Batoning Down the Hatches!

Well, our Tofurky was fantastic, the girls and my DH loved it, so worth a try for anyone who wants to try a vegetarian feast. It was neat to have a "traditional" holiday feast with all the trimmings.

The forecast is predicting some wicked winds here in the desert. We KNOW how to do wicked winds, and with all the dirt we have it can be a nasty thing. They say we should have sustained winds around 40 mph with gusts up to 70+mph, YIKES! The last time we had these winds come through we lost our roof and our entire wooden fence fell down. It was wild with the big kennel runs we have almost going over the 6 foot fences, everything was flying. Hopefully the forecast will be wrong or at least we will weather the whole thing better this time.

Knowing the winds were coming-it was getting pretty windy this afternoon-I set to work trying to clean everything outside up. I asked the girls to help, and anyone who has teenagers will be able to imagine how that went. Usually the girls are pretty good helping if I ask but boy today I got some rolling eyes and they clearly thought I was a bit nuts when I said the light plastic chairs should be brought up into the garage, after all they put two light weight chairs on top of each other, so what the heck-after all how much force could a wind pack, right?

I am in a no win situation, if there are no winds, then the girls will forever think I am a little short in the logic department, and if the winds do come like they are predicted I will be able to say I told you so, but those type of winds always bring damage to at least some of the people in our area.

One thing that will be safe no matter how strong the winds are is my new table. I posted a picture of it on facebook when I completed it last week, but figured I would show it off in the blog too. This table started its first life as a table my friends husband built for her, then she gave it to me, I resurfaced it, and resurfaced it, changed the legs and had it as a baby pause table to use with the puppies or when I wanted to have one of the dogs drive to something-they could go to that table if I wanted to use two tables. I wanted to do some teeter training with the two table method and so I needed another higher table so I decided to give the table yet another life. I LOVE using the table as a huge target for exercises and we do LOTS of table games, so you can never have too many tables in your back yard.




I think I am basically a pretty inventive builder. YEAH, that's what we will call it. Sometimes with training or building something it is just too easy to do something the tried and true way, so I will set out on a search on the 'net to see if I can find a better way to go about things. LOL, sometimes, well.....USUALLY that can get me into some trouble and this project was no exception.

The reason this table will be very safe even if we have hurricane force winds is that it probably weighs a ton. Hey, me and ten of my heaviest friends could jump on it, it is sturdy as they come but with each new life I just added on another layer of wood onto the top. It doesn't take many layers before a table is pretty heavy-IT ISN'T GOING ANYWHERE!. If worse comes to worse tomorrow with the winds we will all be heading to hide under the table so at least I know we will be safe.

The painting was done with a new method I read about on the net where people were suggesting using raw sugar and rock salt for the traction in the paint instead of using a finish with sand. Sounded like a great idea after all then if I needed to refinish it I could sand it down which does not work if you use a sanded surface. Well, it looked fantastic, until it would not dry for days and days and there was an oily slick surface. Hummmmm, so I sopped up the oily stuff and put another coat on, and added some rice. Well, at that point we could have ate the table, we almost had rice pudding. I am not sure if there was a chemical reaction with the paint and food....or if the paint was reacting to when I watered it down. It was a new type of paint.

I finally scraped everything off and did a traditional finish. After probably spending twice as much on this table and taking way more then twice the time it should have we have a sturdy, wonderful table. SEE,it all turns out in the end, LOL. The table is supposedly adjustable and there are all the heights on it from 8 inches to 24 inches, but in reality,....it is PVC and PVC doesn't come apart that well once you really pound it together so I have left over pieces I will make a baby table with and I think I will just leave the table at 20 inches.

If anyone needs to make a table, and you use the tried and true methods and don't do a lot of experimenting,.....this table was really easy, and I am really impressed with how stable it is.