why I slammed on brakes one day last Fall, to strike up a conversation with a woman out in front of her house, to ask if it would be possible for me to grab a few of the cut pieces from a tree they'd just had removed.
(blurry, sorry)
Peter didn't. He didn't realize that I'd been looking and trying to justify the price tag of this piece on West Elm (which I couldn't.... still can't.... IT'S A LOG). Dammit, I had to be able to do that one myself!
The kids definitely didn't understand. (When you're 12 and your mom is stopping to put random tree stumps in the car, you are mortified. Believe me.)
I brought home 2 log stumps from that random conversation (I don't even know what kind of tree it was) and left them in the garage all winter to dry out. I'd almost forgotten about them, until this past weekend, when I tried to get the bark off. Using a screwdriver and a hammer, the bark peeled off quickly, in large sheets. And I was excited!
And here it is one of them, after I sanded it down with the palm sander-
They got slightly darker when I gave them a rubbing of linseed oil, which I read somewhere online helps to kill whatever tiny things are left living after all that-
Once these are dry (I'm giving them a day), I will begin applying the 3-4 coats of polyurethane to seal them. I will show them to you once they are done, I already know where I will use them. What I can tell you right now is that for this project I have spent about $6 for sandpaper, $10 for a quart of polyurethane, and $7 for the linseed oil. And that is quite a bit less than the $199 price tag of the West Elm one.
Before I happened upon the downed tree in that nice lady's yard last Fall, I already had plans to call an Arborist in the area to see if they would give me some tree stumps, I felt sure they would.
Emma and Ian are just relieved they aren't chairs for them.
The story I told them when they saw me put them in the back of my car.
