Restauration of an old table

When I grew up in the 60ies I remember an old table we had. For about three years ago I found some parts of  the table in the basement of our old summer house. They laid in the dirt, soaked with water and mud. 
When I came home, I asked my mother if she knew where the rest of the table was?  Lucily she had taken care of some of the parts. She wantes to restore it, but a couple of the feets were missing. So she  gave one foot to a furniture carpenter for to make som new feet. She waited for years but nothing came back, the carpenter had lost the foot.
I then decided to get the table restored. I had the top, the pillar and one foot for to start the restauration.

This is te tabletop, lucily it had not lied in the mud. But there was som scratches on the top, and also some painting. I had to strip all the old paint and then grind it for to get rid of the schratches.

This is the pillar, broken and soaked to pieces. Lying wet and dirty for years. I  see I have forgotten to take picture before I started grinding it an putting it together.

As you can see the splitting is huge, and I was not sure if I had to make a new pillar.

But I had to try. 

And after a couple of mishappenings I finally made it. I do not have a workshop with a lot of tools to help me with.

I searched on facebook for to get someone to make the feet. And I found one that was willing to make me four new feet for the table. He was fast and made the feet, and did an excellent job.

This is the only foot I had left and sent it over to him. Yeah, you can see a real lions foot.

An look what came back to me. I just loved the work he had done. Kudos to the  man, I recomand his work. Well done.
I knew when this was done I was able to get the table back to its origin again.

But there was still a piece missing. And I did not remember how it really looked like. I had no pictures, and I didn`t have any idea of how big it was about to be either. I thought of making it, but I turned my head up and down, and always came ot with the same thought: The table is going to tip over with my construction. I thougt about making a square, and never thought  of chipping the corners for the feet.

I asked my mum again, and she told me to take a look at the attic.

And I found it: the attatchment for the lion feet. And now I could see how the feet was to be attatched, and no tilting.

Again strip off the old paint, and grind it.

So then I began to put the table together, and luckily my brother came to visit me. 

He told me that my father once had restaured the table. He had sawn off about 15-20 cm off the pillar. He had also taken away the pearls that was going around the table. He had also made a stain of tea and coffee.

Aha... therefor the table was so light coloured, I remembered it had a much darker stain in my younger days.

Hmm.... good or bad news I thought?

Well, I started to look for someone that made rows of wooden pearls, but I could not find anyone in Norway. Tapping my fingers and wondering what to do now?

At last, I decided to buy some wooden pearls and cut them in to pieces. 

And then glue on the pearls around the edge.

Next making my own stain. The man that made the lions feet told  me where to buy and make it on my own.

Exciting, Out on the big web again and order stain.

This is me in the process: 

First round of stain. I wanted it dark so close to original colour as I could remember. 

At last finished: Stained and varnished.

Now with chairs that does not fit the style of this beautiful table. 

Hmmm... you can see it? The table is still too low...the pillar is still missing its full lenght. Do not worry. It`s coming around. I found the perfect top with perfect lenght for the pillar, but it is still missing the stain and varnish.
But of course I had to wait again a couple of weeks.

So now tadaa.... A long way on the road and finally finished.

 

Fully useable again, and back to its origin both in colour and design. Have to do something about the chairs ...tji hi... 

This was my 2018-19 project.