We bought our cottage on Cache Lake, Ont., in September 1998. We had been receiving Cottage Life as a gift from my parents for several years already. I would, and still do, carefully file away—and occasionally reread—each issue.
I’m an enthusiastic thrifter, and I sometimes buy wood furniture with damaged finishes. I’d acquired a table with a worn top; instead of stripping and refinishing it, and to celebrate our 10th anniversary of cottage ownership, I clipped pictures from the Sept/Oct ’98 issue and used them to create some tabletop art. (I found a duplicate copy of the issue—I would never have pulled apart my original.)
Check out the beer can wallpaper in this unique outhouse
I used a homemade podge finish to glue the pictures down and covered the collage with a piece of glass cut to fit the table. It was a little tricky to lay out the design, take it all off to put a podge base down, and then get those pieces back on exactly where I wanted them. I may or may not have been thinking some un-cottagey thoughts while I was struggling to get the pictures into the exact spots. But it was still a fun way to hide the table’s worn top.
Now the table sits in our cottage living room, between my La-Z-Boy and the end of the couch where my husband sits. We have our morning coffee there while we listen to the news before it’s time to go outside and enjoy another cottage day. The table is a daily reminder of how fortunate we are to own our own little piece of paradise.
This article was originally published in the March/April 2023 issue of Cottage Life.
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