying to drive thirty-nine nails?
A. Two
B. Thirteen
C. Nineteen

5.  How many times did Loralee hit herself in the shin with the claw side of the hammer because it bounced away from the wall?
A. Twice
B. None at all
C. Once

6.  How many times did Loralee hammer her thumb, trying to drive thirty-nine nails?
A. None
B. Ten
C. Who's counting?

7.  How many times did the hammer bounce off of the nail head instead of driving the nail into the wall?
A. Three times per nail.
B. Every freaking time.
C. 1/4 to 1/3 of the time.

8.  Loralee holds the hammer:
A. Like a pro!
B. Like a girl.
C. Like a weirdo.

9.  If Bruce were around, would he laugh at Loralee's hammering skills?
A. Yes
B. No way!

10.  With a nail-set, Loralee:
A. Still smacks the baseboards about once every eighth nail.
B.  Has cute fingernails.
C. Never hits the baseboards with the hammer.


BONUS QUESTION:
True or False: Loralee is writing a blog-post to avoid working on the very last, stubborn nail.

Here she is, hard at work.

OK. Did you write your answers?
Here are the correct answers:

1. —  A  Loralee does, indeed, use her feet to hold things in place so she can work with both hands.

2. —  D  It takes Loralee about fifty-three strikes to get a 1 1/2-inch nail all the way in. (I counted.)

3. —  A  Loralee can break the surface of the board (dent it, at least) with one hammer strike.

4. —  B  Loralee bent thirteen nails, and drove thirty-nine into place. (Although a few of the thirty-nine that went into the walls might have bent too...)

5. —  B  Loralee did not hit her shins with the hammer's claws even once!
This time around.
(She has done this a few times in the past).

6. —  C Loralee didn't count how many times she hit her thumb with the hammer. It was a few times.

7. —  C  That stupid hammer bounced back at Loralee 1/4 to 1/3 of the time.  Good thing she learned to keep her shins out of the way!

8. —  C  She might just hold the hammer like a weirdo.
B is also an acceptable answer.

9.—  B  If Bruce were around he would not laugh at Loralee because she would have asked him to do this job—and he would have done it!

These are not my tools. If they were, the red you see
on the hammer would be my blood, not paint.

10. —  A  Loralee still dents the baseboards, even with a nail-set, about every eighth nail.

BONUS QUESTION:  TRUE!  Loralee is absolutely avoiding working on that last nail because it refuses to go in. She even asked her sons to try it, and they couldn't do it either.


>sigh<   Back to work.


p.s. I may not be great with a hammer and nails, but I did a great job cutting and fitting the boards!

Growing into myself

I posted this picture on facebook yesterday so I could show off my hair that was full of drywall dust.

When Bruce laughed at my white hair, I told him
I was just trying to match his hair color! :-)

But I almost did not post the photo because of...

...my nose.

After a tiny debate, I decided that it was actually a good picture; I look pleasant despite the powdered wig, and everyone who knows me has seen my proboscis.

I don't know which family member I inherited this member from, but there is no denying that I've got me a schnoz—not the kind you see on cute little actresses and models. The funny thing is that I probably wouldn't ever think about my conk if it hadn't been for junior high school (jr. high is a lovely place!). I didn't really think of it before then.

Once, when I went to a maturation program with one of my boys, the teacher-guy was talking about ways your body changes when you go through puberty, and one thing he said was that some kids' noses grow faster than the rest of their faces do. But, not to worry—your face will grow into your nose. I wondered if this was true of me.

In 7th grade a few kids—boys—made comments about my nose. I felt a little bad, but didn't think about it again once we got started on our lessons. But there was one boy who sat behind me in my history class who gave me the name "Eagle Beak," and he would. not. let it. drop. That was how he addressed me every time he had anything to say to me. So one day Kim and I were talking to Mr. Taylor (the 7th grade history teacher) after school, and this boy was there, and he was calling me "Eagle Beak" over and over again until finally Kim reached into my dance bag, pulled out my pointe shoes and smacked him on the head with them (and yeah, they are hard—made of "densely packed layers of fabric, cardboard, and/or paper hardened by glue.") I think she started to chase him out of the room, waving the shoes at his head...  He quit after that.

Kim wasn't around in 8th grade, and I walked the mile home all by myself. For the first couple of months there was a group of boys who followed ten to twenty paces behind me and teased the snot out of me for the first half of my walk. (Huh. Bullies. Although I didn't think of it like that back then; they were just jerky, mean boys.) I took to ducking into the library, which was just a block or two from the school, and looking at books until I was sure they had gone. And then one day I had an epiphany:

Who cares what they say? They are just some really jerky boys, while I am actually a pretty cool person! 

I don't know how or from where I pulled that up at the tender age of fourteen, but there it was. And I knew it was true. And when I quit hugging my books to myself, and walked with my head up instead of down, and didn't change my pace for them, they stopped!

But I have never really liked my nose ever since. Over the years I've gotten used to it; I don't really think about it too much. And, more recently, I don't even think rude things about it when I look in the mirror. It's just my nose. Not that I want my profile carved into a cameo or anything, and I do still think twice about sharing a picture where it's kind of prominent...

But, hey! Everyone sees my nose—or rather, they know it's there. I think maybe my friends—most people, really—just see me. And I'm a pretty cool person.

I think I am finally growing into it.

Drive-Thru Graduation

Rachel graduated from Uintah High School on Friday, May 22, 2020!

...I think.
I mean, I was there, but... Well, it's a story. :-)

This was not at the graduation. This was a little tribute that the transportation department made to this year's senior class.

