Bench Re-do

Years ago,  and I am talking 1995 or so (you didn't know I was so old, huh?), my husband and a friend made handmade gliders, one for me and one for the friend's wife.  I loved mine and loved the way it looked on our front porch.  As sometimes happens, life got in the way, we moved to another home and didn't have the large porch that we had previously.  Our glider was left in the weather and suffered from neglect.  We didn't dispose of it but we didn't use it, either.

The poor thing was exposed to rain, sun, heat, cold, snow and just about any other weather-related conditions.  No tornadoes or hurricanes, though.

It just looked pathetic and forlorn--if inanimate objects can look that way.

That is one more photo just in case you didn't believe my "forlorn" remark.  

Most of the time I didn't even give the poor thing a second thought.

Flash forward to 2015--

One of my older sons who has been staying with us for a bit is quite handy, artistic, intelligent, handsome--oh wait, we are talking about the glider......

Anyway, he took the glider totally apart, board by board and sanded each board.  Perhaps I should just allow him to tell his technique:

"A 20 year old rocking bench, made out of redwood had grayed in the weather. It was taken apart, sanded down with a belt sander, stained twice with Thompson's WaterSeal Advanced, smoothed over with steel wool, and re-assembled. Given the old screws rusted and left dark stains near the screw holes, black wood screws were used to re-assemble the bench to match the dark rust stains. Some of these old screws broke apart when disassembling so two pieces of wood sitting right under the bench slats were re-cut. For the gliding action, some new bushings were made out of brass pipe fittings, which we very carefully ground down the thread and cut to size using a electrical grinder (4" disc). The stain seems to be holding up, though after a few storms you can feel the wood has absorbed a little water. It probably doesn't help that steel wool was used to smooth it over, but we can always apply another coat. It dries fast!"

Here are a few photos of the finished project:

Of course, here is a full shot of the glider restored:

Doesn't it look less forlorn?  I am so happy to see it restored to its former glory!  I am from the South originally so a porch swing or a glider makes my heart happy.

I know there are plenty of blog posts on restoring furniture and plenty of Pinterest's pins, too.  Well, this is mine and I hope you enjoyed it or at least weren't annoyed by it.

 Thanks for reading.  We are new to blogging and just trying to have fun and hopefully be a bit entertaining, if not informative.  We (my two daughters ages 22 and 14) are working on finding our voices (mine has a bit of sarcasm to it) and we hope you will visit us from time to time and see what the heck we might have come up with next!