Week 284: Damaged/restored

I left a glass on the floor at the top of the stairs to remind me to take it down, thinking that surely I couldn’t miss it. But of course I could. It didn’t smash, but I watched it bounce down the steps two at a time, leaving a big obvious dent (or pair of dents) in the oak of each one it hit. When we had the house renovated a couple of years ago, we went for engineered wood – it’s about 6 mm of wood on top of a plywood base – rather than some kind of synthetic flooring because it looks nicer, and because our house is so small that even expensive flooring doesn’t cost all that much. But there was another reason: you can repair wood, and when the wood starts off with a slightly rustic look (knots and filled-in cracks) it’s even easier to camouflage further repairs. I used a clothes iron and a damp cloth to raise the dents, then drop-filled with superglue where the varnish was damaged. When the glue had hardened I scraped it level using a razor and polished it with some very fine…