My first confession:

Today I painted over a 100-year old rimu door. 

There, I've said it. Now I have to make sure my father never knows of this blog site slash confession post. That, and make sure he never comes to visit ever again, or at least never looks into my hallway. 

I thought I painted a lot, and I always enjoy the results. However lately I've become aware that most of the wood that I've been covering with colour - or more likely in my case, white - has been special wood. You see, I'm the daughter of a cabinet maker who also makes beautiful furniture. In the family home is a farm-house kitchen built entirely of matai, from kickboards to beautifully panelled doors to finely moulded bench top. My mother's extensive collection of blue and white crockery is displayed on a traditional country dresser with handmade lace shelf trimmings, and the pantry is a three-doored and be-moulded mountain of beauty with the same panelled t&g doors. The floor is stripped back original '20s timber flooring, and this continues throughout the five-bedroom farmhouse. As you walk through the home you will come to the dining room with it's 8-seater polished wooden table with turned legs and padded timber seats. The lounge has a large, open fire on one wall, completely surrounded from wall to wall and floor to ceiling with timber bookshelves and cupboards, display shelves and mantlepiece. Most of another wall has glass-fronted display cases and panelled timber doors. 

Need I go on? 

Not only that but my grandfather is even worse. I mean better. Family legend has it that when my father married my mother, he told her he was not a 'handy man'. I imagine my mother's father possibly told my grandmother the same thing when they were married. However as my maternal grandmother's own father could turn from taking apart an engine in his garage and putting in back together, to creating a heater that still pumps out fantastic heat nearly 80 years later, to building a replica Tudor dolls house complete with tiny staircase, leadlight windows and hinged doors, I imagine she took it for granted that her new husband would simply carry on building and creating as her father had. In fact, my grandfather has just finished building his most recent house at 90 years of age, a little cottage with handmade kitchen, doors...and all the rest. He built my daughter a beautiful weatherboard playhouse, 3.1m x 2.4m, in such a way that all the wall panels, roof, and floor panels can be unscrewed, put flat on a trailer and moved to the next house. It included bunks, little glass windows, a dear front door with stained-glass insert, and curtains made by my grandmother. 

And so perhaps my confession makes a little more sense to you possibly. In my family, timber is sacred. As I have now made the first step towards freedom from this addiction, I will come completely clean: I have also painted all my timber t&g ceilings in my new house. And gibbed over the beam and t&g ceilings in my last one. I painted a kauri kitchen bench/stool, and a rimu desk, and a rimu bedside, and an oak dresser, an oak carver chair, my rimu panelled kitchen cabinet doors, all the rimu skirting boards and architraves in my house, a rimu fire surround, wooden bar stools, wooden bentwood chairs, mirrors, a sideboard...I had better stop there...

Now I need to figure out how I can justify painting my latest victim.