woman vs. iron

In my project list for a while now has been fixing our living room tables. We inherited these pretty little things from Charley’s mom. They are from Italy and I truly love their sleek lines. The only thing that really bothered me was the little scrollies in the middle. Incredibly picky of me, I know, but I feel like that little detail makes the tables look patio-furniture-ish. For me, it kills their lovely modern vibe that that compliments the marble. So for a year I begged and begged Charley to let me knock those suckers out. I think it felt taboo to him to ruin something in good shape. He finally agreed one day. I did a happy jig. I waited another year. Then insanity hit me late at night to tackle the task. The great thing about having all that time is that we were absolutely decided that I could knock them out- no hard feelings. (We also checked with his mom to make sure it was okay with her too!)

SO I grabbed a hacksaw and several hundred blades, popped in The Two Towers and got to work

nothing was more satisfying than sawing and hacking away at a piece of metal with some battle noises in the background.

Actually satisfying isn’t the right word

Painful, strenuous , slow going. Any of those will work.

By the end of it I figured most of my stress and anger had been freed for the week.

I was utterly surprised at how hard it ended up being.

four saw blades later, halfway through the movie

and

it

was

still

attached.

I literally growled at it and attacked it again (after refueling with these: )

I figured out that it went a bit faster if I incorporated some prying in between. Also pushing super hard on the saw slowed me down because I lost energy faster. Slow and steady won the race in this scenario (although it still made me feel like a woman hacking away in brute strength).

A little later I did finally get through. I ended up sawing through about and inch of metal where the top was connected on either side.

Lucky for me some of the sides were not melded so I could pry with my 4-in-one tool to loosen those.

and then VICTORY!! one side out. four to go.

I have so far to go, but the next step will be filing down and smoothing out the iron with this guy so I can prime and paint it black again to prevent rust:

The one side looks pretty good. I left it looking like this :

the other sides have been partially sawed but are still attached.

and then realized that I lost sleep over this….something must be wrong with me to care so much about little inner scrolls on a coffee table.