Vacation memories...

Well, my vacation (such as it was) is over. As I said before, we didn't really go on any adventures, but we did have some great "down-time" and recharged the batteries a bit. I'm not getting a full week off this summer, but I am getting three smaller "vacations". My next one will be Fourth of July weekend, when we actually ARE going out of town to visit our favorite biologist in West Virginia. Yay!

But I digress - what did we do this past weekend? We started a project long anticipated... we stripped and started the refinishing process on my grandmother's dining room table. We had always assumed it was walnut. Nope. After we got the 100 years of stain and shellac off, we discovered a beautiful wood that was almost pink in color. But it's not cherry. It's mahogany. And it's absolutely gorgeous. To prove it, here are a couple of photos. The first is the professor (in full respirator gear) as he started the stripping process.


This next picture is the table after two coats of polyurethane. We decided not to add any stain at all, and just let the wood speak for itself.

I can't wait to see how it looks when we get the chairs finished too. (We bought ones like THIS at Wood You in Opelika.) We're planning to go to the local paint store and get them to custom color-match the table with their computer system. So theoretically, even though the table is mahogany and the chairs are parawood (from the rubber tree), the coloration will be very, very close. We're hoping to finish up the process this weekend. If we succeed, I'll post a before-and-after pic for your perusal!