A Sad Day At The Ranch

Last summer I went to the Fountain of Youth and brought back a kitchen table. Well, if we're being completely honest I brought back the rough idea of a kitchen table. Fine. I brought back pieces of a footbridge. But, darn it! I loved my little foot bridge!

It was rough weathered wood that was perfect for a big, heavy, unbreakable kitchen table. The ideal replacement for my very broken kitchen table that didn't survive the move from South Carolina (the surviving pieces now hang on my wall as a giant frame... but anyways...). Hubby's work schedule and the pregnancy slowed progress on my table to a crawl. And then our saw broke, the weather turned cold, and we put the whole project in the barn to wait for spring.

Now... well... I went and walked Dog today. Usually I don't wander the back pasture because the deer and bears play back there and Dog likes to bark at things he shouldn't bark at, but I went that way today. It's the first sunny day we've had in a week and I thought it would be fun to check the hedges for signs of blackberries (all this rain is promising a bumper crop!).

We walked into the barn and I stopped. No bridge. No wood. NO KITCHEN TABLE FROM THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH!!!!

This is what happens when you give in-laws carte blanche to clean things around the house while you're in the hospital. I thought they meant washing dishes, not destroying furniture!

Yes, all right, we have another table. It's a big, hefty, hand-me-down kitchen table with flaking green paint on the legs and splatters caused by someone's science project on the top. It works. It's probably very hard to break. But it's not my cool table from the Fountain of Youth! (Although, once I strip off the paint and redo it with an antique style it will be a really awesome table, but I digress...)

I'm pretty sure the pile of wood stacked against the barn wall is the remnants of the bridge. I could nail it all together like a plank table, but it's going to lack the authentic look. Some of the wood is missing, probably judged too ugly and thrown out. I will probably still go out there and make myself a large table, the one we have isn't big enough for family AND friends (that's an important factor for us).

But I'm tempted to call the state park again and see if I can get another bridge.