Oh shellac, how do I love thee?

Let me count the ways:

1)

2)

3)I could go on, but I should probably stop at 3...

What I did over the long weekend

Turned these e-bay finds...

...into this side table for the living room.

The top still needs finishing. I was going to use just polyurethane but apparently since it's spalted burl maple (which is why it has that marbling in the wood) I need to use shellac first. Or so the internets tell me. In any case, once it's finished the marbling will be even more pronounced.


I was inspired by this and this. And George Nakashima. And probably by watching back to back episodes of Design Star on Hulu.

For Helen (and Amanda)...

Not that y'all can't read it if you want, it's just that it won't be as much of a revelation to you because yours truly somehow neglected to take "before" shots of the table.

In any case, Brad and I were helping our friend Helen (who beat P Diddy in the New York marathon, btw) move when we came across an old table in her basement. Turns out, she'd gotten the table from our mutual friend Amanda (who, as we speak is traipsing across Brazil- that's right, my friends are filled with all kinds of fabulosity) when Amanda was purging for her cross-country drive to California.

It had seen better days and Helen was going to leave it in the basement, and being the sucker for a project that I am, well...

It used to be covered in a dark varnish and had 2 drop leaves supported by gatelegs. I removed the leaves and gatelegs (you can see holes where they used to be attached), used SoyGel stripper to remove the varnish, sanded it down with my new best friend, added 2 coats of Timber-Soy wood stain in mahogany, and finished it all off with Poly-Soy, a soy based polyturethane. It was a lot of elbow grease for a little table, but it was also pretty fun.