The Restory Retreat Centre

In previous posts I wrote about the table I was busy restoring. After finishing the project in August last year I never got around to taking pictures of the final result. Shame on me! And as some of you recently asked about the project, Matilda took some pictures of it last week.  To recap: On arrival in the workshop ( Beauty longing ) A work in progress ( Beauty longing - Part 2 ) And finally Its place is in a dining room and not a chicken abattoir, don’t you think?  George

OK, in order to get the bigger picture and compare the "before" and "after" you have to go back to the post Beauty longing . I was busy restoring the huge old dining room table. Oregon with teak legs was my guess at that stage. This is my first big woodworking commission since we have moved to Barrowfield. In order to complete it I had to do quite a lot of repairs on the machinery that would be needed in the process. The belt sander got damaged during the move. I welded the cast iron table where it broke at the base. Two weeks before our move down here, they broke into my workshop at Rietfontein and stole the electrical motor with its particular bracket off my table saw. It was no mean feat to replace it. In the process I got to know most of the electrical suppliers in Newcastle, drove to Alberton to get the bracket components, made adjustments to that and put in a bigger circuit breaker at the distribution box as the new motor kept tripping the previous one. ...

All the beauty that's been lost before wants to find us again.                                                                                                         U2, Ordinary Love  Our landlord Johan and his wife Debbie are destined to become our direct neighbours in a few months’ time. They are moving into the house of his late father close by which will make it easier for him to tend to the cattle side of their farming activities. At this stage the old house is being renovated.  By mere coincidence Debbie recently got an old table back that has been in the family for generations and was given to friends years ago. The size of the table (2.75 m x 1.14 m) provided an ideal surface to work on in the ch...