LIVING THROUGH COVID-19 – PART 3

This blog isn’t about Covid-19; well, not really. It’s about furniture, old and repurposed furniture, and what we call retrouvailles, the French word for reunion.

I mentioned in an earlier blog that Covid-19 had had a significant impact on our son, Jacques, his partner, Isabelle, and their daughter, Lucie. As a performing artist, Jacques saw years of hard work and a promising career crumble overnight as gigs evaporated one after another. As a CBC radio journalist, Isabelle experienced major changes in her workplace: too much work and too few resources. Lucie struggled to adapt to home schooling, missing her friends and the all-important social aspect of life in the classroom. Many of the things that drew them to Toronto life were affected negatively by Covid-19.

Long story short: in mid-June, they decided to move to Prince Edward Island! Naturally, Elva and I were thrilled at the news. We decided that the best way to help was to look after some of the little things and, in that way, make the move as easy as we could for them. They fell in love with a ninety-year-old farmhouse in Greenvale, nestled in the rolling Hunter River hills and offering an environment that couldn’t be more different from downtown Toronto.

The family arrived “home” on July 3 and did the mandatory fourteen-day quarantine while Elva and I worked on getting the house ready. Word soon spread that Jacques & Co. were back and might need a few pieces of furniture given that they were moving from a one-bedroom apartment to a nine-room house. Sofas, tables, chairs, carpets, and knickknacks appeared out of nowhere.

Sylvie’s family had decided to renovate their bedrooms and get new furniture for Samuel and Natalie. So, Elva and I stuffed dressers, desks and an old bed into a rented cargo van and brought them from Saint John to their new home in Greenvale. This week, a friend of Jacques’ pulled into the yard with a pump organ! It now has pride of place in the “studio”. Cousin Joyce contributed a nice chair and a Lowney’s wooden crate with the Arsenault & Gaudet stamp on the ends.

Jacques and Isabelle are of the IKEA generation but, unlike most, they do appreciate old things, particularly items that have a connection to family. That’s where I come in. I began refinishing furniture and stripping woodwork when we lived in the old family place in Wellington from 1979 to 1990 and became quite proficient at the tasks involved. I was only too glad to dust off my tools, stock up on supplies, and roll up my sleeves.

I began by stripping a refinishing an old spindle-type headboard Jacques and Isabelle bought on Kijiji. Next was a set of six kitchen chairs, all of which needed a degree of repair. We then turned our attention to the family heirlooms, some more precious than others. Elva helped by sanding a dresser that originally belonged to Ghislain and had been passed down to Samuel. Next came desks from Samuel and Natalie’s bedrooms. All were refinished in the best Benjamin-Moore colours. Ghislain’s dresser is now Lucie’s; Sylvie’s childhood desk has found a new home in Isabelle’s office; Clément’s childhood desk is now a china cabinet in the kitchen. Jacques’ childhood desk from our Ash Drive home will become Lucie’s art project desk. She even helped with the sanding.

Before Elva sanded the dresser Jacques and Isabelle had chosen for their bedroom, I took it apart and found a section of the May 6, 1920 edition of Le Devoir, the Montreal daily, between the mirror and its backing. On the back of the dresser the manufacturer had scribed its destination in black wax pencil Arsenault and Gaudet Ltd., Wellington, my grandfather’s store. Almost exactly a century ago. Good karma?

But my favourite piece is the old four-poster bed from my childhood Wellington home. It sat unused for years in a spare room before Mom had it repainted and moved it to her refurbished bedroom. Sylvie had it in our Sherwood home and she passed it down to her daughter, Natalie. The bed’s origin is a bit of a mystery. Mom told me that my grandfather, Emmanuel Gaudet, may have acquired it when a customer defaulted on an outstanding account. It’s an odd size, called a three-quarter; wider than a single and a narrower than a double.

I knew I was in for a big challenge when I brushed the first coat of stripper on the piece. But, since it’s solid white oak and black walnut, I was determined to see the project through. The frame pieces are 3 x 3.5-inch walnut, about six feet long, and I decided to start with them. Today’s paint strippers are not nearly as strong as the stuff I used in the early 1980s. Once I’d gotten the surface coats off, I was down to the bottom coat of white milk paint, a stripper’s nightmare.

Milk paint is a nontoxic water-based concoction made from milk and lime. Borax is mixed with the milk's casein protein to activate the casein as a preservative. Milk paint has been used for thousands of years and is extremely durable, often lasting for hundreds of years if protected from the elements. Because of its chemical makeup, it can’t be dissolved by the type of paint stripper you buy at the neighbourhood hardware store. So, I had to remove this last layer of paint using a power sander and a lot of elbow grease. The last layer of finish, varnish, was removed using the sander as well. 

Where possible, I always take a piece apart to make stripping easier. I could see that two lengthwise pieces were attached to the walnut rails and I pried them off. Each was held in place by six hand-forged iron nails, making the piece at least 150 years old! I tried to imagine the strength and patience required to drive the relatively soft nails into rock-hard walnut. As proof, one of the nails was curled back onto itself, unable to penetrate.

Satisfied with the two side pieces of the frame, I decided to take the head and foot of the bed to Spray-All Painting, a local shop that specializes in stripping furniture. Tackling the turned oak bedposts would have been too much work. Spray-All uses a commercial-grade stripper that’s much stronger than anything I can get my hands on. The two pieces still required a fair bit of scraping to remove paint lodged in the grooves. Two coats of Danish Oil later, the old bed frame looks pretty good. Covered with the beautiful rag quilt Elva made, Lucie’s bed will play the role of family heirloom for many years to come, I hope.

Isabelle, Jacques, and Lucie settled quickly into their new home. They even have a name for it: Val-Moineaux or Sparrow Vale. We know they’ll enjoy happy times there and we hope they’ll stay on the Island. We especially look forward to spending time with Lucie. Covid-19 has not been kind to them, but it does herald a new beginning and it may bring new opportunities, something none of us could have imagined when 2020 began.

I confess to suffering from a mild case of “furniture fatigue”. My old bones tire more easily than they did those many years ago in Wellington where my passion for old things was nurtured. But I can now say proudly that I’m the best (male) stripper in Greenvale!