Bungalow Brown

Bungalow Brown. That’s the color I used when I recently repainted the picnic table K’s dad made for us about 20 years ago. He died in 1994, but I think if he were still around he would be happy with the job. Sporting a new cedar top and fresh paint (see photo), the old table is ready for the coming summer.

K’s dad was a wood joiner by trade. To watch him measure and cut wood was to watch a master. Although the picnic table is a timeless design, the measurements, angles, and construction still need to be right on for the table to be solid and to last. They are and it has.

Originally it had a 3/8-inch plywood top. He painted the table battleship gray (probably with surplus paint from the Navy Yard). Plywood isn’t the best choice for a table top if it is going to be out in the rain, but that’s what he used. Perhaps the plywood was surplus too. You don’t ask about things like that.

For years the table was sheltered by the roof over the covered patio at my old house. It got a lot of use during the summer months. I repainted it once, adhering to the original color scheme. But when I moved four years ago, there was no place for it at my new house. So we took it to Treasure Island and put it on the back deck, where it had no protection from the elements. The photo below shows how much the old top had deteriorated.

A few weeks ago I decided to fix it up. The plywood top came off easily. Plywood might not have been the best choice originally, but as a blessing its solid surface protected the wood frame underneath. For the new top I bought some cedar planks from a lumberyard in Chico, likely spending more for them than the cost of the wood in the original table. My neighbor—a pretty fair woodworker himself—cut them to length. To make the cedar last, I applied a product called Australian Timber Oil.

After as much scraping and sanding as I could stand, it was time to choose a color for the frame and benches. Among the many shades of brown I considered were Ohio Buckeye, Tarnished Copper, Tapper Brown, Buckskin, and Rope Burn (who thinks up these names?). Bungalow Brown seemed to go best with the new cedar top.

Now if I could figure out how to build a cover over the Treasure Island deck, the table might last another decade.