Hello friends!
Here in Portland it’s yard sale season. So people are cleaning out their garages and attics and closets and putting out stuff for sale or giveaway at the curb. Which is how on my walk back yesterday from my regular Saturday yoga class, I came upon a 55-inch round folding table.
The table was covered in green felt and a thin foam layer. It was one of those things that makes you stop and wonder: Huh, how could I repurpose this? Because a round table is so useful. Especially one with folding legs! And we need some new outdoor furniture for our deck, which is a sprawling, oversized outdoor space designed and built last year to cover up a lot of otherwise unusable backyard. (Too shady for gardening, too sloped for pavers.)
But the furniture I have my heart set on is also too much, and until it goes on a major sale or I find an acceptable dupe, for now we have an eclectic mishmash of things I’ve found on Craigslist or in vintage stores.
There at the curb, I had an idea. A lot of restaurants in our neighborhood put oilcloth covers on outdoor tables. It may seem counter to Portland’s soggy reputation to those not from around here, but there’s often no rain from June well into September. And even when it does rain here, it’s often mild enough to dine al fresco all but maybe two or three months of the year. So an oilcloth cover on a particle board poker table I found on the street makes more sense in this climate than it did on, say, our old deck in Washington, D.C. Also, I knew that a funky store in the neighborhood, Asylum, sells beautiful oilcloth fabric.
The woman giving away the table told me that her husband used it for poker nights in their garage. She couldn’t remember when they bought it, but they did cover it themselves with the now-shredding green felt. Look, she told me, even if you get it home and it doesn’t work, you can just put it out on your own curb. Someone will want it, she said.
This was true, and so I called Chris to come help me wheel it through the park, across Hawthorne Boulevard and up our driveway. When we got it home, we set the table up on the deck. The round shape looked good. The table could seat at least six.
One problem: It was about two inches too tall. I knew we could cut down the tubular legs with a tool that slices conduit, but we didn’t have one. We also needed new rubber footings for the legs. And the oilcloth, of course. This could mean multiple trips to the hardware store. Was it worth it?
Yes, we decided. It was. It was a beautiful day and it was lunchtime and we had no other plans. Why not make an afternoon of this project? We put the dog on a leash and walked down the street for sandwiches. Then, we hit up the hardware store, where I had to show some dudes what a conduit cutter was. (This was an exceptionally satisfying moment of demonstrating my expertise around tools without mansplaining. Emotional growth for all in the plumbing aisle!) The $20 tool was the most expensive piece of this project, but now we have one and we’ll probably find all sorts of other uses for it.
And then I headed down the street for oilcloth. Unfortunately, the beautiful fabric at Asylum wasn’t wide enough for our purposes. So I walked over to Fred Meyer, which if you’re not from the Pacific Northwest, is a grocery store and variety store and hardware store and discount gas station and so much more. Freddie’s had a $5 vinyl tablecloth that seemed like it might do the trick.
I really was hoping that this project could be done within walking distance of home—after all, I found the table on the street! But the Fred Meyer tablecloth was too small, and so a car trip to Target was in order. While Chris prepared dinner, I headed to Target, a 4.5-mile drive. I found an appropriate-enough vinyl tablecloth for $15.
When I got home, I stapled it to the underside of the table, using a method I learned from my dad when he taught me decades ago how to re-cover a stool. And then, we ate dinner out on our deck, on the new table.
The project cost $41, not counting lunch. It made for a perfect afternoon. And while the table isn’t the patio furniture of our dreams, I like that it has already given us its first story. Someday when we’re done with it, we’ll wheel it to the curb. And someone else will see it and imagine their own uses for it.
Yours,
Erika
THE NEWS
All the links…
For Stateline, I wrote about what states along Route 66 are doing to ready for the road’s centennial in three years, which includes making it easier to identify charging stations for electric vehicles. Warning: You may want to plan a road trip after reading!
How Norway adapted to EV use. There are some fascinating tidbits in this piece, including how tire pollution is a concern with EVs, how the construction industry adapted to electric-powered heavy equipment…and how kindergartners nap outside!
Why it’s so hard to buy an EV in the U.S. Because a powerful trade organization that represents one of the richest professions in America doesn’t want you to.
The new EV VW bus. It’s cute, no?
Why do electric cars have such terrible model names?
The die-hards still mailing newspaper clips to family and friends. This is an adorable piece about my kind of people. (And let’s be honest, these links I put together are pretty much the digital equivalent of me cutting out newspaper articles and sending them directly to you.)
#1000wordsofsummer The novelist Jami Attenberg’s annual community writing spree begins June 17. It’s an excellent way to make big progress on a project; I wrote multiple draft chapters of Windfall during the 2019 session of #1000wordsofsummer, and have been a big fan ever since. Here’s how it works: Every day for two weeks you get an email from Jami encouraging you to write. She also invites guest authors to contribute love notes to creativity and productivity and inspiration. I’ve found that the spree is most useful if you 1) have a project in mind, and 2) can devote time each day to work on it. This round, I’m carving out two hours each morning in hopes of finishing a project, and I would love the camaraderie. Let me know if you’re working on something, too!
How Summer Camp Became Such a Hot Mess for Parents. This is your weekly FOTWD link, by Lydia Kiesling. I try to gift links to paywalled publications, but I do not have a Bloomberg subscription. However, the magazine is available online at most public libraries—a reminder of the abundant community resources we can access, thanks to the taxes we pay.
P.S. Have you pre-ordered Lydia’s book yet? It’s out Aug. 1.