The Story of a Stump

By Katie

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A while ago I found this great stump.  I can’t remember where it was, but when I found it, I thought, “That’s a great stump.  I like that stump.  I will make something with that stump.”

So I took the stump home.

The stump was rather rough, so I took a palm sander to it.  I started with a 40 grit sandpaper and slowly moved up to a 200 grit to get a nice, smooth finish.  All said and done, it took me about 3 hours of sanding to get it smooth.  I had enough for the day so I put the stump in Will’s shop.

Some time passed.

Fall came.

Atticus was born.

Christmas, spring, summer, fall, Atticus’ first birthday, Christmas, spring.

Vivien was born.

We finished our house renos. Christmas again.

We listed our house.  We sold our house.  We bought a new house.

Will asked, “are we taking this stump with us?”

Of course we are!!  Thats my current work-in-progress, dude!

We moved.  We settled in.

Will organized his shop.  And asked, “Are you ever going to do anything with this stump?”

I told him to stop pressuring me.

We took a family trip to Habitat for Humanity.  I found 3 castors  (they didn’t have 4, boo!)  for $2.  I bought them for my stool.  Will laughed at me.

We found out we were expecting twins.

Summer came again.

Then one day, I was returning a pair of pliers to the shop and saw my stump.  And I thought to myself.  This is the day.  This is the day that my stump turns into something more than a stump.  This is the day that my stump achieves its destiny.  The sun shone through the window on my stump and I heard a choir singing.  (I did actually think of my stump achieving its destiny.  I have a rather melodramatic mind. However, it was overcast so there was no sun, and there was no choir either.  Though, if I win the lottery that I never play, maybe I will hire one to follow me around to sing in concert with my melodramatic thoughts.)

So my stump came inside to my work table.    I knew I had a bit of dark brown stain from a previous project that I thought would look good.    I used a piece of an old sheet to wipe the stain on because I didn’t have cheese cloth, or stain cloth on hand.  And we always use an old sheet for these sorts of things.  It works.

 I did 3 coats of Saman Colonial stain.  It’s a very watery stain.  Will hates using it but I don’t mind it, but I probably won’t choose this brand again.  Miniwax is a much nicer stain to work with.

Since I was planning on using my stump as a stool/side table, it needed to be wipable and stain-proof, so I did 3 coats of laquer as well.  I had a bit left of this left over from a previous project as well.  It dries nice and hard so I knew it would be perfect for my stump.

The last step was the castors.  It would be easy to balance it if I had 4, but I only had 3, which made it less easy.  It was even less easy to achieve balance because the stump was oval shaped, not circular.

But I prevailed.  I marked out the centre point and drew a circle around it.  The theory is that in order to achieve balance, you have to have your castors on the 3 points of an equilateral triangle.  So I marked out those positions and screwed in my castors.  (I only did one screw in each, because I figured I would be moving them)  There was one side that was really tippy so I moved all the castors to try counter-balancing it.  There was still some serious tippage, but I didn’t think moving the castors equidistantly would help.  I moved one castor to try balance the tip and it worked!  So my castors do not form an equilateral triangle, but I have a tip-free stool, so a win for me and a lose for math!  (Just kidding,  I realize that if I did math equations that took into consideration the weight, height and shape of the stump, I would come up with the prime location for the castors.  But I didn’t want to, partially because I didn’t know how to, partially because it was getting late.)

I took my stool to our living room.  I set a cup of coffee on it.  I tried to take a picture, but they were fuzzy, so I waiting until daylight was coming in the windows.

 

That’s the story of my stool.  My project that took 4 years, 4 kids, 2 houses and numerous jabs from Will, but I got it done.

 

If you have any small, easy projects that you want done with absolutely no time-line at all, let me know.  I’ll get it done for you.  Maybe.