Everything old is new again

Just in time for the new year, a couple of old pictures from my camera which I apparently never posted.

I picked up this table off of Freecycle, planning on using it in my back room/workroom as just a level surface. Originally it was covered in 30-50 year old contact paper (a lovely star spangled theme if anyone wants it) stapled to the underside of the top. When I pulled the paper I found a) a nicer looking old table than I expected and b) a pretty obvious gap between the boards forming the top.
I was thinking about recovering the table in something, but then I noticed that the nails holding one of the boards were loose. Turns out the table was very poorly repaired sometime decades ago (as well as probably rebuilt - looks like there are three different woods used, plus I'm pretty sure this once had drawer). So I pulled the four nails and tried to reset the board. At this point I discovered that the attempted repair job had involved a heavy coat of glue:


The glue had hardened around the outside edge of the leg, so the board couldn't be pulled back evenly. Twenty minutes with a putty knife and razor blade and the glue was chipped away. Snug the board as close to the other as possible (the boards look like they were a replacement top ages ago - neither is fully square so there's still a much smaller gap between them in the middle), tap the nails back into the same holes, and voila!

Before:

After:


Also, and this was months ago, this is how the window on the steps to the basement used to look:

...and here's how it looks now:

These two windows were lying around in the basement and happened to be the perfect width. Together they're a little too tall for the space, but they fit snugly enough with the existing box that a heavy bead of caulk on all three sides seems to have sealed out the wind pretty well. The exterior window (sort of visible in the second photo) is missing a pane though, and I was waiting for the temperatures to come back up before testing out my new glass cutter/glazing points/glazing compound bundle that's now sitting in the back room desiring to be useful. Better pics of both inside and outside once I lay that last pane.