Table refurbishment

When I started this blog, I had no idea that I would end up writing about emotional distress, self-doubt, and failure.  But that was before the table refubishment project...

It's been a learning experience, that's for sure.  And some parts have been successful.  For example, I did get BoConcept to supply me with a nice new pair of fancy hinges for the extension leaves, despite their best efforts to ignore me for weeks at a time. And - and - well that's about it for successes really.  Almost everything else has been a monumental disaster.

At times, I did succeed in getting a pretty good finish on the copper leaves, but I always managed to spoil it somehow.  On its own, the copper paint is so useless that if you touch it, it leaves a mark which you can't get out - hence putting (1-part acrylic) lacquer over the top to protect it.  That's fine, except that the lacquer redissolves the paint and then forms a seal over the top of it, so that if the paint's thick, you can still leave a finger print in it even after several days.  At one point I had to resort to removing everything from one leaf with cellulose thinners and starting again.  And yet, I just couldn't learn to leave things to dry properly.  Right at the end, I stupidly reassembled the extension leaves into the table when the lacquer was only touch dry, and left a set of prints in it (again!).

Then there was the two-part lacquer.  This is the stuff that costs £24 for a 400ml aerosol can. I'm sure it's very hard-wearing,  and it is the only half-matt lacquer I could find (another demanding requirement from the chief of interior design) so I gave it a go.  When I got some, it came in a can with no English writing on it, and no instructions apart from a frightening safety leaflet, so I looked it up on the internet. It turns out that it's full of isocyanates, which can give you life-crippling asthma if you inhale it in doses which are too small to detect (if you're unlucky) and so the only sensible way to proceed is using forced air respiration.  Ah! So that's what they mean by "for professional use only".

So I made a forced-air respiration system.  Here it is, looking surprisingly like the Russion spacesuits in the Speyer Technik museum.

It's made from a fancy full-face snorkelling mask, which provides a surprisingly air-tight seal, even with my beard to contend with.  I filled up the air exit holes with hot glue gun plastic, so the only way out is through the front valve.  The air comes down a big flexible pipe from outside the building and through a valve, which can isolate the headset completely so that you can detach the feed pipe when you want to leave the building.  At that point you just have to hold your breath until you are outside.

Outside, the air pump is my trusty garage hair dryer, taped on to the end of the pipe and supported by the pole the "sold" sign used to be on, to keep it up in the fresh air.  The steps keep the door shut. I need hardly mention that everything I needed for this entire life support system was already lying around, just waiting for a way to be useful.

There was one moment during the spraying when I could smell paint, so I stopped breathing for a while and just let it flush through.  I guess there had been a slight gust in through the open garage door (even though it wasn't windy) which wafted some paint-laden air out through the side door and into the hair dryer.  Apart from that it all worked faultlessly. Of course, I had to breathe gently, and I couldn't wear glasses under the mask, and the mask wasn't very good optically; all of which made the painting just a bit more difficult. But overall, I haven't suffered any ill effects, so hurrah!

Sadly, the same can't be said of the table.  Despite my best efforts at aerosol wielding, my almost reasonable paint finish turned into a trompe l'oeil interpretation of the mowing pattern on Wimbledon's centre court when I put the super-lacquer on.  And I ran out before I'd finished both copper leaves, so one of them is  shinier than the other.  And I dripped a bit (glove too near the nozzle, a rookie mistake) which leaves, well, drips.  All in all, it's been a hard life lesson in accepting one's own inadequacies.  However, I am determined not to let my ego get the better of things, so I state quite openly, "Thus far in life, I have turned out to be completely crap at painting".  So there.

Still the table is proving effective at keeping things off the floor, which is something.  Here it is in various states of functionality.

so, what do you think you can bring to the table?

nice leg - shame about the face

best viewed in the dark

it's flat really.  honest.