My favorite Christmas gift!

This was by far my favorite Christmas gift:

Yes, it's a table. We've been wanting one for about four years. This table came free from my parents as my brothers were cleaning out their basement. This table has been down there for a LONG time and I think I was the only person who used it for it's intended purpose (no, brothers, it was actually NOT meant for climbing on, beating huge gouges in, playing ping pong, or doing your monkey around the table trick). I spent many hours bonding with that "homework" table and my calculus book. If you sat too long you'd stick to the bench either because of a bad finishing job or because someone got something permanently sticky on there before it came to our house. With all of those quality hours of torture, I always thought of this table as a massive black slab. Turns out when you remove it from a basement and into sunlight it was actually just VERY dark brown and VERY beat up.

It's now been stripped...

Sanded...

Re-stained, and finished. I had to get pictures of it mounted on our food storage buckets while Paul worked on it because it was just funny to me-those buckets really are useful in an emergency and I hope this is the biggest kind of emergency we ever have.

It's had all it's dents and dings worked out and was actually really pretty underneath. I love all the grains and knots that are now visible and it is a beautiful piece of furniture for our kitchen. The best part is that once we get the bench done we will actually have enough space for our family (our previous table sat six-tops). We had fourteen people around this table on Christmas Eve and it was cozy, but worked out well. Merry Christmas to all of us!!

And thanks, Mom and Dad, for getting rid of the black slab in the basement. I hope you like its new life. When you come visit there will now be space at the table!