Everybody in a long term relationship knows the horrors of buying furniture. You may have been together for a decade, have basically the same interests, plans in life, you combined your families and friend circles, and then you need to buy furniture. Suddenly your beloved looks like a total stranger. How can the person you love more than anybody else like that couch? If your relationship survives the first round of furniture shopping, you may survive as a couple. And then you are together for so many years that you have to do it all again. Especially when you have children. Especially when your children are alien monsters in a cute disguise.
Last year around autumn the little one managed to actually break the legs off a chair. The other ones weren’t very stable either any more, so we needed to go out and buy new ones. And the table looked horrible as well. 14 years of eating, crafting, living had taken their toll on the plates. Nevertheless, while we could agree quickly on new chairs, we could also agree quickly that the tables were not an option. Our table needs to be large and extendable. For some reason, the large tables all had a plate that is split lengthwise, and at that point (apparently they changed since) , could only extended by inserting a plate lengthwise, which doesn’t make sense, since it doesn’t sit more people, but make sitting down and getting up difficult since the table is too wide now.
The only one available at the big Swedish furniture shop that suited our needs was the exact same one we already had… so i decided to restore that one instead, which only took me about 10 month to get done.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
This is how the table looked before. The varnish has basically disappeared in the areas most used, there are big scratches and dents. I seized the opportunity to get a random orbit sander and got to work. I removed the old paint and nasty scratches at 60 grit.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Then I did a second round at 150. In the image below one half is already sanded, the other half is not. People who work with wood can feel the image.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Last round was done at 220 grit and off we went for varnishing.
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I used varnish for wood floors/stairs, since that is the most durable, and you saw what already happened to the table once.
I applied a total of three layers of varnish, giving them ample time to dry in between.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
A first coat of varnish. I lightly sanded in between applying the coats, but by hand and with a 800 grit. One thing about the varnish is that it doesn’t “pull even”. It keeps a bit of a structure, and if you look closely, you can see it (though not in this pic). It also hides dirt until it’s dried and it’s too late…
The legs got some repairs where needed. Down at the feet, where you stub your toes, ant the bars where you put your dirty, sweaty feet. I had to do that inside, it was not nice.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Finally, here we are. The two plates have been sanded and painted. The middle extension isn’t done yet, but we don’t need it every day.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved With bonus husband running into the pic
Now, what does my little project have to do with capitalism? It’s easy when you think about it: Capitalism wants me to buy a new table. Capitalism needs me to buy a new table. Capitalism makes it impossible for most people to not buy a new table. A new table would have been around 300€. The materials for restoring the old one were 80 bucks for sanding discs and varnish and brushes, and 150€ for the tools (though I still have those, but they lost about half their resale value the moment I carried them out the door.) That’s 230€ with no guarantee that this would work.
It also took me almost a full week. I have an outdoor space for sanding, but of course that required the rain to stop occasionally, and an indoor space for painting and drying. Also a separate living room with a separate table we could eat on in the meantime. And most importantly: I had the time AND skills to do this and it’s actually something I enjoy. Nobody who dislikes crafting would do this to save maybe 100€. Unless you’re completely poor and have to hope that somebody else throws away their perfectly usable but pretty shabby table.
Now imagine we built our world not around consumption, but around community. Imagine community repair centres. There are tons of people, especially elderly people who can’t / don’t want to do a full work day, but who will happily work a few hours a week. Imagine such a centre where you can go and together (or without you) you can restore your furniture, repair your bike or learn how to fix your leaky sink. Imagine having the time to do so. Sounds good, doesn’t it?
That turned out beautiful! You can be proud of the job very well done. It is great that you have the skills AND the patience to complete the task.
My kid brother runs a charity that promotes sustainability in the area in which it operates and one of the things they do is operate a tool library, along with lessons in how to use the tools. The tools run from small to large, indoors and outdoors. I wish it was local to me, it would save us havng all of those tools that help you do a job easily, but that you use maybe once a year. Apart from saving resources by lending tools so that each household does not need to buy all of the tools they are also promoting the idea of properly maintaining tools, as well as repairing tools and other things rather than chucking them.
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The table looks great, lovely work!
Wow it looks great! Very nice.
It would be awesome to live in a society where people worked together to help each other. Right now, I’m feeling pretty certain that will never happen, but no question it would be an awesome experience and I’d love to do it.
You did a great job with the table. I like your idea of a community repair center. It’d certainly make all those retired guys happy.
Looks great!
Sanding is my life. So, I guess I hate my life? No, it’s OK -- but sanding still sucks.
I love the idea of a “fixit place” where retired people with building/fixing skills could teach and demonstrate.
