A Different Drummer: The terrible tale of the toppling table

Don’t you hate when you’re old and you do something stupid or clumsy and people say, “Well, you’ve learned a valuable lesson”?
You’re thinking, “Hey, stuff it. I learned this lesson when I was 12. The situation still got the better of me.”
My massive walnut coffee table that I’ve been describing for three weeks is safely resting in the man cave in front of a leather couch and together they look fantastic. The table top glistens like glass.
However, I had a tumultuous — might I say stupid and clumsy – finale to my table project. Things had gone swimmingly for two months, through detailed planings, sandings, stainings, and standings. I took my dear sweet time with each phase. My dry times would kill a fly.
So, it was on the final day that trouble struck. Everything was dry and shiny. The thick slab of epoxy-resin-coated walnut rested upside down between two sturdy sawhorses in my garage.
I brought in from the backyard the iron-pipe legs I had designed using various lengths, couplings, T intersections, and flanges. One pair of legs needed to be 14-inches wide, while the other pair had to be 10-inches wide, to fit the contours of the walnut slab, which is bulbous at one end. I’d been spray painting these pipes left right and sideways for two days.
After literally two failed trips to Home Depot and one fortunate trip to Ace, I found the perfect screws to attach the iron flanges to the walnut. Attaching the legs would be the final step. I screwed on the legs. They were snug and solid. My coffee table was finished. At last! It was time to carry it from the garage to the man cave and put it on display.
I ran upstairs and found my wife. “Honey, it’s finished. The table is ready to come inside.”
“It’s about time,” she said. “What do you need from me?”
“Can you help me carry it to the man cave?”
“Yes. Let me finish what I’m doing and I’ll be right down.”
I hurried back to the garage and stood around, pacing. Suddenly, I got a nightmarish notion. What if I measured the screw lengths wrong or the wood thickness wrong and the tips of the screws had busted through from the bottom into my beautiful table top? Anxiously, while waiting for Susan, I attempted to lift the table slap up onto its side so I could peer at the top surface.
When I did that, the heavy bulbous end, now coated in slippery glass-like resin, slid right off the end of the sawhorse. I couldn’t catch it in time. The slick beautiful surface screed across the sharp corner of the sawhorse as the table made its horrifying descent to the concrete floor. The corner crashed and shattered. Splinters of wood and resin splayed across the floor. The fall busted off a chunk of wood the size of my thumb and made a mess of my glassy consistency.
“Arg!” I yelled. Nothing. “Arrrgh!” I yelled louder.
“What’s the matter down there? I’m coming.”
Susan came through the door as I was righting the table onto its own legs for the first time. The screws had not penetrated. I knew they hadn’t. I’d downsized the screw lengths already after careful measurements. I was just fussing. My fussing busted my table.
“Oh, my. That’s a big bruise. And look at that ugly crease all the way across the surface.”
“Oh, baby. Oh, I can’t believe it.” I was wringing my hands. “I was done. This was the grand finale!”
“Well, maybe you’ll learn not to fuss. Why couldn’t you have just waited for me? You’ve been boasting for four weeks about how slow and meticulous you’ve been creating your masterpiece, then you get impatient because I’m not down here two minutes sooner, and you drop your table? It’s absurd.”
Chagrined, I rubbed my face with my palms.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I’m going back to Kelly Moore and buy more resin.” I turned and jumped into my truck. I was back in a half hour. I sanded away the mashed wood, mixed up more epoxy, and patched my gaff. While I was at it, I reapplied another coat to the side bark, filling in a few overlooked gaps and thin spots. When it dried later that day, it looked even more fantastic.
Here’s one of the beauties of epoxy. That nasty crease across the surface from the sawhorse disappeared on its own. The resin sprang back into shape.
So, as I said, Gino’s gift of a walnut slab was now a high-gloss table resting prominently as the centerpiece of my man cave. Its welcoming surface is ready for beer bottles and glasses and whatever lands on it.
My gaff led to an overall improvement in the table, so I made lemonade. I’ve learned never to fuss or be impatient, again, at 62.
Perhaps the best part of my fumble is that I now have two practically full bottles of epoxy resin and I can pour it on something else. Let me see.