The idea to frame and encase encaustic paintings in bar resin started off as a way save paintings that were taking damage and never going to fully dry, and a way to keep waxy oil paint from getting all over everything else. (By everything else, I mean all over Steve’s stuff that is in proximity to my stuff, which ALL has paint on it.) Steve and I had been tossing the idea back and forth for over a year – how to build a liquid-tight frame, added weight, what tools we’d need. Unfortunately for our project-loving selves, for that first year, we didn’t have the means to get the tools and supplies the project needed. (Not limited to a band saw, a miter saw, a routing table, wood, caulk, nails, and no small amount of two part epoxy resin.)

 

So the resin-meets-painting idea sat there on the back burner. For a year.

 

Fast forward to November 2015.

 

We’d acquired the basics of power tools through careful budgeting and planning (miter and table saw) and Steve had been making professional-grade cradled panels for me for a while. We’d tested resin over encaustic on a few pieces, so we knew resin over encaustic worked well. Somewhere between November starting and December hitting it’s stride, and probably in the hubub of the show in Orlando, I decided it’d be a GREAT IDEA to rearrange and clean out the garage-workshop.

 

That’s when I realized that Maiden Voyage, a piece I’ve fought to hold on to for years, probably needed to be thrown away. It had taken so much damage over several moves and collected so much gunk and discoloration in the still-sticky paint (four. years. after being painted – it was an experimental piece) that it was deteriorating fast.

 

Background on Maiden Voyage – it’s a good sized piece. 32 inches wide by 48 inches wide on a half inch thick birch ply panel. It’s been through several moves, and I’ve held on to it. I love the piece. I literally CRIED (shush, I’m sentimental, I know) when I realized I’d probably have to throw it away.

 

That paint used to be white. Ouch.

So I tried to fix spots with patience and a heat gun, and when not even heat could get the sticky to go away, I made my peace with throwing it away. Took some goodbye pictures for records’ sake. Mentioned it to Steve, when he asked me why I seemed down.

 

Guys. I know you all love Steve and think he’s awesome, and so you’ve already guessed that he’s going to save the day somehow.

 

Guys. I know you all love Steve and think he’s awesome, and so you’ve already guessed that he’s going to save the day somehow. And he did. So, that’s what he decided we were going to do – we were going to find a way to save the day AND the painting. However, because we both knew that framing a piece THAT big and pouring resin over it would make it so insanely heavy that it’d tear itself out of the studs in the walls of our rental house (uh, no, that’s bad),  we had to find another alternative that didn’t involve just coating it in resin and leaving it in the garage.

 

I got the hair brained idea to turn it into a coffee table.

 

Steve, along with being awesome, is also not one to back down from a challenge, so when I explained, in that overly-enthusiastic way that I have when I have a really great idea but don’t yet have the words to explain it, that we should make it a COFFEE TABLE (because we don’t have one, so hey, it works well!) he said, okay… but… what did I have in mind?

 

We spent some time figuring out how to make it. How to hold the painting in. How to make it liquid-tight, so the resin wouldn’t leak out all over everything. How much wood we’d need, what design, and that we still needed a routing table and band saw. so we worked out how to get those out of the budget from the next  months. (Home Depot card with no interest and a hard and fast repayment plan did the trick.)

 

So sketches were made (mostly by Steve, because he wanted things like “to scale” and “with actual numbers”), tools and supplies were obtained, and we got started. There were practice cuts made, and tools were adjusted.

 

 

Boards were measured, measured, measured, and cut. Put next to the painting to make sure there wasn’t even an eighth of an inch off, measured, and clamped together, and the painting was measured over and over and over. Legs, braces, and edges were cut, cut more, and sanded. (It did not take much to talk Steve into handing over the electric sander; he hates sanding.) Sides were routed, and cleaned up.

 

 

There were a few odd orders placed – a galvanized steel M single monogram was ordered, M for both of our last names. (We’re married, and have our original names; thankfully they both start with M.) That M took a few weeks to get in, but when it came in Steve gave it a quick trace on the front board of the table. and handed it off to me to carve out on the flex shaft.

 

 

It was harder than anticipated, but we got it done, and patched the M in with some wood putty. (We won’t be using this kind in the future, just because it doesn’t stain as well as we had hoped it would.)

 

 

 

And then, weeks after we had officially committed to this wild hair of an idea, the glue and nails came out. Legs were attached, the mitered edges of the table were put together. The braces for under the table were set in, and then it was all nailed together.

 

 

We decided on longer legs for the table so we can sit on pillow around it and eat sushi or Chinese take out as a family, and also just not to whack shins on the table (it’s knee cap height) and not have to reach down for your coffee.

