Refinishing

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People often assume that all mid-century furniture was finished with teak oil, Kennedy said, but most was finished with sprayed, toned lacquer. Therefore, you likely won’t want to use teak or Danish oil. “It’s like putting olive oil on a car finish,” Duffy said, adding that if you strip and sand a piece, then put teak oil on it, you haven’t really established a surface durable enough for everyday use.

When trying to achieve a certain color with your new finish, she recommends practicing first on a spare piece of wood. (If you’re unsure which products are right for your item, Kennedy offers free advice in his Facebook group the Mid Century Modern Furniture Refinishing Resource.)

The pros I spoke to advised avoiding the finishes available at hardware and big-box stores in favor of professional-grade options.

There are many brands, but for beginners, they recom-

Treehouse

CONTINUES FROM PAGE F4 possible,” says Wright. “Kids like to go up and down in different ways.”

The possibilities are myriad:

Transplant

CONTINUES FROM PAGE F3 planting date in good garden soil, and they will germinate. Save transplanting efforts for vegetables like tomatoes and peppers, which need to be started early indoors in order to ripen their fruits in a reasonable amount of time. Or broccoli and cabbage, because individual plants yield a substantial amount to eat. Tomato, broccoli, and cabbage plants do not object to being transplanted, and not too many transplants are required since they are set a mend those by Mohawk, which offers many of its products in aerosol format, so you won’t need to invest in a sprayer.

When applying the finish, sloping ship’s ladders, slides, rock walls, cargo nets, fireman’s poles, spiral staircases, ziplines and ramps. If you install a rope ladder, Wright recommends staking it to the ground, because if a hanging ladder gets snagged while

Duffy said, “you need to build up five or six coats to create a really beautiful surface that is strong enough for daily use and will preserve the furniture for another 50 or 60 years.”

Let each application dry according to the package directions; in between coats, you’ll need to lightly scuff the surface with high-grit sandpaper.

When to walk away

If your piece is painted, it might not be worth the trouble.

Stripping away paint is tedious and time-consuming, especially for a novice. Even Kennedy says he will no longer refinish a painted piece unless it’s a particularly hot seller.

If you’re considering attempting it, he advises asking yourself, “What’s underneath the paint? Did they paint it to hide something?” You could put in hours of work only to discover damage.

Maybe reconsider

On the flip side, if you’re planning to paint a mid-century piece yourself, the experts would encourage you to reconsider.

“That trend has irreparably ruined many fine pieces of mid-century furniture,” said Duffy, who points out that most items people think are “beyond repair” and must be painted can, in fact, be refinished successfully.

being raised, it can pull an unprepared child over the edge.

9. Accessorize it

The sky is the limit when it comes to decorating.

Add a wooden ship’s wheel and a bird cage with a parrot doll perched inside to create a pirate ship. Attach a few futuristic looking dials and gauges to the walls for a time machine.

Other fun design flourishes include skylights, portholes, a trapdoor or concealed cubbies for hiding treasures.

“My favorite addition is a rope bridge out to another platform,” says Wright. “An overlook, a crow’s nest you build higher in the tree or a little perch that doesn’t have a roof on it.”

Peas generally aren’t worth transplanting because you need lots of plants; each plant bears little. (LEE couple of feet or more apart in the garden.”

Seeds which are particularly finicky or valuable (due either to scarcity or cost) also are worth growing initially in pots. There, seedlings can be watched and nurtured individually. I am again trying to grow blue poppy (Mecon- opsis spp.) this year. Because the seeds are very small, and germination is very slow and erratic, I am sowing them in a seed flat rather than in the ground outdoors. And sure, it may be worthwhile to start a few corn plants indoors, because fresh sweet corn is one of the ultimate gustatory pleasures of the vegetable garden. But is zucchini that toothsome?

Any gardening questions? Email them to me at garden@ leereich.com and I’ll try answering them directly or in this column. Come visit my garden at leereich.com/blog.