And two very generous moms who were willing to donate their time and money to help me get the necessary parts and refinish them into something very beautiful. Ben's mom gave me her 30-year-old wheel, which had lost all but the largest parts. Then she bought me all the necessary pieces new to get it up and running.

On Sunday my mom put in a lot of elbow grease helping me strip off the old varnish and stain (and damn there was a lot of it), sand it smooth, stain it, stencil it, and teak oil it. Yesterday I finished waxing and assembling all the parts and actually started spinning yarn on my new wheel. It's even more beautiful than I imagined it could be. There was some lovely wood grain hidden under that old varnish.

I only remembered to take the before shot after all the parts had been disassembled and the stripping had begun, but you get the picture. We went from this:


To this:


The two bright white knobs on the left are wood that was hiding in the hardware pouch, which I didn't open at my parents' house for fear of losing a screw or two. So eventually I'll need to slap a little stain and wax on them, but 99.9% finished is good enough for me.