 

 

 

Not by me. I don’t get to use the power tools when things like accuracy and making things square are in order, it turns out. You’d think he was afraid of me missing while using the nail air gun or something. Or putting the wrong sides together. (It’s not like I was the one who cut the mitered frame backwards the first time…)

 

(Actually, what really happened is that he likes this part of the work, and I don’t, so he did it. My turn was coming up soon.)

 

And then came more sanding. Steve handled most of the sanding, looking all handsome and sexy, and I was responsible for getting splinters finding spots that needed more sanding.

 

Good men wear aprons.

Right about here is where I can’t find the pictures I took, and it’s probably a good thing, because this is about the time we stained the wood for the first time. Yes, first time. It took us most of a week, due to weather, and it ended up being something we had to sand off and do again anyway. I’ll explain later. Just imagine us doing three or so coats of red mahogany stain with two coats of spray polyurethane.

 

After the Staining I Do Not Have Pictures Of Happening, I sat in our front yard with a heat gun and sharp flat knife, scraping all the wax off of the edges of the painting. Our neighbors gave us some looks. One drove by twice, reaaaalllly slowly. Steve was out there with me, and did the scraping of the back part of the painting, while I held the heat gun on four year old wax globs, and kept painting upright. We had to do some removal of the back edge of one corner before we could drop the painting into the table frame, but nothing that damaged the front of the painting. The rip saw at Home Depot was just sideways when they cut the panel, and so the sides were mitered a tiny bit. (We measured the top edge, not the back edge. Easy fix.)

 

Steve dropped in the false bottom, and ran silicone caulk around the edges, just as an extra precaution.

 

And then we dropped the painting into the frame. Carefully. Very carefully.

 

 

You can see the cracks in the painting here. The gunk that had sunk into the paint that I blended in and made a part of the painting. [Insert life metaphor here.]

 

The panel the painting was on had warped over time, so we put soft cloths down under wood blocks and clamped them down to force the painting to make contact with the silicone caulk and false bottom. We wanted a good seal.

 

Several days later, we pulled the clamps and blocks off, and I put down the brass name plate in the bottom right corner… and we poured the first quart of resin over the piece.

 

 

When the first layer was cured, we poured the second one. And then the third… and we eventually lost count of how many fraction-of-an-inch thick layers of resin we poured on, picked bugs out of, and waited to cure.

 

 

We ended up with just over a quarter of an inch, leaving less than a quarter inch lip all the way around the painting. Success.

 

Until we saw that tape had gotten stuck under the resin, and some had dripped down the side, and instead of carefully removing it, Steve thought it might be a good idea to just cover all the wood in resin.

 

It sounded okay, so I painted the entire side and top in resin.

 

This was a bad idea. Do not do this. It looked HORRIBLE. We discovered that my heat gun could get the resin off the wood the next day.

 

It also pulled the polyurethane coat off that was under it.

 

Steve was not a happy camper. We had to refinish the entire frame. And it was raining that week, so we had to wait until the weather cooperated enough to let us open the garage and work. So we waited, and when the weather cleared up, we taped the resin-and-art inlay down…

 

 

Put down two layers of brown paper, and more painter’s tape…

 

 

And began the process of refinishing the woodwork we’d already finished. Another day of sanding. Another two days of hand rubbing the stain in.

 

 

Steve surveying the stain, after the third or so coat. We ended up taking most of it back off, since it wouldn’t soak in or dry. That was okay, but that meant another day of sanding it off by hand with steel wool and cloths.

 

Another two days of painting on polyurethane followed. We ended up painting it on because we were out of the spray kind. Two coats, with sanding between.

 

And then we were done.

 

 

The wood grain showed through and looked well worn. The steel monogram was shiny. The paper and tape came off.

 

I stood on the Jeep’s front bumper to get pictures. (There are no pictures of me doing that, so you’ll have to take my word for it.)

 

 

It was done. Steve walked around, checking to make sure it really was done.

 

 

And then we brought it inside.

 

 

 

It looks like it’s under glass, but that’s over a quarter of an inch of resin on top of that painting-turned-table-inlay. If someone managed to get their hands on this piece, they’d probably damage the painting removing it from the frame – the resin goes UNDER the painting, too. We made sure of that. You’d have to cut the frame off, and carefully sand the edges. It’d really just be better to cut the legs off and keep the frame.

 

—

 

And that is the story of saving Maiden Voyage, and how our Sushi Table came to be. Steve’s already working on the next version of furniture with a painting inlay – a desk for his son, Michael, with Michael’s favorite piece of mine.

 

I know, I know. He’s awesome.