not just an old table

Restoring an old piece of furniture can fulfil a sense of accomplishment. You know. You take an old table, maybe it’s one from your childhood days that your mum is throwing out the garage and you decide, what the heck, lets take it home, sand it down and give it a good coat of varnish.

Then you and your partner and a few ice cold beers sit in the garden, under the shade of an old tree, and you laugh and you chat while carefully getting into all the grooves and corners and you carefully remove all the old varnish and give it a good rub down.

Then you stand back and admire the smooth clean table and begin applying the first coat of varnish. Then, after it has dried, some 6 hours later, you add the second coat.

That is what my boyfriend and I did on Saturday. We restored an old piece of furniture. An old homework desk I had when I was still a kid in school. An old desk my mother was about to throw out, when we decided to save it.

And we had a great time. And we had an opportunity to talk about the issues we had last week. And we said what we needed to say and said a few things we did not need to say. And in the end, it was exactly what needed to be said.

Only then, when we were done with our table restoration, and we stood back to admire our handiwork we burst out laughing because we really did do a crap job.

We did not manage to fix or restore the table quite how we wanted it. It did not come out looking like we thought it would.

But we fixed what needed to be fixed and that is all that matters.