Because of the covid-19 foolishness, the entire nation kept their school children home for the last semester of the 2019-2020 school year. As they announced longer and longer closure times, and then finally that there would be no return to school this year, the big question on everyone's mind was: WHAT ABOUT GRADUATION?!

Well, Uintah High School decided to have a Drive-Thru Graduation Celebration for the Class of 2020. Families decorated their cars, students donned their caps and gowns, and we all were part of a graduation parade.

First of all, Rachel was going to wear Kaylie's cap and gown, but the cap got ruined in the bad weather at Kaylie's graduation last year. the cap was "her ticket in" (for the procession...although I wonder why anyone who wasn't graduating would want to enter...) I tried to order a mortarboard online, but there was a $60 shipping charge! So I made Rachel's cap. We did order a 2020 tassel, but it still hasn't arrived so she used Kaylie's tassel.

Anyway, on Friday, the 22nd, we went to the store and bought some red, white and black balloons (Uintah's colors)—along with the whole rest of the city of Vernal. And then Rachel did some window-painting on Lindsey's car.

painting the windows
Rachel has a fascination for chimeras; that's what she's painting on the back window—in Uintah colors. :-)

She finished the car just in time to put on her regalia.

the kitchen pre-graduation photo

At 5:00 Bruce, Rachel, Ruth Ann (Rachel's best friend) and I were headed to the high school. Along with a lot of other people.

There's a happy girl.
And there were about twenty cars that looked a lot like that one
in front of us on 500 North, and several more behind us.

Here's the driving route we took at the high school:

We turned onto the east drive to the high school, passed the Seminary, then cruised around the parking lot north of the Seminary. Then we headed west and around to the west (stadium) parking lot, where we did more zig-zagging. There were teachers in both parking lots, waving pom-poms and cheering for the grads while dressed in their graduation regalia...and black medical masks with the Uintah "U" stitched on them.

First we passed the Seminary where all the teachers and staff—and their families—cheered for the grads.

The Seminary teachers rise and shout—the grads are out!

Just after we got through the first parking lot, we had to stop and wait for about five minutes and wait to start the actual "ceremonies".  So I hopped out of the car and took a picture.

waiting to go...

This year's graduation was announced, parade-style, on the local radio station, and broadcast through the local TV station (and to the internet) as well. We had a bit of a wait because we were probably right in the middle of the lineup. We were stopped right by the sheriff, who was radioing to someone out on 5th North somewhere monitoring traffic.

There were a few banners on the way, like this one, which had been donated by previous graduating classes.

I don't know who these two guys are—presumably faculty or school board, judging by the way they're dressed. I guess they are helping keep an eye on the traffic flow too.

We finally started moving—slowly—and got to the west parking lot. As we drove around that lot several teachers recognized Rachel, said "hi", and congratulated her. 

Rachel had lots of opportunity to practice her Queen of England wave that evening.

Since I was sitting in the back seat, I had lots of opportunities to take pictures of her in the rearview mirror... And she took some pics, too. :-)

There was a jumbletron on the west side of the parking lot, so we got to see the grads' names and pictures up on the jumbletron as we queued around.

We weren't actually lucky enough to see Rachel's photo on the jumbletron. This picture was taken by a professional photographer (and I stole it off of facebook).

Here's one of the teachers, in a graduation robe, Uintah High ball cap, and Uintah mask. Waving pom-poms.

I'm guessing this kid is the first in line to get his diploma.
The teacher on the right is Mr. Richins, Rachel's chemistry teacher.

Finally we were on the last leg of the graduation procession!

The visitor lot sign marks the way to the diplomas.
I am of mixed opinions about "worst ending ever"...
The school board (?) ...officials, anyway.

Rachel got her diploma, the photographer got in her face, and the kids at home saw her on the TV!

Now Rachel is famous!

receiving her diploma

She opens up the diploma case and sees...
Not a diploma. It's a coupon for a free drink at the Soda Shack, and a paper saying that she'll receive her diploma at the commencement exercises that will be held either on June 26, July 17, or August 21. That's some pretty solid information right there.

Well, I say she graduated.

But wait. There's more!

We drove away from the school and headed to Main Street, where we waited to start a parade through town.

This truck was in front of us as we waited to start driving.

The parade started at 6:45, so we were only waiting for five or ten minutes. Then we drove down Main Street (not Highway 40, which is also called main street by a lot of  Vernalites...), then to Hwy 40, and we finished at 300 East. All along our route people were parked, standing, or sitting on the sides of the streets. Everyone waved and cheered—honking horns, yelling, "Congratulations!"—for every student, not just their own. I love our town!

We had our radio tuned in to the graduation still going on behind us the entire time. Just as we reached the end of the parade route, at 7:30, they announced the last of the graduates back at the high school. :-)

We took a few pics back at home, but I want Rachel to get back in her cap and gown for more graduation photos. Maybe on June 26, July 17, or August 7...

There's the grad!
She's wearing a medal for finishing with a 4.0 GPA, a medal for Best English Student (9th grade) and a medal for majoring in Life Sciences. She is awesome!

Inside, Lindsey had a little graduation gift for Rachel (wrapped very fancily).

ALL of my kids agree that this is the way to do all graduation ceremonies, every time. I am inclined to agree—it was a lot of fun. Rachel got to sit and chat with Bruce, Ruth Ann, and me the entire time, teachers got to greet and congratulate their students on a one-by-one basis, there was something interesting to see and hear all along the way, and the whole town cheered for the grads. It was great!

But, greatest of all, is that my smart, hard-working, motivated, and super-cute daughter graduated Friday! 

Congratulations, Rachel!