Spotting inner beauty

A couple months ago, my wife ran across an older Heywood Wakefield nightstand at a junk shop. It was incredibly beat-up, with major damage to the finish on all top and side surfaces, as well as stickers stuck all over it. As if that weren't enough, there were a couple dark marks on the top, where it looks like a candle was left burning.

It certainly didn't look like the sort of thing you'd want to bring home and put in your bedroom.


While the surface was damaged, the piece (which is made out of solid northern yellow birch, and is incredibly heavy for its size) was in fine structural shape, and for only $2 she simply couldn't pass it up.

Here's a couple more angles, just so you know what we were dealing with.


My wife started the job, and got a good portion of the old finish off it, then I spent another solid afternoon working on the piece while listening to some football on the radio.

The particular finish used on this piece (which goes by "champagne") is actually a rather impressive concoction of colors and finishes, and instructions for mixing it seemed incredibly daunting. Even then, it seemed like results were pretty hit-or-miss.

Fortunately we found a fellow on the internet who sold pre-mixed batches that he had put together using a tried-and-true method that got rave reviews from other armchair furniture refinishers. At 40 dollars for a quart, it was kind of expensive, but worth saving the headache on trying to mix our own.

After five hand-applied coats, the last coming on one of the last true nice days of the fall, our nightstand was finally ready to be re-introduced to the world (or at the very least, our bedroom).


Total cost of the piece ended up being just under $45 with tax, which is one-third or less what we would have paid for a decent used piece. Sure, it still has a few blemishes (like a small reminder of the candle burn), but I figure it gives it some character.

This wasn't the first time we've rehabilitated a cheap piece of furniture from a sale or store, and it won't be the last. For furniture, beauty is way more than skin deep, and if you're willing to put a little elbow-grease into it, a nice piece of furniture will last a long, long time.

Ahoy. Greetings.

That project I mentioned a couple posts ago ran a bit long and shelled me out a bit, but things should slow down and allow me to get back to some regular posts here. I'll start off with one of the cooler garage sale finds of the year so far, a ship log (the "Ship St. Paul") from the early part of the 20th century that I got at a yard sale for $2.





Obviously, this book has seen some wear and tear. The corners of the cover are all worn down, the binding is split with pages loose on the inside, and there's water damage galore. That said, it didn't smell musty and I could detect no active mold, so I simply couldn't pass it up.


Inside the front cover was the ships forecastle card, which was cool enough in its own right.





The book is filled with page after page of entries that basically describe what would be the day-to-day life on a Northwestern shipping boat 100 years ago. There are lots of descriptions of weather, which I'm sure got somewhat monotonous for someone on the boat at the time, and while I haven't read through the entire book, my landlubbing self finds the hand-scrawled entries absolutely fascinating.





Of course, I had to do some internet searching on the boat, just to see if there was any more information out there, and sure enough, there were not just one, but two great photos on the University of Washington's digital collections site of the boat. Below is one of them, but be sure to check them both.

"Crew on deck of the Northwestern Fisheries Co. cannery ship ST. PAUL leaving Seattle, Washington, March 1912" - from the John Cobb field notebook

One of the only other mentions of the boat (not to be confused with another, more famous Ship St. Paul that was key in the discovery of Alaska) was that according to this article, it was turned into piece of a Seattle pier aquarium sometime in the early 30s (which then closed in 1956).

A lot of times when I'm thrifting or hunting around at garage sales, I'll buy something simply for its "object" value. This log book had that in spades. It's unique and incredibly aged, with not only words that tell a story, but an appearance that does so as well.

Yes, the back cover is even faded a different color than the front

Soon to be cruiser

Two months ago I saw an old 1984 Trek bicycle sitting out in a somewhat oddball mid-winter garage sale. It was my size and the price couldn't be beat, so I swiped it up and threw it in the trunk of the car and knew right away what sort of project it was going to turn into. After a couple weeks spent trying to paint match, I threw up my arms in defeat and had the frame media blasted and powder coated in semi-gloss black.

Ultimately, that latter decision is probably going to be one for the better, as the final product is turning out much closer to what I'd imagined in my mind than the original red paint job would have. This weekend was spent polishing some of the old parts and waiting for a few more to arrive in the mail. Barring any major hangups, I should be able to finish putting it together this week.







Once everything is assembled, I'll have a little longer post with some better pictures and a bit more description.

Objects I Love: Panasonic R-70 transistor radio

Truth be told, I listen to the radio only a fraction of the percentage that I used to. I have an insanely large collection of music, and instead of taking my chances with what I suspect is largely crap on the airways, I pull something off my shelf (or out of my digital library) that I know I will enjoy. Is that elitist? Perhaps.

And yet, there are a couple things that I really enjoy listening to the radio. There's something soothing to me about waking on a weekend morning and hearing at least part of "Car Talk," and there are days when I come home from work and spend an hour in the kitchen working on a meal where I flip back and forth between sports talk radio and "Fresh Air" with Teri Gross.

I'm getting really circuitous here, but the other thing I absolutely adore listening to on a radio is baseball games (particularly college baseball). There's something about the numbers, the names, and particularly the cadence of it all that really appeals to me. There are the long periods of near dead air sometimes punctuated by rapid bursts of action and the ocassional low-scoring pitching duels that unfold with ever-increasing tension. I have my team that I follow, and this is where the cutest damn chunk of plastic and wires in the world enters the stage. Please let me introduce the Panasonic R-70 transistor radio (aka "The Panapet").

The coolest vintage radio ever? Probably

I discovered my first Panapet at a thrift store about 3 years ago. I'd never seen anything like it before and knew that for the $3.99 price, it would be mine whether it worked or not. I got it home and replaced the 9-volt battery and it crackled to life. I spun through the AM dial and realized that sadly, there wasn't much worth listening to. Not much to listen to, that is, except baseball...



In less than a month, it will be college baseball season, and my army (which now numbers 4, in 3 of the 5 total colors available) of Panapets will be ready to inform me of every inning of the season and provide a chattery backdrop as the days get a little bit longer and the temperature gets a little bit warmer.

From a design standpoint, I don't think that this particular device has been rivaled until recent times, if at all. It's got an Eames era, space age flair that just works in the five color combination that it were released in (blue, green, red, white, and yellow). In addition to the dual dials for volume and tuning (which look like eyes), the split body (which opens to reveal the transistor guts and 9-volt connection, along with a solid battery housing cage) is highlighted by a clear, rotating band display, a perforated speaker opening, a mono earphone jack and a built-in keychain. Yes, you saw/read that correctly, a keychain. It was the 70s version of the iPod, but much more colorful and playful.



Fortunately, they were also very popular, and if you can't find one at a thrift store, flea market, or junk store, they're abundant on ebay as well.