HUZZAH! They’re done!

Here’s what the chairs looked like before I started. The chair on the right had the most damage, with the replaced back board and broken bar. Plus, most of the joints were no longer flush together.

Here’s the most damaged chair, in pieces.

Here are the repairs on the two most damaged pieces:

And here are the finished chairs.

The damage is still visible, but BY GUM the repair is smooth and sturdy!

The two repaired chairs are in front.

Next major project will be the table–or the bedroom floor since that’s the last room that needs done.

Busy day at Coopers Rock, what with it being freaking 70 F IN FEBRUARY.

Towards the gate:

Towards the I68:

We took it kinda easy today–my back has been sore from all the bending over and crouching I’ve been doing working on the chairs.

Location: Coopers Rock
Trails: Roadside, Reservoir Ski, Reservoir Trails
Distance: 3.7+ miles
Elevation: 2169-2364 feet

So we hiked the Reservoir Ski Trail to the reservoir and then around the reservoir, which brings me to this important question:

HOW DID I NOT KNOW THERE WERE BEAVERS AT COOPERS ROCK?

ADDENDUM the First:

To clarify for H J Gadiyar, check out the details of these pictures!

The larger tree is in the process of being gnawed down. But in the background to the left you can see a felled tree.

Here you can see the tell-tale v and ^ signs of the tree that fell to the left. But also you can see that the missing branches on the tree coming towards the camera have all been chewed and drug off once they were detached.

If you have spent more than an hour with me, you know I’m not a patient person.

So much of this project is WAITING. GAH. Waiting for wood glue to dry, waiting for resin to dry, waiting for stain to dry… SO. MUCH. WAITING.

Here’s how things have progressed since last week.

I dug and scraped and sanded all the old glue and gunk and everything to get these pieces to fit together again. (Here you can see prior to work, these pieces are held together with about a quarter centimeter of wood glue.)

I scraped old glue and then sanded the crap out of the broken pieces to see if I could get them to fit back together smoothly.

I glued everything back together as carefully as I could. After getting the large piece down I remembered I had small paint brushes–those worked best. Then I taped everything down for the resin.

PROOF I wore gloves! I also had a window open! Safety precautions! I did not bond together anything that should not have been permamently stuck together.

In progress. It’s never going to look good, but BY GUM IT WILL BE STURDY. And smooth. And even. Just ugly. (Here’s how it looked before I started.)

It’s possible if I’d be more aggressive with the sanding it might have looked better, but as this wood is mostly likely 100+ years old, I’ve been terrified of using too much force. And the site I found that showed step-by-stop how to use the resin to fill voids also used a power sander to smooth the resin. I’m positive that made things quite different from my sanding by hand.

Again you can see how the resin filled in the void.

Three areas visible here that got resin.

Let me tell you, working with the epoxy is a giant PITA. I ended up peeling everything off and starting again on two different sets of cracks. The second time I was far more sparing in my application of resin. If I’d thought to get tooth picks it probably would have gone easier.

The resin is supposed to be sandable, but I mostly have just (CAREFULLY) used a razor and exacto knife to cut the resin flush with the wood.

Yes, that is as miserable to do as it sounds. But so far, no trips to the ER.

And here’s where things are now. Waiting for stain to dry so I can polyurethane the chair on the right. Left is also waiting to be polyurethaned and for the back to be finished.

Another note–the wood here is very light. I’m positive that on a darker wood many of the imperfections and repairs would have blended into the grain. But here I’m stuck with repaired cracks and voids that are much darker than the surrounding wood.

(First post here.)

The project is moving apace. Two chairs are finished, two are waiting the arrival of the clear epoxy I ordered.

First, what was hiding when I went to recover the seats:

I found three different fabrics.

Of course I left them underneath for the next person to go WTF?

I did NOT strip the wood, just thoroughly cleaned and sanded. Here’s part of a quick cleaning:

The two chairs that were finished were simply coated with a water-based polyurethane. I’m going to have to purchase a small can of light oak stain for parts of the two remaining chairs that I’m repairing.

Here is the chair that has the busted back. I am super nervous about how the repairs will turn out, but I realized it can’t be worse than how it was. Plus, someone cracked the end of a support bar while working with the legs. (That someone is NOT ME.)

The clear epoxy should arrive Monday, so I can stain the pieces I sanded over the weekend and they should be ready for the epoxy then.

And here is a finished chair!

My goal was simply to recover the seats, and add a layer of protection to the wood.

Next week, we’ll see how the repairs go. But if you hear a lot of cursing, you’ll know it’s not going well.

Although last week’s snow is gone, it was a clear, beautiful day at New Rover Gorge.

We spent a good deal of time poking around Wolf Creek. One area was easy to get to, the other–less so.

Location: New River Gorge: Canyon Rim Area
Trails: Timber Ridge, Long Point, Fayetteville, Park Loop Trails
Distance: 4.7 miles
Elevation: 1784-2151 feet
Temperature: 34F

Map of the Hike.

The start of the month was for short stories–including finishing up anthologies I’d been reading for ages and ages.

I read a lot of good books this month, including going back and re-reading a book I’d almost forgotten about.

As for my favorite books of the month, let’s start with A Fantastic Holiday Season: The Gift of Stories which was an anthology I picked up solely for the Patricia Briggs story. Which I’ve not read about five times, because I kept re-reading it when I’d flip past it or while on a Patricia Briggs reading bender. Not all the stories were for me, but in all it was a strong anthology.

