catching up on the table

When we moved into the house I uncovered an old table out in the old house.  It was buried under trash, tools and junk.  I found what I thought were leafs for the table over in a corner.  I showed it to Annmarie and we decided to refinish it and put it in our dining room.  Well, three years later the table is finally in the house.

  Sarah and I brought it in just before Thanksgiving.  Our holiday company glued one of the feet back together (amazingly I found the broken off piece while cleaning out the junk of the old house and saved it).  So today I started cleaning it up.  (Annmarie didn't think it needed to stay upside down on the floor for longer than 3 weeks...).  I vacuumed all the cobwebs from the underside, set it upright and installed all the leafs.  It ended up being a pretty big table!  I then took some Murphy's wood soap and a scrub pad and went to town on the top of the table for a couple of hours.  I will let it dry now and then go to steel wool so I can get everywhere.

  I figure to work on it about 30 minutes a night.   Once I get it all cleaned and smoothed out then we can decide on a color and finish.  I really like the Formsby brand but it is not as readily available as it used to be.  They sell a prepackaged kit now, but I liked buying the individual products better.  They had the best wood furniture cleaner for getting out 100 years of grime.  It was great stuff, green colored product.  The table is still wet in this picture.  It will look more like this when it is finished.  If I took the picture of it dry it would be far more washed out.

I didn't work on the legs very hard.  They need to be sanded some to smooth out the cracks and dings.  My rag kept catching the whole time I was trying to clean them.  I was peeking out the side window looking for the heating repair guy (yes our central heat is not working.  The fan is not running.  Good thing it is 45 degrees F outside right now.) and spotted a group of pheasants next to the house.  I tried to take an action shot of them flying once the dog realized they were there.  All I ended up with was a couple of blurry pictures.  No such luck.  I did get a couple of decent stills of them rooting around in the grass.

They knew they would be safe close to the house.  I am not even sure if the season is over.  I suspect it is.  I went out one time and missed my big chance.