Wet Weather and Beautiful Wood

Woody & Boo

It's hard to believe it's almost May. We have had rain every single day for the last week, but are supposed to get a complete turn around this week with it drying out and temperatures in the 70's. I'll be out there mowing in shorts again in a few days, woo hoo!

This weekend was definitely back and forth with the rain, and this afternoon after the last bout of showers, all the cats came in to nap, and Woody and Boo ended up curled up together in the big chair.

With the wet weather, but longer daylight hours I have been getting more sewing and needlepoint in. This weekend I put the collar on the blouse I am working on, and today made the buttonholes and sewed on the buttons. All I have left to do on it is sew on the sleeves and that will be done. The needlepoint is now about 80% done with some of the design and colors still being determined on the fly; but it's coming together.

I don't think I ever featured my dresser in the posts of furniture projects of the past. The dresser itself has a long history. It has a signature on the back and I decided today to try and find information online about it. The signature is Carder & Sons, Kalamazoo (my hometown). I couldn't find anything on Wikipedia, so I decided to Google it. And it brought up a book on Kalamazoo history, and it looks like that furniture company may have existed back in the 1880's. I pretty well knew it was over a 100 years old, and that is strong evidence of it.


It is a very solid and nicely built piece of oak furniture. My personal history with it started back in the early 1980's when my brother Mark gave it to me before he hitch-hiked out west. I had done an initial stripping of the really dark stain on it in the driveway back home, but it stayed in that rough condition until 2006.

There were two things that lead me to start the final refinishing of it; my neighbor Dave passing away, and coming across the decorative keyhole covers in the drawer of my secretary desk. I had figured I better take advantage of having the back deck to work on it while I still had the chance, thinking that I might have to move in the near future (that's where Dave comes in). Well, 8 years later, I'm still here and Dave's property is still up for sale. (This is the short version, the long version is too long).

The keyhole covers were my other
inspiration, because I really wanted to see them on the dresser after all those years. I love the curved upper drawers and curved top as well. My dad had gotten me the beautiful round brass knobs for Christmas one year back in the early 80's, and I found the pulls that complimented them in 2006. I do everything by hand, so it's a lot of elbow grease, but I totally love very minute of it. I use Homer Formby's Tung Oil, I like a natural finish where the beauty of the wood shows through.

The weather was good starting in April that year, so I went to it and got the dresser all sanded and refinished within about a month. I would go on to refinish 4 other pieces of furniture by October of that year. I was really on a roll, and the weather was good all summer.