I am a Craigslist queen. I don't pay full price for anything, but when we realized that our dining room set had the potential to seat twelve, but only 8 seats (combo of benches & chairs) I was seriously considering paying the Amish to copy the chairs we already had. Then, out of nowhere, just as we were about to close on our house, the Craigslist fairy provided and I found a set of 5 almost identical chairs, which came with a table with two leaves, for under $100. So my dining set was more than complete, but i had an extra table. This table has been everything. It is sometimes a circle, sometimes an oval, sometimes the workspace in my work-in-progress basement kitchen and sometimes a picnic table in our sapling of an orchard.
Last weekend, it was a s'more-prep table by our fire pit. But it was getting dark when our guests left, and we're seriously lazy sometimes, and we left the obviously-meant-for-indoors table outside all night. Then two. And then all week, afterall, it was dry right? Well, apparently it hadn't been so dry on Thursday night and this is what we found at 6am Friday morning (aka: t-minus 24 hrs till vacation departure):
The entire surface was a (thankfully still wet: read, tacky) waterspot! I was instantly devastated. I think everyone needs an all purpose table, and now mine was at best going to be doomed to wear a tablecloth for the remainder of its existence, and at worst going to end up as the tabletop for my new outdoor tree-table, after having been stripped and outdoor-ized. Instantly, I hit the Internet (it's my way).
I learned a lot about table finishes, but the #1 tip for ridding yourself of waterspots was mayonnaise. When a table gets wet, the oils in the varnish (which is what makes it clear, as opposed to filmy) escape, and if they are not replenished before it dries, the filminess stays (and is considerably more difficult to deal with). Only one little problem, I was out of mayo. I was going to the store on my way home from work and it was on the list, but all night was going to have to be car packing time, and besides, the table probably would have dried by the time i got home with it. I decided that my allergen-reducing pledge was probably oil based and definitely made for furniture, so i, without touching the gooey varnish, covered it in copious ammounts of pledge, crossed my fingers, begged God to have mercy on my table, and left for work. I came home to this:
Definitely not exactly as it had been before, but DARN close and no nasty filmy stuff. And so, i could leave for the beach in peace. :)
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