The Most Expensive Free Thing

I know there is no free lunch.  But there are some things that could be considered "free" -- stuff that other people already have used and are getting rid of.  Sometimes, these cost a lot.

The top items on my personal list (before yesterday) included Jacques, the Red-Eared Slider that someone gave us when she got married.  The pet came with a tank, but the tank needed a stand.  We purchased a dresser.  The tortoise had been kept for some time in room-temperature water and needed a warm place to get dry and bask.  We altered his arrangements and purchased the things he would need.  He had skin peeling from around his eyes, so we bought and applied the appropriate medication.  He died seven days after arriving at our house.

Then there was the 100-year-old piano with marijuana leaves carved onto the front.  It had been home to a family or two of mice and had been up to its neck in floodwater before being
loaded into a one-way rental trailer and hauled down to us.  The piano was a free gift, but we paid for the trailer.  The veneer was peeling, the varnish was cracked, the strings were rusted and the whole thing weighed a ton.  When it came into our house, we took it down to the unfinished basement, which took a toll on my husband's back.   He said it was not coming out the way it came in.  We moved before a door was installed in the basement, so the thing left in pieces.

The current winner is the set of six green occasional chairs that a tenant left behind when they moved from the office they were renting from my husband.  Nobody else at the office wanted them and we needed some seating.  They were a little worn but were in pretty good condition.  The 80's green upholstery clashes with the dark spruce carpeting in the front room, but we have used them for a few years.  They were not what I would have chosen, but...they were free.

This week, while my husband was away in Japan, I decided to surprise him by updating the chairs.  This seemed like a simple project and my next-door neighbor is a professional, who could give me some tips.  I purchased several yards of a beautiful, neutral fabric (expensive but doable at half-price) and decided to get to work.

It turned out that the neighbor was also out of the country.  The days wore on, and I finally decided to embark on my own, but the wood looked a bit shabby.  Hardware store stain, brushes and sandpaper were about $10 and it promised to be a quick phase of the project.  I brought the chairs out to the porch, wiped on the stain and left them to dry while I took the kids on an errand, but not before I brushed up against the finish.  One favorite sweater ruined.

Note to those over 40:  Always put on your glasses and read the fine print, especially the parts that are bolded and in capital letters.

When we returned home, it had begun to rain.  The wood was still tacky, so we brought the chairs inside to protect them as they dried.  Three of the chairs went into my husband's home office, off the entrance, where they would be out of the way; the other three went into the front room.  We had not stained the bottoms of the legs and they were not dripping onto the porch, so we did not consider what might happen to the carpeting.

There is a reason it is called stain.

Fortunately, the front room carpet is dark enough that the spots are not too noticeable, but the places where I frantically scrubbed the spot remover show damage to the nap.  The beautiful and expensive, sand-colored, molded carpet in my husband's office now has about a dozen indelible marks from the bottoms of the chairs.  So the cost of the refinish has to include a recarpeting job.

The wind had picked up before the rain started, so there was a layer of debris in the finish.  We had a hectic activity planned for the evening and my daughter avoided the chairs in front of the hall closet, but when she put on her shoes she sat on the piano stool I had also touched up and stained the entire rear end area of her pants.  I also had another brush with the chairs.  One pair of comfortable jeans and one nearly-new skirt, ruined.

I spent two hours in the basement this morning, wiping on a new layer of stain so yesterday's layer could be wiped off.  The warm, dry weather (to complete the stain drying process) starts two or three days from now, but my husband comes home tomorrow.  The wood finish looks shabby again; I think a gel stain might have been a better option, for it promises to cover and dry.  And the upholstering has not even begun.

I think this project will surprise my husband, all right.

This is one battle I did not win.