To the King! To Restoration!

Am I beautiful? Am I useable? ~ The Killing Lights, by AFI

So way back in the day, I guess when I was a kid, I read this book called “Tales of the Kingdom.” It’s a potent allegorical collection of short stories, which I won’t really go into here, except to say that the Rangers stay true to the King, pledging themselves “To the King! To the Restoration!” (Who doesn’t love rangers??)

Now I never was able to pull of being a ranger very well, even in dnd, but restoring things is a hobby of mine.

The other day it was a Thursday and a trash day, and my first thought walking home was “Trash day? Oh, I wonder what treasure will I find today?” And sure enough, there was an abandoned desk on the side of the street. Typically I can’t rescue big furnitures that are far from my house, but fortunately this one had wheels! So I took it home to revive it.

Here is how it started:

First, I assessed the situation. Some of the veneer was missing from the edges, and a whole section was coming off. But other than that, it was in pretty good structural shape. I then washed it off, and pondered what to do with it next.

Since it was already primarily black, and black is a color I’m glad for furniture to be, I went ahead and painted the edges black. I have to say, finger painting is one of the most exhilarating ways to paint… But anyway, at some point I decided the top ought to be white, with a border of black. But how to make the edges sharp?

Now, you would think masking tape would be perfect for this, right? But not so! The tape ended up peeling off the paint when I went to take it off. So I had to do a lot of painstaking edge labor by hand (and by that I mean by paintbrush).

Here is the End Result:

I think it’s so fantastic that we have a Restorer. Though we are dust, by Him, we are made beautiful, being conformed to His likeness.

Song: Something Beautiful, by Jars of Clay (In case AFI wasn’t enough.)