Oak

I am refinishing an old oak table, that belonged to my mother-in-law. We will use it as our diningroom table in the new house. In the past I would have stripped the old finish, but I opted to take it to someone to strip it for me. The old finish was light and had turned very, very yellow. I want it a little darker.

Here are the base and a leaf. I am rather proud of the leaf, which I just built myself. The table was made to accept leaves, but they had long since disappeared. The guy who stripped the table (he answers the phone, "this is Tim, the male stripper") said the table is more than a hundred years old and had a customs mark on the bottom. Unfortunately Bertha acquired it from a secondhand store with no story about its past.

The top will probably get another coat, but I am nearly finished.

When I was young and furnishing my first house I decided I really liked old oak furniture. It was just becoming collectible at the time. It was the furniture of my grandparents' and great grandparents' generation. My mother grew up in a house full of it and considered it "ugly old stuff." Nevertheless, when my great grandmother died and her house was emptied Mom brought this old washstand back from Colorado for me. She knew I would love it.

Mom kept, for herself, her grandmother's china cupboard, which was entirely out of place among my parents' modern Scandinavian furniture, but was very sentimental to her. It came to me when my mother died.

The colored photo, by the way, is my parents. The oval portrait hanging above the cupboard is my greatgrandmother, the original owner. I have several other oak pieces I have acquired through the years, but these are my favorites.

I bought this little book in 1975. It is filled with photos of vintage oak furniture. I still enjoy looking at it.

The back section of the book are pages reproduced from a 1902 Sears catalog—the source of much of that style of furniture.

It shows the original prices and the approximate values of each piece in 1975 when the book was published. In 1902 a table, similar to mine, sold for $12.45. In 1975 they valued it at between $125 and $275. I have no idea what it would be worth now. This kind of old oak has kind of gone out of favor again, I think. The hot collectible stuff now is the mid-century Scandinavian furniture of my parents' generation. Funny. To me it's ugly old stuff.