Scars and the tales they tell

I recently acquired three Ercol red dot children's chairs. They had been bought new by a family with two sons (no-one is quite sure why three chairs for two boys) who are now men with families of their own.

Both parents have subsequently died and the sons are busy disposing of their parents' belongings. The chairs formed an integral part of their childhood memories, and the plan was the sand them down, restore them and use them in their own homes. But their own children have outgrown kiddy chairs, and with full time jobs, homes to run, families to raise and lives to lead, finding the time was proving too difficult. So they decided to sell the chairs to someone who would take the time to restore them.

That someone proved to be me.

The chairs show clear signs of having survived the childhoods of two rambunctious boys and their various friends. Presumably the grandchildren used them, too, when they went to visit. There are scratches in the wood, some of which probably deserve the word 'gouges'; the points of the various bits are chipped; they are long overdue for an oiling. Everything you would expect from a piece of furniture half a century (or so) old.

So there I stood, sandpaper in hand, with a decision to make: before I apply lashings of nourishing and preserving oil, do I sand the beautiful elm wood right down until it is blemish free and perfect...and ever so slightly differently shaped from the original? Or do I sand away the worst of the damage, to leave some of the history while removing the risk of splinters for the next little person to sit in the chairs?

I went with column B. The chairs have had their own story. I hope their stories will continue for several decades yet. I don't know how each of the scratches and chips was caused, but I do know that each one has been part of the journey. If you want a blemish-free piece of furniture, you buy a new one. If you want a piece of history, you want it have evidence of said history.

Or so I think, anyway.

It put me in mind of an incident that happened when my niece was a little girl. She was in my Mom's bedroom as my Mom was getting dressed and she asked with a gasp of pure admiration, "Granny, how did you get those pretty finsil (silver) lines on your bum?" Said niece is now a gown woman in her thirties. She almost certainly has 'pretty finsil lines' of her own, and no doubt she hates them as much as my mother hated hers back then. We're raised with the idea that we're to go through life's storms without collecting evidence of the battles we've won (or at least survived). Those stretch marks which bear evidence to the fact that we carried the next generation within ourselves for a time. Those wrinkles that declare that we have been around since before the current norm was the norm...and we're still standing.

More recently: my son was features on the front page of an ice hockey match programme for this weekend. I WhatsApped a copy to my family abroad. Both my mother and my sister - who haven't seen my son in years (such is the reality of living on different continents) remarked on the scar in the middle of my son's forehead. They remember that scar. They remember how he got it: flying at mach 1 into a doorpost. They have seen it featured in every single photograph of my son for the past 20 years and change since he acquired it. It's part of him. It's part of his story. They know how it epitomises the no-holds-barred approach my son still has to life - that he lives at full tilt, with no sense of self-preservation, and saves nothing for the swim back (if you can name the movie from which that reference is drawn, you get extra brownie points).

Vintage is in. You only need to look at an events calendar, or a TV schedule to see how sought after it is. We want things with a past, a history. We want things that look as if they have a tale to tell. Perhaps it's time to adopt the same attitude towards ourselves?

Anyhoo, before I wax too philosophical, let me end this particular anecdote with before and after pictures. The chairs have been uploaded to my Folksy shop.

Before

Sanded and oiled

The story of the little drawers that could

When you're making something, do you start with all the thinking and designing and drawing and then move on to the doing? Or do you start doing right away and kind of make it up as you go along? A blend of the two?

Here's how I tend to go about things. I'm going to use a specific piece as an example.

I came across a little drawer unit advertised on Freecycle. The advertiser admitted right up front that one of the drawers was jammed shut, but she thought it might be fixable. It was the fact that it was solid wood that appealed to me, so I arranged to go and collect it.

Under the wallpaper

The sorry little unit had been (badly) covered in wallpaper, but it was clearly sturdy and it had a cute shape. It had promise. I took it home and ripped the wallpaper off. What I found was what had obviously been the drawers of a desk in bygone days. It bore one of those oval shaped stamps in purple ink that appeared on the movable assets of all government departments when I was a little girl. Sadly, even though this one has been stamped more than once, none of the stamps were clear enough for me to read. The desk top having taken a different route at some point, the top of the unit was a piece of badly cut plywood.

Under the wallpaper, the unit was painted beige. And the drawers had those little wooden handles that were ubiquitous at one stage.

Exposed skeleton

I took top off and let the denuded little unit stand as it was for a while, while my subconscious mind toyed with it. Clearly, the paint had to be stripped off. If the wood underneath was good, it could be sanded and sealed and allowed to speak for itself. If not, I would repaint it.

This is going to sound really mumbo-jumbo-ish, but it's when I get hands on with the wood, that I begin to get a sense for what it should become. I'm almost inclined to say I commune with it, but that would be seriously overstating the case. I'm not into animism.

Mismatched wood

As I stripped and sanded the little unit down, it began to take shape organically. It proved to be made of a variety of woods, which I had no plans to disguise. I also opted leave just the smallest traces of the previous paint. All the drawers were in varying shades of the same colour, but with different grains. Just perfect. To make matters even better, once the wallpaper and paint had been removed, all the drawers behaved just as they were designed to do.

After sanding, with new handles

I had no plans originally to replace the drawer handles, but I could clearly picture those brass, cupped drawer handles that were on teachers' desk drawers during my early school days. I went on a hunt and wouldn't let up until I had found exactly what I was after. I had been to all the recognised DIY and hardware stores without joy. But I struck up a conversation with an elderly couple who were also looking at drawer handles in the hardware store. I told them what I was after and they assured me that they had seen exactly that at a budget store in town. I hied me there and found them exactly as described, and at a fraction of what I would have been prepared to pay!

Of course, there was still the little matter of the top. It occurred to that I still had some solid bamboo

Bamboo top

floorboards left over from when we had our lounge and hall floors done. I had already made a coffee table from some of the leftovers, but there were still a few boards knocking about. This could work. It would add yet another colour and texture to the unit. I cut them to size and attached them. Perfect.

Now...was I going to varnish, oil or wax? The feel of the wood under my hands during the sanding process had been so silky, I didn't want to lose that any more than I needed to. So I went with oil. And there you have it: the little drawer unit that could. I think it's lovely. But then I would.

Tada!

So there you have it. Some forward planning. Some subconscious stewing. Some happy accidents. Some flying by the seat of the pants. Some organic development.