Teddy’s Table
Last week Teddy and her friend Eva Syberden spent an afternoon visiting local used book and thrift stores. She came back all excited about a round antique DR table that she had spotted at a thrift store. She thought that it would be a perfect fit for the dining room back at “The Farm” in Michigan. She wanted me to go and look at it to access the quality of the table and to determine the feasibility of transporting it back to Michigan.
So the next morning we drove over there to look at the table.
It was a solid oak 48 inch round table. It was on a hexagon pedestal with solid oak hand carved claw feet. It was a leafed table, however the leaf(s) was/were missing. It was marked at $60.00 which I thought was a real good buy. I figured that I could make an expansion leaf or leaves and decided that transportation would be no problem as we could store the top in the trailer and the pedestal and legs in the basement cargo bins.
But…there’s always a but…when I attempted to open the table to determine how much it would expand, it would not open. There was no visible locking mechanism but it would open approximately one inch and solidly stop. Thrift store personnel could do no better than I, so declaring that the table was hopelessly defective we offered them $20.00 and they accepted.
Upon getting the table back here at the park my friend Hank Syberden and I determined that the previous owner had inserted two drywall screws into the expansion slides, apparently to lock it closed as there was no expansion leaf anyway. We removed the screws and it works beautifully.
Teddy could not wait to get started and before day’s end made a trip to the local Ace Hardware and loaded up on refinishing supplies, zip strip, sandpaper, steel wool, scrapers, etc.
She has been hard at it ever since and is making good progress as the following photos will attest.
Pedestal stripped & sanded ready for staining.
Claw foot legs stripped & sanded.
Strippin the sides
...and the top.
I expect that after she is done we will be able to take it to the “Antiques Road Show” where we will be told, “If I had this in my shop, it would definitely be worth $(put your guess here)”.
;-))
