I'm sitting at the table made by my grandfather, Harold Lesile Johnson, known to his children and grandchildren as Pop. The table has just been beautifully and sympathetically restored by Ian from Adams & Co, and looks like new - well, as new as a table that's more than 80 years old can look...
That's the short version of the story...
The longer version is that my grandfather made this table out of Burmese Teak that he'd salvaged from a vehicle showroom in the 1930s. They didn't have electricity in their home in Pietermartizburg back then, which meant that all the hard work (it's hard wood, after all) had to be done by hand.
That's why the old man took my dad's Meccano to build a lathe, that he drove by pedaling furiously, to turn the magnificent and exactly identical four legs. I say that so glibly, but I can just imagine the hours and hours of work - both pedalling and crafting carefully with chisels and calipers to create perfectly matching legs - that must have gone into that.
The lack of electricity is also why my uncles had to sand it down every day when they got home from school, using elbow grease and sweat, to get it smooth enough to the old man's liking.
My dad related a few stories of family meals around that table, most notably the one where Uncle Basil, who was known for his...er... mischief, cheeked Pop, and then when the old man got up to smack him (because that's what you did back then), Uncle Basil ran out of the room and slammed the door... into Pop's face.
He continued running but wasn't too smart about where he landed up: in a tree. The old man took his chair and his newspaper and sat at the bottom and waited until Uncle Basil was cold and hungry enough to come down and face the music.
The table has stayed in the family since it was made with so much love, care and child labour in the 1930s, although there was one narrow escape when Aunty Tilly wanted to sell it for R100 when she was moving house. Fortunately, my dad (who was considered, as the very laatlammetjie, too young for child labour way back when the table was made), paid the R100 and kept it.
My dad related a few stories of family meals around that table, most notably the one where Uncle Basil, who was known for his...er... mischief, cheeked Pop, and then when the old man got up to smack him (because that's what you did back then), Uncle Basil ran out of the room and slammed the door... into Pop's face.
He continued running but wasn't too smart about where he landed up: in a tree. The old man took his chair and his newspaper and sat at the bottom and waited until Uncle Basil was cold and hungry enough to come down and face the music.
The table has stayed in the family since it was made with so much love, care and child labour in the 1930s, although there was one narrow escape when Aunty Tilly wanted to sell it for R100 when she was moving house. Fortunately, my dad (who was considered, as the very laatlammetjie, too young for child labour way back when the table was made), paid the R100 and kept it.
The table has hosted countless family meals over the years, and it's our kitchen table, where we sit as a family every morning and every night,.
We'd been looking for someone to clean it up properly, as it was grubby had some nicks in the surface, and really looked like it could do with some professional love and attention.
We found a company a few years ago that quoted a fortune just to sand and seal the top - and it didn't quite feel right to give them the job, so we didn't.
Then, in one of those small world moments, I remembered that I'd seen news about Ian opening Adams & Co earlier this year. Ian is the son in law of a very good friend and opened what looked like just the kind of woodworking shop my dad would have loved to have had - he was a passionate woodworker like his dad had been, and funnily enough, as had my maternal grandfather been too.
I contacted Ian and gave him a bit of the history of the table, letting him know that I wanted to have it cleaned up a bit - but by someone who knew what they were doing.
I think he was a bit skeptical when he heard how old the table is, but agreed to come and look at it, even though I think he was expecting a rickety wreck beyond redemption.
When he first arrived, he was impressed with the table's condition, and told me that, as a hobby, he read old woodworking books, and as it happened, had just read one from the 1930s that described a new way of affixing a table top to the legs so that the wood wouldn't move and crack.
And... there it was - that was exactly the method that the old man had used,
Ian said that he would take the table apart, which freaked me out more than a little - but as he described what he would do and how he would give each piece its own special attention, I relaxed, and accepted his quote - which was less than the original for significantly more work.
Fast forward a bit - and Ian came to collect the table. He treated it with such love and respect as if it was his own family history being loaded into the back of a truck.
A few days later he contacted me and asked if I would like to continue the Johnson tradition of child labour - would we like to go and work on the table at his workshop over the weekend, with the boys having the chance to sand the table top, just as their great uncles had?
I leapt at the opportunity - never mind the boys, I wanted to have a go!
We headed out to Ian's workshop that Sunday morning, and entered the world that I hadn't been in since my dad packed up his workshop at home and sold his vast collection of tools and equipment.
He would have loved Ian's workshop - all the big machinery, a place for every tool and every tool in its place, with the workshop purpose-built to accommodate jigs and templates, machines and offcuts, and a very ingenious home-made vacuum system, which collects saw dust for the horses' lunging yard outside.
Ian told us how there were parts of the table that had been made from pine, and it was at these points where nails had been used, that the table was getting a little wobbly. He replaced these pine elements with teak he had in his workshop but kept the original cross beams under the table, which were made of Oregon pine floorboards.
Ian was amazing - he let all of us sand the table's top with an electric sander (we were so much luckier than Uncle Basil and Uncle Leslie on that count, as they had to use blocks, sand paper and elbow grease), and then he spent time with the boys showing them how all the tools worked, and helping them build their own creations out of offcuts.
A week later, Pop's table came home. Ian had filled some gaps with marine epoxy, and cleaned, sanded and sealed the whole table. It looks magnificent and is solid and sound enough to last until my grandchildren can share a meal around it - and probably well beyond then too.
If you're looking for someone to build wooden anything from scratch, or to restore a special piece with love, care and the kind of craftsmanship I thought didn't exist any more, Ian and his team are the people you need to speak to.
And... there it was - that was exactly the method that the old man had used,
Ian said that he would take the table apart, which freaked me out more than a little - but as he described what he would do and how he would give each piece its own special attention, I relaxed, and accepted his quote - which was less than the original for significantly more work.
Fast forward a bit - and Ian came to collect the table. He treated it with such love and respect as if it was his own family history being loaded into the back of a truck.
A few days later he contacted me and asked if I would like to continue the Johnson tradition of child labour - would we like to go and work on the table at his workshop over the weekend, with the boys having the chance to sand the table top, just as their great uncles had?
I leapt at the opportunity - never mind the boys, I wanted to have a go!
We headed out to Ian's workshop that Sunday morning, and entered the world that I hadn't been in since my dad packed up his workshop at home and sold his vast collection of tools and equipment.
He would have loved Ian's workshop - all the big machinery, a place for every tool and every tool in its place, with the workshop purpose-built to accommodate jigs and templates, machines and offcuts, and a very ingenious home-made vacuum system, which collects saw dust for the horses' lunging yard outside.
Ian told us how there were parts of the table that had been made from pine, and it was at these points where nails had been used, that the table was getting a little wobbly. He replaced these pine elements with teak he had in his workshop but kept the original cross beams under the table, which were made of Oregon pine floorboards.
Ian was amazing - he let all of us sand the table's top with an electric sander (we were so much luckier than Uncle Basil and Uncle Leslie on that count, as they had to use blocks, sand paper and elbow grease), and then he spent time with the boys showing them how all the tools worked, and helping them build their own creations out of offcuts.
A week later, Pop's table came home. Ian had filled some gaps with marine epoxy, and cleaned, sanded and sealed the whole table. It looks magnificent and is solid and sound enough to last until my grandchildren can share a meal around it - and probably well beyond then too.
If you're looking for someone to build wooden anything from scratch, or to restore a special piece with love, care and the kind of craftsmanship I thought didn't exist any more, Ian and his team are the people you need to speak to.
