You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May 2008.
We can hear you asking, "Wait, what happened to Weekend 123? They promised us non-stop weekend action!"
True, we did. But we didn't promise prompt updates.
Here's what happened last weekend:
We held a grilling party and Michael built a fire pit for atmosphere.
Sadly, the wind picked up too much to use it. But we are prepared for the next one!
And we turned a $3 thrift shop purchase into a baby entertainment unit.
She doesn't mind the wind. It helps keep the black flies off.
And that was our weekend. Okay then. You're up to speed.
Weekend 124 arrived and we started to look around for what could become our next major accomplishment. We haven't been able to dip more shingles because the weather has been a little rainy, so shingling was out. We had pretty much used up all of the materials we had on hand, so major projects were out. What could we do? What could we do? What could we do?
Suddenly Michael said, "If I go and buy a sheet of plywood, I bet I can do something cool in the corner of the kitchen."
More specifically, he was talking about this part:
That right there is a $40 Ikea bookshelf that Cherie has owned since about 1998. Since we moved into the house it has been a critical, yet unattractive and marginally functional, part of our kitchen, holding bowls, pans, cookbooks, baking supplies, and approximately 752 different kinds of tea. It has always been a placeholder for the multi-purpose cabinet we had planned for the space. Since this is a small house, we try to utilize space wisely, which is why when we say "multi-purpose" we really mean that this little three foot area was planned out as a message center/bookshelf/baking cabinet/wine rack. Got all that?
Anyway, Michael went and purchased the plywood and we ripped it down. Then Cherie and Annabel went on with weekend business and tried to ignore the banging and sawing and nailing happening in the kitchen. And then–bada-bim, bada-boom–this was sitting where the Ikea bookcase used to be:
One slab of plywood as a countertop later we had our multi-multi-multi-multi-purpose built-in.
It holds cookie sheets, bowls, tea, small appliances, and wine. A pitifully small collection of wine, by the looks of it.
And Michael even had enough plywood left over to make an upper cabinet to give all the cookbooks a good home.
We hadn't originally planned on an upper cabinet here, which explains why the phone jack is so high. We may move it down someday, but until then we'll just try to not bash our knuckles when we answer.
And if we do injure ourselves…well. That's why the wine is right there.
It’s been a while since we did a weekend update. This form of updating used to make sense because when we were living in another place while building here we got most of our work done on the weekends. But once we moved in, we were (theoretically) working on a (theoretically) daily basis and thus it made more sense to update on projects as they were (theoretically) completed. Now we are so busy during the week that we are back to working on the house mostly on the weekends. (Um, theoretically?) So Cherie dug out an old calender and counted up and here we are: weekend 122. And that’s a lot of weekends.
Anyway, guess what we did this weekend?
Come on, guess.
No,you have to guess.
Would you just guess already, fer crying out loud?????
That’s right! We shingled!
What a surprise, right? (Pay no mind to the baby on the porch, child protective services. Those are not electric cords all around her; they are safety lines ensuring that the playpen doesn’t go anywhere. And that is absolutely not a table saw next her. It’s a, um, really high-end baby monitor.)
We haven’t shingled since the fall, so it took us a little while to get back in the groove but once we did…whooo-eeee. We were unstoppable. Well, we were unstoppable until we ran out of dipped shingles. Then we were stopped. But we got a bit done, including around the front door which provides people entering our home with the illusion of completeness.
As long as they don’t look up. Or to the right. Or down. And frankly we aren’t even sure how they got to the front door considering we don’t have any steps to the porch yet. So who cares what they think, the low-down, no-good porch scalers.
After we ran out of shingles Michael kept working and built the over-the-fridge cabinet.
So now we can take all of the stuff that was piled haphazardly on top of the refrigerator and pile it haphazardly in the cabinet.
We’re pretty sure we’ve said this before but…progress of any kind is still progress.
Darn tootin’. Now hand me a shingle to chew.
