Tag: Maintenance

  • Midwinter Mending

    Midwinter Mending

    Midwinter Mending: repairing boathouse railing, December 22, 2021 (Photo: Cheri Phillips)
    Midwinter Mending: repairing boathouse railing, December 22, 2021 (Photo: Cheri Phillips)

    Sometimes it seems words can get in the way of our will and our wants. Often even. Sometimes words blur or over-focus or misrepresent… But they’re what we’ve got. And so it is that my morning words today, “Midwinter Mending”, endeavor to broadcast my will and want without blurring or over-focusing or misrepresenting. Allow, if you will, that these words are optimistic and matter-of-fact. An apt title for a tiny clutch of poetry that, like a seed perhaps, might germinate and flourish.

    Midwinter Mending Haiku

    A tiny building on Rosslyn’s waterfront. A tiny poem on a tiny moment like a threshold — midwinter, mid-repair — captured in a snapshot from a close friend. Probably a phone photo. A delicately distorted photo, watercolor-like in it’s impressionist abstraction, not altogether unlike stained glass that offers a fresh perspective on the familiar.

    Friend’s ferry photo:
    midwinter maintenance, mending
    our boathouse gangway.
    — Geo Davis

    I hope that this haiku will fertilize the Rosslyn boathouse rehab, accelerating its already delayed completion before Lake Champlain’s winds and rising waters and, possibly soon, her ice begin to battle with the dock house. I hope…

  • Farmhouse Furniture Wax: Green Product with a Nostalgic Feel

    Farmhouse Furniture Wax: Green Product with a Nostalgic Feel

    Farmhouse Furniture Wax (Source: Sweet Grass Farm)
    Farmhouse Furniture Wax (Source: Sweet Grass Farm)

    We’ve had good luck with using Earth Friendly Products’ Furniture Polish on unsealed wood such as cherry and walnut furniture that hasn’t been varnished, lacquered, etc. Because the grain is open and receptive to oil, the furniture polish works nicely to brighten the natural pigments and grain while maintaining the requisite moisture in the wood. But this product is decidedly unsuitable for our mahogany dining room table, leaving behind unsightly smears and swirls from the applicator.

    My current quest to source a green furniture wax connected me with Betsy at Farmhouse Wares, a user-friendly online purveyor of the sort of essentials you might have found at a general store in the distant, slightly idealized past. Betsy’s goal complements our own ideals nicely: the marriage of classical elegance and healthy, ecologically responsible design. So the website was an obvious match for me this morning when I was dredging the web for a non-toxic wax to maintain our French polished and lacquered antiques.

    Farmhouse Furniture Wax

    Farmhouse Furniture Wax from Sweet Grass Farm promises to be exactly what we need. More once the wax arrives and we’ve had a chance to test drive it…

    Sweet Grass Farm
    Sweet Grass Farm

    Update: Time for a re-order! It’s been eight months since I first posted, and I’ve just placed another order for more Farmhouse Furniture Wax, and this time we’re trying the lilac as well as the lemon scent. Lavendar is not likely to be a big hit with Susan’s who’s sensitivity to fragrance tends to rule out lavendar. A shame since I love the smell; reminds me of Provence…

    Verdict is that this product is a good, reliable hard wax for highly finished wood furniture. We’ve been using on finicky antiques with great results!