This might sound weird, but garbage day is my favorite day of the week. Be it a lack of storage space or simply the revolving door of people moving in and out of the city, the streets of NYC never fail to produce some really great finds. This is especially true in a neighborhood like ours (Bed-Stuy), where every house is 100+ years old. With many of these homes having been in the same family for over 50 years, a lot of cool stuff tends to get thrown out.
While taking Owen on his evening walk this past Saturday, we came across a really cool wooden plant stand. Here’s a pic of it after we brought it home (it’s sitting upside down):
We could tell from its design and patina that it was old, but it was missing a leg. While we were standing there trying to figure out how we could salvage it, a woman came out from the building to find us rooting through her trash. Now, to me, the unspoken code of the street is that if it’s in the trash, it’s up for grabs— but some people haven’t gotten that memo, so we weren’t sure what to expect. Thankfully though, she smiled and said: “You want that table? I have the leg somewhere! Give me your number and I’ll text you if I can find it!” We exchanged numbers and about 30 minutes later got a text with photo of the missing leg. We went back, grabbed the leg, thanked her, then headed home to see about making the repair.
Luckily, the leg had a pretty clean break, and looked like it had already be re-attached before as there was wood glue residue and a dowel already inside.
After scraping off as much of the old wood glue I could get off, I got a selection of drill bits and began boring out the original dowel. I changed the bit size four times before getting it to the size I needed.
After taking measurements of the depth of the hole in both the leg and the base, I cut a new dowel to fit and attached everything with wood glue. The fit wasn’t perfect (as there was some old wood glue residue I just couldn’t get off) but it was close. I set the stand on it’s side with a rubber band for a bit of tension so it could dry overnight.
The next morning—good as new! Sturdy with no wobble. We may put a bit of brown caulk into the seams where I re-attached the leg for some extra support, and just face that leg towards the wall. Now where to put it…
