Dining Table

I like buying my furniture second hand.

The majority of the furniture that I/we own was bought second hand. Sometimes we buy pieces that are ready to use just as they are. Sometimes we buy pieces that need some work on in order to make them suitable for our purposes.

Lately it seems like we have been finding pieces that need work in order to fit our needs. this often saves us more money, but at the trade off of our time and labour.

I have mentioned the kitchen / dining space dilemma. We don't actually have a designated dining room / space in this house. We do have a large eat-in kitchen.  The House is a typical Queensland post-war home built around 1946. We are the first people to live here after the original owners have passed.  The neighbourhood has changed but it is an area where there are still many people who knew the original owners and have told us much of the house's history. It may be just me but I really like knowing its history.

I bought a timber dining table and chairs on eBay and we picked it up on the weekend. We got it for $70. The catch is that the chairs need reupholstering and the entire set needs repainting. I have started sanding the chairs.

 yep two different seat covers.

The original owners had covered four of the chairs with a cream micro-suede, which is now awfully stained and in need of re-covering.

 I like my little Ozito sander - it is small and shaped like an iron and when I use it, it doesn't leave my arm feeling like it has been shaken half out of the socket and my fingers aren't tingling for two hours after switching it off.

 The table top with its legs removed for sanding 

I will get stuck into this with the heavy duty belt sander which does shake my joints loose and leaves my fingers tingling for two hours after I switch it off... but man is it serious about sanding a surface back to naked wood.

... and a close up of just how bad the surface looks. It was redone by the original owners - poorly, they needed some lessons on staining a surface evenly. Then it was used to stand on when painting (why???) and has multiple spatters of paint all over it.

Later this afternoon our eldest daughter and her hubby will come over with his extended family. That will bring us four strong men to assist hubster in the task of getting the monster table out of the kitchen. Before they come we will need to move a heap of furniture out of the path - our hutch, lounge chairs and maybe some of the furniture in the front room (my craft space). yeah no mean feat.