Monday, June 28, 2010

refinishing furnitures - it takes a village

Recently I did refinish some of the old furnitures that I got. It all started with the 4 midcentury modern Scandia Chairs that I bought from a neighborhood consignment store  for $25. I have been thinking of refinishing them and was wondering how to do it. Finally, our friend Andrew Rhys Jones said he knows how to work on old furnitures and can help me during the summer vacation. Andrew did  spearheaded this project and brought all his tools. We started it by going to the neighborhood hardware store (Cobbs Hardware). WE also had to make several trips to Home Depot  since the neighborhood store did not have some of the stuff we needed. There went our plan to do the project entirely with the local small business and avoid the corporate giants like Home depot! But in the process we learnt that Some of the stuff like paint brush and paint strippers were cheaper at Cobbs than Home Depot! Paint brushes are also made in USA as opposed to Home Depot ones from China! 

The project started with repairing one chair, stripping paints and re-staining them. It ended with refinishing bunch of other furnitures such as a coffee table, a midcentury modern end table (from Lane), old antique stool, a teak outdoor table, and a oak tea cart as well as a small mango wood antique shelf. Most of these furnitures except the coffee table bought from garage sale for $5 or less. Teak outdoor table and two chairs came to me from a friend (Jean Carol) in neighborhood who gave me the set.  During the refinishing project my friend Jennifer Sjoberg came and help me to do oil polish my midcentury modern teak veneer dining table which I was given to me by my friend Nancy Loevinger about 8 years ago. It is her grandmother's dinning table from 1960s. 

It is truly a project which would not have been completed without the help of my global village! I am thankful to all of you and thank you Andrew for taking the initiative and teaching me how to do refinishing furniture.

Here are the pictures: 

Posted via email from Kaberi's stream of (un)consciousness

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Slender loris from KMTR shot by U. Saravana Kumar

This one was one of my female study animal. Sara (Saravana Kumar) came to visit me in field for a few days to take some good pics of my study animals. This was a young female. There was no cut markings in the pinnae of ears and no other facial cuts and marks. The nose looks pretty white and ears are yellow. As they get old their bear skins get darker. I looked at the image closely this morning to see the nose structure. Strepsirhines  such as lorises, lemurs and bushbabies have wet nose as oppose to Haplorhines . Tarsiers  have dry nose and consider as Haplorhine. However, if you look at tarsiers' nose morphology, it look much like a loris nose. I was trying to id the animal that was shown in the Bangla King Kong movie.  Intially, it looked like a slender loris. But after Brian Switek  said it is likely to be a tarsier. I looked at closely and  watched it several times, compared it with the loris images that I have. It seems like it could be a tarsier - I noticed the base of the ears in the movie looks different than loris ears and also the face is little more triangular ( but that is difficult to determine from the 2 frames in the movie). Anyway, you can join the discussion to see whether it is a loris or a tarsier!

Posted via email from Kaberi's stream of (un)consciousness