Cool red, warm red

Fifty years ago my first table came into my life*. It is maple, drop leaf. I painted the legs red. I did art projects on it in my Broadway apartment when I was in art school in Seattle. We ate a thousand blackberry pies on it when we lived in the beach house in Magnolia. My two children sat at this table while I spooned homemade baby food into their mouths and they painted their first watercolor art here and scribbled with crayons on paper and onto the table in Leschi. It went with us to the farm we bought on Vashon Island. It has been with me all these years in Renton and is about to take up residence in the breakfast nook of our new home in Black Diamond.

The only problem is the red - it is too blue. Today I began painting the legs a warmer red that will complement our Rustico Cotta tile floor. The photo above shows the old red and the new red. After the paint,  I will flip it over and refinish the table top. I won't remove stains and nicks that show it has been well used but it really needs a good cleaning after its participation in many annual pasta making parties.

*When my former husband, Bill Iles was twenty and we were dating, he worked as a delivery person for Van's Furniture in Kent. I was able to purchase this table because the original owner bought a new dining table to replace it. Originally, there were two ladder-back chairs that eventually fell apart but recently I found two beautiful vintage maple ladder-back chairs on Craigslist.