Either paint or stain half your furniture at a time. This seems like a good idea. You can even leave it like this.

Preserving old furniture is something everybody does, even that weird old guy who lives a few doors down from you and likes to stand out in his driveway every morning wearing sweat pants and a soiled tee shirt, sipping his coffee, like he wants everyone to see that he doesn’t change his shirt much.

So you better get started. Preserving old furniture, that is. There are many ways to do it. Here is an unsubstantiated small number of poorly researched ways. By poorly researched, of course, the Czar means “not at all,” which is exactly how much this valuable service is costing you this morning.

Step one: find a piece of furniture you want to preserve. Experts recommend you choose the whole thing, of course, and not just a piece of it, but one thing at a time, right?

Step 2: Preserve it. Contrary to the obvious notion, preserves do not work well here. For example, strawberry will, we suppose, do more harm than good. Forest preserves are even farther off the mark, and may cause more damage faster than any other method.

Step C: Take a break! This has been pretty hard work, and by now, you’ve earned a well deserved rest. And by well deserved, we mean poorly researched.

Yeah, here’s the finished product. Looks great! Or maybe this is halfway through. Or perhaps before we started. Anyway, it looks great and you’re to be commended!

Step Д: Get back to it! This seems rather obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people have to be reminded to get back to it after sitting down for a few minutes. Or longer. Especially longer.

Step ٥: Use something to prevent humidity from damaging the wood. Those little packets you get in nearly everything these days are perfect to soak up moisture in ambient air. Best of all, you have dozens of them around the house, which makes it perfect to preserve an entire set of twelve chairs (especially if you’ve hidden jewels inside them). You do have these, don’t you? My God, you haven’t been eating them, have you? It clearly says not to eat them right on the outside of the packet. You think that’s there just for the lawyers?

Step 六: Ensure you are in a well-ventilated area and complete the work. A task well begun is half done, and all that.

Step VII: Nice work! That’s basically all there is to stripping, sanding, staining, and preserving old furniture. This probably works on all types of furniture, including metal, glass, plastic, and wax.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.