A Full Circle Story

I have a story to tell you all but before I do I want to make clear to everyone who may read this that I think everyone needs to find their own style. It may not be my style but I will probably still love your style because I just admire people who find their style and go with it.

Having said that I want to talk today about painting furniture. I have some funiture that I have painted but the vast majority of it is what I call "man wood"-unpainted, stained wood. And there is a fascinating reason with possible deep psychological reasons why I like stained wood and that's the story part of this.

I was a teen in the 60's and both of my brothers were in the service. My older brother was in the Army and was in Vietnam for a couple of years and my other brother was in the Air Force in Thailand supporting the activities of the Vietnam war (he fueled planes). There was this one summer I remember vividly that my mother painted most of the furniture in the house. She called it "antiquing". My father hated what she did.

To give you an example,this is a rocking chair that my Mom painted although the paint is wearing off. There's actually a green layer under the brown layer so she did this one twice. I remember her painting it again after reupolstering it. I have plans to re-do this chair someday.

Now here's the full circle part of the story. My son was in Afghanistan in 2002 and I spent that summer stripping the furniture she had painted, to cope with the stress. Somewhere along the line I figured out that she had originally painted the furniture to cope with the stress of having two sons in a war zone. I had a lot of conversations with her that summer even though she had passed away a few years before.

This cabinet was orange. Big bright orange! She also painted my father's desk in his office orage. As I said, my Dad hated the painting jobs. This was a big stripping job and took a long time but it took my mind off things for quite a while.

This little chest was green and when I started stripping it I found this painted design under the paint. I had to carefully use a heat gun to get the paint off. It's a little rough but I love this chest-it's a really warm golden color in person.

Now this table is something I found recently and I plan on painting it. I'm living with it for a while so I can figure out what color it should be so see, I do paint some furniture. There were a few other things I stripped but have since sold but I'll never forget that summer. Luckily my son came home safe. I think a lot about military mothers-it's a hard road to go down. So that's my little story and I'm sticking to it!