As the daughter of a finishing carpenter it isn’t any wonder why I’m attracted to power tools and the smell of freshly cut wood, they are things that are very familiar to me that I grew up with. I can’t put my finger on what started my new hobby in woodworking and restoration though. Maybe it was the way it complimented the physically taxing aspects gardening had on my aging body. Maybe it was to fill the long Alberta winter months and a gap left behind by kids grown up and moved away; time that used to be spent in cold hockey arenas all over Alberta, into Saskatchewan, Manitoba and even Prague, Czech Republic. But I digress, that is one for a blog post another day! In any case a new hobby was birthed and with it so much crazy fun. Every project has a life of it’s own, a personality…like people and pets. My favorite is to create or restore something for someone in particular.
This project, a dresser that I transitioned into side tables to ‘fit’ the needs for a dear friend, is a perfect example. The dresser was my friends when she was a little girl. But after years of being stored in a shed and a decision that it no longer fit within her home, it was on its way to the dump. That was until I convinced her hubby they had lost their minds and to leave it with me! There was so much character and potential in that dilapidated piece, it just needed a little lovin’.
As I worked on that project I thought about my friend growing up, sitting at that dresser and staring into the mirror… as a younger girl maybe exploring everything there was about her own reflection and making goofy faces. Then as a teen, primping and preening for that perfect look that might woo her heartthrob. Thinking about her growing up with that dresser was so much fun as I restored it to something I hoped she was going to love again.
There always seems to be a surprise of some sort in every project, this one was no different. I found a drawing on the back of one of the drawers when I was sanding it down, it was so cute and unexpected that it made me laugh! I couldn’t bring myself to erase it with sandpaper and so it remains, part of the old character that the new version evolved from.
