Console Table

It rained on and off all day today so I had to take a quick photo in between rain showers.  We really needed the rain so I can't complain about it raining.

I'm going to shorten the rods by 8 inches.  That will give an overhang of glass about 4 inches on each side.  I figured that I might need to shorten the rods and that is why I left them as long as possible. Better to cut twice then cut too much off once.

We also want to add another rod but first we will concentrate on the length and then add the third rod.  R says there is one area where he thinks there is enough material that we can drill another hole.  

Japanese beetle trap update.

The traps are still catching beetles but at a much slower rate.  I am still not finding any beetles on my roses or plum trees so that is good.  Next summer should be interesting to see if the number of beetles are less than average.  

Also, I did not win the Powerball tonight.  But I did get a check in the mail for 36 bucks.  About 6 months ago I read an article about class action suits.  It says that a lot of people miss out on $$$ that is owed to them.  So now whenever I get an email about a class action suit, I fill out the form and email it back.  So far I have received 4 checks.  

Granted they are not big. One was for malware software that was bogus and I received a full refund of $19.99, another one was for a memory card that I bought for a laptop a long long time ago, there was also the Ticketmaster suit but I didn't even try to get my discounted tickets because I read they were gone almost immediately.  There was another one for $20 bucks but I can't remember what it was for and today's was the $36 dollar check for magazines.  I didn't really read it carefully.  I just looked at the magazines and went yup I subscribed to that one and that one and that one.  

At one time I was receiving a lot of magazines but then the recession hit and a lot of them went out of publication and they would substitute another magazine in it's place.  One time I renewed a two year subscription for R to a weekly newspaper about racing. Within a month they folded.  This was a well known paper owned by Chris Economaki and he died soon after they folded.  The weekly paper was picked up by another person but changed to a monthly with glossy paper.  R never liked it.  He liked the weekly format because they covered some of the smaller racing series and he could see his name and my son's name in the paper every week.  I ran across a stack of those papers in the garage just the other day.  So anyways, fill out those forms and you may get a check in the mail, too.  Free unexpected money is always the best.

Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle

BTW if you used Rustoleum's Restore on your deck and did not like the results, I understand that they are close to settling that class action suit.  Search the Internet and you will find several forums dedicated to that problem and what to do to get your money back.  The product wasn't cheap and it looks like it didn't work too well.  That really surprises me because I love their spray paint.

Repurposing a Cast Iron Sewing Machine Base

I was beginning to think that I had dreamt that I bought a cast iron sewing machine base.  I must have made 10 trips through the house and barn looking for it.  I walked through cobwebs and through the barn loft until I thought I would faint.

Finally I gave up looking.  R and I were busy today changing out the well pressure tank and replacing some sections of ill installed copper pipe.  Exactly who uses short sections and elbows galore when a straight piece 8 feet long would work perfect?  It was during one of my many trips through the basement and out the basement door that something caught my eye.  There it was.....just where I put it 2 years ago.  

It was 630PM and my local ACE Hardware closes at 7PM.  So I threw one side into my vehicle and took off to buy solid steel rods and acorn nuts.

The rods came in 48 inch lengths which believe it or not was just the length that I thought would work perfect with the glass top.  The base needed to be wider to support the glass top but not so wide that the proportions would look odd.

Dan, my hardware guy, cut threads in the steel rods for me but only after we figured out which size acorn nuts would work best.  He than checked out the thread count and pitch so that he could cut the threads to match.  He used a button die to cut the threads.  I have a complete set in my tool box but I thought he had a thread cutting machine in the back.  It was only after he cut them that I found out he just used button dies.

We double checked the acorn nuts to make sure they worked.....and they did.  Good job Dan.  The cost was a little over 17 bucks.

Tomorrow I'll clean up the base and spray paint it satin black.  I won't need to sandblast it as it doesn't have much rust that can't be removed with a brass brush. It appears that the base was only painted one time, so there is very little loss of detail that happens when multiple layers of paint fill in voids and obscures subtle details.

I'll need to clean the rods with alcohol or paint thinner to remove the protective coating of oil so that the paint will stick.  The only detail that I need to figure out is what I am going to put on the top of the base where it contacts the glass.  Probably some sort of rubber or foam with a sticky back.

By tomorrow night I should have a console table made out of a free piece of tempered glass and a 16 dollar vintage cast iron sewing machine base.

BTW within 1 hour of placing the two table bases out to the curb, they were picked up by a scrapper.

Reuse Repurpose Recycle