To Be Continued...And: Agua!

...We haven't disappeared again. We swear. We just have been working on so many projects that we haven't had time to finish any in particular, let alone post about them.

But here are some teaser photos:

Some are old, some are new, some are currently a total disaster. Either way, we're working on it. And when we have something a little more substantial to share, we promise that we will...We're thinking November 1st might be a good day...

Emphasis on might.

Oh! Also! While you wait-- with baited breath, I'm sure-- you can check out this super-duper great etsy shop filled with other people's projects...that are much less self-serving than ours:

It's called "Water4Christmas" and it is raising money to build clean-water wells in Africa. More than four thousand children die every day due to a lack of clean water, and a group of crafty ladies have donated their time and art to raise money for this cause, so go and take a look!

Plus, their stuff is craaaaazy cute.

The Re-ReBirth of a Coffee Table

Before Mary headed off to Peru, I created a list of all of the projects that I had been meaning to do (and some that I hadn't) so that I wouldn't get bored without her.

This project here is a coffee table that Mary found on Big Trash Pick-up Day when she was 16. It's been with her through high school, college and married life and it was time to give it a makeover.

As usual, I forgot to take a "Before" picture. In the picture below, though, you can mostly see the old finish-- if you don't pay attention to where I had already begun removing the finish with stripper and a scraper. The table had a lot of problems, but here's a map of its most notable landmarks:


And that worked for a while- to get the main stuff off- but I eventually had to switch to the electric sander to make it a really clean finish. Then I used sandpaper on the edges and the little grooves where the sander couldn't reach.

And from all of that hard work came this guy:


Then I tried putting on a Medium stain, which came out SUPER light, so I switched to a Dark Oak color and the results were this (sorry for the blurriness. I was using a broken camera):
The final step was applying a spar urethane finish to protect it from UV rays and water.

You can see how pretty it looks in our living room:
I also gave the legs and underside a rub-down with some stain to cover up any nicks and scratches. The color did end up still being lighter than it was originally, so it's like having a slightly brand new table.

Slightly.