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.

Rollin', Rollin', Rollin'...

So, something else I felt like I needed for my trip-- but, it turned out, very much did not-- was some kind of bag or cover for my Yoga mat. You see, as I was being offered free Yoga in return for my farm-handery, I figured lugging my mat all the way to South America was necessary.

It was not.

Eh. Either way, I got a Mat Roll out of it.

For the main part, I used some brown corduroy material leftover from my Inigo Montoya costume from 200...6? I had orginally planned for the thing to be just a bit longer than my mat. I rolled the mat out and eyeballed the measurements.

When my logic kicked in, however, I realized how bulky this would make it once it was rolled up and cut that son of a cow in half.

Then I simply hemmed the edges a bit and began frantically searching for something to tie it closed with.

I found nothing and so made some REALLY poorly constructed ties out of leftover stretchy headband fabric. On a day when I have the patience to not light my sewing macine on fire, I will redo the ties. Because they're crap. But the purple sure looks pretty!

Anyway, then it dawned on me that I might want a convenient way to carry the thing, and another frantic search for materials began...

This is when I delved into my favorite new resource: The Applebee's Uniform.

My current victim: the Omnipresent Apron.

(why do I even still have this uniform?)

I removed that nice, sturdy, navy blue apron string from its pouch and...

Ta-da! A handle!

And it might have been a pain-in-the-ass to cram into my backpack, but it was lovely and handy for lugging around Cusco, so it's about a 47% win.

These are apparently my favorite shorts. Apparently.

Waterbottle Sling

This is going to have to be a mini-post, because this project was done in a hasty fit of panic and no photos were taken of the process.

I realized about two days before I was to leave for Peru that I would likely need some kind of water-bottle-holding-apparatus. By this time, however, I was at the point where I refused to purchase ANYTHING ELSE and so was fashioning supplies out of whatever I could find.

After a few hours cursing at my pathetic sewing machine, I had come up with this:

The sleeve is made from some leftover quilted fabric from my housebook cover and the strap is, fantastically enough, scrapped together from my old Applebee's uniform polo shirt.

If they make you buy it, it damn well better be useful post-TequilaLimeChicken, that's all I'm sayin'.

Anyway, I doubled over the already quilted fabric so that it would be extra cushioned so I didn't end up with a Kleen Kanteen shaped bruise on my hip. Then I just wrapped it around the bottle, made note of the size (plus a little bit of give) and sewed it closed.

After that, I didn't have a strip of polo shirt that was long enough, so, instead, I just cut a bunch of large sections out, doubled them over for strength and sewed them all together, patchwork style. I attached the strap all the way to the bottom of the sling's sleeve so that it was less likely to rip apart from stress.

It's not pretty, but, man, it worked well.