People have been gently admonishing me for not keeping this blog going after we moved. To be perfectly honest I had kind of lost my enthusiasm for this project (not that I was ever 100% enthusiastic about it) because of the extreme loss of momentum that occured after we moved back in. There are certain things that must be done before I can fully get my life back to where it should be and I've been very patient for the past five years doing things Doug's way for the most part. Patience is the only way because he will not be rushed.
So I decided to get caught up finally. I've backdated the entries so you can see what's been going on with the house on a month by month basis, going back to April. You'll notice the entries become much less detailed after my initial burst of energy on April's post.
This month it's been all about homemade tables. We don't have any furniture due to a rather unfortunate event and we didn't replace anything because we didn't have room in our rental place and because who knew this whole thing would take so long? I did, but that's another story. At this point I would like to have as little furniture as I can get by with. I hate clutter, although I've certainly learned to live with it.
Anyway, the card table I've been using for a desk all this time was no longer doing it for me, so I decided that maybe I could make something for cheap. I was right, and the best thing about that was that I got Doug to make it for me! It took him about 30 minutes so I didn't need to feel guilty either.
I had in mind a 20 or 22 inch door with legs attached. My dad made my mom a sewing table like that and it seemed pretty simple. The doors only came in 18 or 24 inches and the room is really small so Doug talked me into the 18 inch one. It was not deep enough so he kept it for himself and made me another one that is 24 inches deep and it's perfect! I used Minwax Polyshades, which is stain and polyurethane together in one product and it looks great. So now we have matching desks.
Doug decided that he didn't want to do four legs, so he did just two in front and hung it to the wall in the back. Because this seemed to be becoming a more or less permanent installation I successfully got him to put baseboards and shoe moulding(!!!) on four of the six walls in the office where the desk is. Four done and two to go! In that one room. It looks great and it's given me a chance to conclude that I like painted shoe moulding better than shoe that's been stained to match the floor. That's good because paint grade is cheaper.
Here's my shiny new black table/desk. It's about half the price and four times better looking than anything I could have gotten at Ikea.
He made taller legs for the CD storage unit to accomodate the baseboards. I was so excited that I couldn't wait to put all the drawers back in before I took the picture.
Doug is extremely happy with his 18 x 80 desk and he was thinking about shelves on the wall on either side for his printer and fax machine. I suggested an all in one shelf with a 6 inch deep section spanning the two 14 inch parts on the two sides. He liked that idea a lot so I'll be back down there staining for the next few days, while pushing for the rest of the moving of the shop to happen by the end of the month. Wish us luck!
