Tote and Table

I am so excited to give you a sneak peak of my old tool tote and farm table sitting in my new home.



My new home isn't totally weatherized yet...



but I feel it will be done any day now.



I bought the old tote several husbands ago, before tool totes had any value at all. I picked it up for a song, and maybe a dance, not even knowing what I'd do with it. When the boys were young, the tote sat in the hall by the back door and held their muddy shoes and boots. Then it graduated to the garage where Juan Last Husband used it for it's intended purpose - tools!

Now it has been upgraded to the house once again and has a place of honor because when we bought this property, guess what I found in one of the outbuildings? This beautiful farm table!



Oh, it was in terrible shape...



...cupped top boards, termite damage, deep gouges, and chippy legs. But it was huge and had such potential! When Juan Last Husband and I were moving it, he noticed printing burned into one leg.



It reads, "A. & M. C. Dining Hall".

Now for all you non-Aggies, A&M University hasn't been a college since 1963. So this baby is OLD. Being retired from A&M, and with Juan Last Husband still working there, I knew I had to bring this big darling back from the dead. The chippy legs and printing were gonna stay!




I couldn't bring myself to retop the table with new boards so I worked madly on getting the double tongue and grooved boards back into shape. I even had to scrape off gum from the underside of the table, although I did leave one piece in honor of all those military boys who sat at this table and ate...after they parked their gum underneath!



UPDATE: Love and Renovations posted about an old A&M table she saw at Round Top. Pictures are about halfway through her article. Amanda, the blogger, said, "This, my friends, is a table from Sbisa dining hall at Texas A&M. It lived there from 1912 to 1926..." Thanks Rosemary for sending the site my way!