{"id":3083,"date":"2019-07-26T07:32:33","date_gmt":"2019-07-26T12:32:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/?p=3083"},"modified":"2019-07-26T07:32:33","modified_gmt":"2019-07-26T12:32:33","slug":"bringing-the-apology-table-back-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/bringing-the-apology-table-back-to-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Bringing The Apology Table Back to Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Nearly three months after a fierce straight-line windstorm swept through North Longview, damaging hundreds of homes \u2013 including ours \u2013 repair work continues. We were luckier than many. Our roof sustained minor damage, plus some smashed gutters. The biggest project has been having our deck rebuilt, and that is nearly completed.<\/p>\n

One victim of the storm was the Apology Table. It is a 30-inch square cedar outdoor table. The top consists of diagonal slats with gaps between each board to allow rain to fall through. The table gets its name because I built it as an apology gift for my Beautiful Mystery Companion in 2008. We were a couple but a few years from marriage. Without going into the particulars, I behaved badly. It required some serious groveling to get back into my BMC\u2019s good graces. A small piece of the penance was building this table as a peace offering. She kept the table on her back patio until we joined households. It has sat on our deck since. Each year I re-stain the table at the same time I stain the deck. The deck had to be recoated each spring to keep the wood<\/p>\n

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from rotting, because it was well past its useful age.<\/p>\n

Luckily, I hadn\u2019t quite gotten around to the annual deck staining \u2013 a full weekend of work \u2013 before the storm knocked down trees and smashed a chunk of the deck. Now, with a new deck freshly stained, my maintenance is greatly reduced. As has my wallet.<\/p>\n

A tree branch smashed the Apology Table on May 8, during the storm. Several of the slats were broken, along with one of the underlying supports. The insurance adjustor gave us $210 for the table, marking it a total loss. But I had no intention of scrapping the Apology Table. As Raul and his family started tearing down our massive deck and replacing it with one considerably smaller and more manageable, I carefully took apart the Apology Table, slat by slat. The bottom of the legs had begun to rot after 11 years out in the elements, so I cut a half-inch off each leg to rid the rot. I pried apart the mortise-and-tenon joints and sanded all the pieces. Slowly I began gluing the table back together.<\/p>\n

Something didn\u2019t look right. The slats, which get shorter as they go toward the corners, weren\u2019t lining up correctly, no matter how many times I dry-fit the pieces in different configurations. I ended up cutting some new slats out of cedar. At my BMC\u2019s suggestion, instead of staining everything, I left the new cedar its natural color, so the Apology Table is now two-toned \u2013 brick red and cedar tan. The corners still didn\u2019t fit quite right, and I couldn\u2019t figure out why. I shrugged and put four coats of varnish on the table. Then I used a trick learned years ago and bought four metal Texas stars about 4-inches in diameter, which have nails on the back side, and pounded them into the corners to \u201chide\u201d the fact the slats don\u2019t line up perfectly on the corners.<\/p>\n

The table returned to the deck and looks pretty nice, if I may say so. It certainly comes in handy for holding our mosquito killers, wireless speaker, beverages and books. I could have just trashed the Apology Table and bought something, but that didn\u2019t seem right. I like the fact it\u2019s risen from the wreckage.<\/p>\n

A few weeks after finishing I found a thin, long piece of weathered cedar outside just off the deck. It took a second, but I figured out where it came from. It once served as the center slat of the Apology Table, which is why the pieces no longer fit correctly, despite my best efforts. I put the slat in the yard waste container. I wasn\u2019t about to take that table apart again.<\/p>\n

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Print this entryNearly three months after a fierce straight-line windstorm swept through North Longview, damaging hundreds of homes \u2013 including ours \u2013 repair work continues. We were luckier than many. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[70,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-70","category-columns"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3083"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3085,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3083\/revisions\/3085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}