There’s a guy out here who’s 75 and retired. He makes his living selling lawn mowers, leaf blowers, weed whackers, chainsaws -- all used. He goes around and picks them up “as is” at yard sales (usually with a clogged fuel line) and resurrects them then sells them for twice what he paid for them. The other day he was showing me a nearly new biscuit joiner (about $300) that he got with all the accessories, for $14 because someone had wheeled something heavy over the power cord and broke the wire inside the insulation. I’ve hung out and talked with him while he works -- it’s a joy to see how fast he can diagnose a 2-stroke engine -- he has all these tricks he’s come up with over the decades, like, for example, one of the first things he does is cuts the power cord off, if the device hasn’t got a fuse and is relatively new. Because that’s about the only thing that can go wrong with a relatively new electrical whatsit. So he just cuts the cord and applies power via alligator clips. If that doesn’t do it, it’s the switch has gone bad.
PS -- then there are the people who have several random orbital sanders and the marginal cost for such a job is basically zero plus the varnish.
Nice work on the table. It looks great.
My solution: everybody minds their own living spaces. I choose to express no opinion about furniture choices or cleanliness standards in my family members’ rooms. Everybody chooses their own furniture, everybody cleans their own room, and nobody gets involved in somebody else’s lifestyle choices. Unfortunately, shared spaces (meaning: kitchen) exist. Oh well, at least we don’t have a shared living room in my home. It could be worse.
Yeah. And this is terrible. Mostly for environmental reasons. I like your suggestions about community repair centres.
I had already noticed that tools in Germany were more expensive, but that’s really expensive. I’d have to pay a couple euros for sanding discs and brushes and less than ten extra euros for varnish.
Andreas
I used this stuff, which is the high end brand, and I shopped locally, which adds to the price. I got the 2.5l tin, so I do have some left, but 750 ml would have been too little (and 2 x 750 ml were more expensive). I still have sanding discs left over.
If you’re a couple with kids, you’d have to be ridiculously rich to do that. I mean, we’re really doing well, and live in a place where housing is still affordable, but no way we could afford that much space.
Marcus
Well, I wasn’t unhappy about “having” to buy a sander. It’ll get used with the epoxy as well. Though I would never say “zero”. I value my time.
Good job, that table looks both nice and useful.
I would like shared repair centers to exist, but any attempts at shared spaces from the communist rule era here ended up badly. One vandal can ruin the thing for the thousands of people and such people unfortunately exist everywhere and without extensive surveillance are impossible to keep in check. So I am afraid that such spaces would have to be heavily monitored and supervised, which would add to their costs (both monetary and environmental). Maybe it would still be worth it, but for me, it is not clear-cut.
I am a big proponent of a “right to repair” though and I think that raw materials should be available to the public at a reasonable price (in Germany raw materials are ridiculously overpriced for private individuals, maybe intentionally to discourage repairing or making your own stuff) and there should definitively exist legislature that forces corporations to make their products in such a way that they can be repaired (and batteries replaced!), and that spare parts are available. The Apple business model is a moral crime and should be a legal one too.
I inherited my grandfather’s dinner table. As my mother (now in her 70s) put it “Me, my sister and my two brothers ate, messily, as kids at that table, we’ve tried to destroy it and failed. Nothing you will do will make a dent in that thing.”
For some reason the art of making furniture that actually *lasts* has been lost.
There’s probably some economic reason why we can’t make things like that anymore, probably because making things that last multiple generations is a lot of effort that needs to be repeated a lot more when the population starts growing faster and faster. Also, if we were to have stuff that lasts and gets passed down multiple generations it would, like simply inheriting money, increase the gap between the have’s and have-not’s.
robert79
I think it comes down to everything being made at a price point and trying find new ways to cut costs.
Also, AFAIK, wood used to be better in the old days. The best quality old-growth wood has been almost used up and modern forestry may produce wood that grows quickly but is softer and less dense and durable. Here in Finland too quickly grown, soft and weak pine wood is called disparagingly räkämänty (snot pine).
Robert79
I think it’s also about care. My grandma’s kitchen table was always covered with a table cloth, and on that table cloth was a plastic sheet. It only ever came off when she made cake or cookies, so nothing ever touched the surface.
But yeah, my table is birchwood, which isn’t exactly known for being very hard.
Nah, making things that last forever means you aren’t going to sell much. There’s a few things that still work like that and the reason I coughed up an incredible amount of money for a Kitchen Aid. But then we get back to Sam Vimes’ boots theory of economic injustice: if you can buy a Kitchen Aid in the first place, you won’t spend three times the money replacing the cheap kitchen machines that break easily.
This reminds me of clothing. I’ve trying to mend my own clothes rather than buying new ones after every little rip or popped button. I don’t think I’m doing very well, though. I can never get buttons to stay on. Maybe my stitching isn’t secure enough, or maybe the fabric of most clothing is so cheap that once a button pops it’s just too worn to support another. Oh well. Perhaps I’ll have better luck with darning my socks.
Darning thread and darning needles both are harder to work. Practice more with buttons, and learn some other knots than what you are using. Some sewing threads are twisted in such a way that the usual granny knot will not stick unless you are very skillful.