Day of the Dead Table ~2019-2021
This project had been in the works for a couple of years. The Tile table came about because this project had stalled. Mom told me that she wanted a “Day of the Dead” table. She would get the tiles she wanted and I would put it together. I found a small endtable on a curb to use as a doner table (the top was missing and the skirts were garbage but the legs and hardware would save a lot of time and effort).
Then the problems started. Mom couldn’t find tiles that she liked. I found four 4″ tiles in Mexico and eventually (months later) Mom found more but not enough for the design I came up with.I had gotten some wood for the top but by the time I was ready to build it had warped. Also I didn’t actually measure the donable table. I assumed it was 2′ square. Everything would have been fine except that I was planning on using the leg brace that came with the table. Since the original was 2″ short on one end the brace wouldn’t fit. On top of thet Mom found some 2″ tiles she wanted to use. After some redesigns we decided to get some 1″ tiles to fill in the space to make it a repeating pattern.
I assembled the table without the legs and glued the tiles to the table. Since the glue would take a few days to cure, I decided to come back the next weekend to finish and grout.
The next weekend I found out that Mom had asked my brothers wife Kristin to help. We had gotten some nice stain to put on the exposed wood. Except that is not what she gave Kristin. I returned to find everything painted grey. I wasn’t mad at Kristin, she didn’t know what we had planned, she just did what she was asked. I had to get different grout to match the wood. In the end it finally worked out and it was finished.
She started to say that it might look better as a wall hanging… but my wife stopped her and she uses it as a table.