Day Zero Project: Get my coffee table revarnished

This is probably one of my more random Day Zeroes. I have this coffee table which I have quite literally grown up with. It's been in my house for as long as I can remember. I have some very vivid early childhood memories of 'dancing' to Status Quo songs by skipping round this table.

I don't think I've actually got any photos of the table just on its own, being a table, but it's been the backdrop to numerous photos of smaller things. As you can see above.

This table was the family coffee table until I was about eleven or twelve when it became the table where my rats and hamster lived. In their cages, obviously, not just hanging out on the table. The hamster I had at the time liked to hang out in the wheel that stuck out the side of his house, it leaked and caused some damage to the top of the table which my Grampy sanded down and fixed for me. The table survived to live another day.

When we moved to Scotland, it came with us, finding a new home in a new house. Since then it's also lived in a flat in Glasgow and in a different living room in the new house. There have been several occasions when it's nearly been disposed of or replaced, but every time I've saved it.

Part of the reason for saving it is because it was made by my Great-Grandfather. I think that the story goes that a family member needed a new coffee table and he just whipped it up just like that. I can't bring myself to part with it.

Now it's in our house with us but it's sort of showing its age. It's got a couple of scratches on the stop and it's generally worn and tired looking. I really think that a bit of a polish and varnish will give it a new lease of life, and hopefully keep it going for another thirty years.

It sounds strange, but we're waiting until the weather is right so that we can take it to my father-in-law's greenhouse to give it the work up that it deserves. When I eventually get around to that, I'll post some before and after photos.