I know I keep going on about Daniel José Older, but that’s because I really do love his writing. Ghost Girl in the Corner is set following the events of Shadowshaper, but follows Tee and her girlfriend Izzy. As expected, the teenage girls are all strong characters I enjoyed spending time with. Kudos again for that.

Ghosts in the Snow is a good book, but it is extremely dark, and I’m not sure that I was in the mood for that much darkness, but if you like supernatural mysteries, then I do recommend it. As long as you’re aware that it’s dark.

The Peculiar Crimes Unit series is one I really do like, and when I realized I had the first book as an ebook, I set out to reread. Second book was also inexpensive, but the third? Well, that’s why I moved into another series. I’m waiting impatiently for that to go on sale. I’d like to note that Grandmom really enjoyed this series.

The other two mystery series are also very good–I’m re-reading the Inspector Erlendur series–but I can only read a couple Karin Fossum stories at a time, because they tend to be extremely depressing–two of the mysteries were about murdered children. The third was about a murdered teen. So small doses of that.

Mystery

Inspector Erlendur
Jar City (2000/2004) Arnaldur Indridason translated by Bernard Scudder (8/10)
Silence of the Grave (2003/2006) Arnaldur Indridason translated by Bernard Scudder (9/10)
Peculiar Crimes Unit
Full Dark House (2003) Christopher Fowler (8/10)
The Water Room (2004) Christopher Fowler (8/10)
Inspector Sejer
Black Seconds (2002/2007) Karin Fossum translated by Charlotte Barslund (8/10)
The Water’s Edge (2007/2009) Karin Fossum translated Charlotte Barslund
Bad Intentions (2008/2010) Karin Fossum translated by Charlotte Barslund

Supernatural Mystery

Ghosts in the Snow (2004) Tamara Siler Jones

Fantasy Anthology

Street Magicks (2016) edited by Paula Guran
Beyond the Pale: A Fantasy Anthology (2014) edited by Henry Herz
A Fantastic Holiday Season: The Gift of Stories (2014) edited by Kevin J. Anderson & Kieth J. Olexa (8/10)

Fantasy Short Stories

A Wolf in Holy Places (2009) Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Burnt Sugar (2014) Lish McBride
Ghost Girl in the Corner (2016) Daniel José Older (8/10)

And now, the statistics! Huzzah!

14 books this month, which is about average.

All ebooks this month (not a surprise), with 5 re-reads, three of which I have in paper. I would have continued on with Christopher Fowler’s series, but I’m not paying that much for a ecopy of a book I own in paper (and paid full price for at the time, I might add!).

eBook – 14
Multiple Formats -3
Re-read -5

Genre, things were split pretty evenly between fantasy and mystery.

Fantasy – 7
Mystery – 8
Anthology – 3

As to author genre, it’s split pretty evenly between male and female authors this month.

Male – 5
Female – 6
Anthology – 3

And that’s it for this month! YAY READING!

This one is going to be a little more complicated.

I inherited Grandmom’s kitchen table and chairs. She said that they were “antique” when she and Popbo were given them by one of his aunts, who had the set in her attic (or perhaps basement).

Popbo refinished the set, and then they were used every day. Over the years chairs broke and were repaired with greater or lesser degrees of skill (depending upon who was doing the fixing). When they started to get unstable, and she was afraid one might fall apart while she was using it, we used L brackets to brace them up, and at the same time recovered the seats, and that’s how things have been since–the late 90s probably.

So I have a table and chairs that are in need of a good deal of work, but also very old. And more importantly, of great value to me because they were Grandmom’s.

Essentially, I don’t want to make things worse, but it’s reached the point where something really does need to be done.

The table I can probably manage, since I’ve refinished tables before.

The chairs, however, worry me.

I’m not worried about the sanding and refinishing, but it seems silly to do all that work without repairing them, and THAT I am not comfortable doing.

The chair in the right is in the worst shape. You can see it was badly broken and poorly repaired. We try to make sure small people never sit in this chair.

Here is a closer look at the repair job. The back slat was replaced with a mostly-matching piece of wood, but the repair where it was rejoined is–awful.

The bracing is on the underside, out of sight in this view, but somewhat visible from the side. It’s just a brass L bracket, carefully screwed into the wood.

Here is the view from the back.

I’ve started by simply cleaning the wood with Murphy’s Oil soap and an old toothbrush and nail brush and soft cloths, and that’s helped, but they really need sanded and several new coats of polyurethane. (Several coats, because this is MY kitchen table now, and I use it every day.)

So, here is the question. Does anyone have advice or recommendations for me? Or is anyone willing to trade delicious baked goods for assistance in this project?

I’m assuming the wood is 100+ years old and so I am extremely leery of removing any existing screws for fear of causing further damage (or not being able to get things back together without breaking something.

Did I mention delicious baked goods of your choice in trade?

I’ve just finished up the hallway (and by hallway, I mean the tiny expanse of floor between the two bedrooms and the bathroom) but I also decided to see if I could do something about the floor grates.

I tried cleaning them, but they were still ugly.

Then I remembered the existence of spray paint!

Here is a painted grate next to one that has been cleaned (no, really, I cleaned it!) but not yet painted.

And here we were in situ!

I possibly should have gone with a darker color, but standing in front of the spray paint options was a bit overwhelming (like, half an aisle of spray paint) and it might just look odd to me because it’s clean and shiny.