Beating Up Tables & Giving Our All

To assemble Agnes' junk pile last month John and I visited just about every thrift shop in the greater Orlando area, which meant I picked up a LOT of unrelated goodies. Including a new dining room set. (WHAT.)(It was only $200!)

So once MegaCon was over, we turned our attention to getting rid of our old table and chairs - a set we bought used over 15 years ago as newlyweds, and that's been drilled, epoxied, painted-on, hammered, and otherwise beaten up since. (We've also refinished and re-upholstered it many times, so it doesn't look QUITE as bad as you're imagining.)

We tried to donate it to the same thrift shop we bought our "new" set from, but they couldn't pick it up for another 10 days... and we're not that patient. So John listed it on Craig's List for $50.

Beat up as it is, it's still a lovely set, and John found a buyer within the hour.

So the other night when I was out in the living room playing Tsum Tsum working, and I heard John scrubbing down the old table, I didn't think much of it. Then I heard the vacuum going. And more scrubbing. Some scraping. Then the power drill.

When I finally wandered over to investigate, I found John had mixed up a custom color-match enamel, and was painstakingly covering the myriad dings, chips, and scratches on the old table top. (We're former faux finishers, and John always was the master at furniture touch-ups.)

"So..." I said, bemused. "Fifty bucks, huh?"

John handed me a tiny artist brush and the bucket of enamel.

"The lady coming for the table is a teacher," he said. Then, almost apologetically, "And I'm probably not going to take her money, either."

We spent the next hour touching up all 8 chairs and the rest of the table together, laughing over the various battle scars. ("When did we use red paint?" "Are you sure it's paint?") By the time we were done, that old set looked better than the newer one we just bought.

And later, when I got to tell a delightfully sweet high school teacher that we didn't want her money? Well, heck, that was worth more than $50, right there.

Seventeen years of marriage, and John is still teaching me about giving your all for the people you love - even in the little things, even for loved ones who don't know you, who don't expect it. Maybe especially for them.

Thank you, John, sweetie. Here's to a lifetime of beating up many more tables, and giving our all.

Farewell, old table & chairs, it was fun! Now to work on steampunking up the new set...