The Weekend Report: 7/52

I married a man who has an obsession with projects.

And thankfully, not just starting them, but finishing them as well. That's got to be a great indicator of character, right?

So give him two days of glorious weather, a few reasons to get his hands dirty, and he'll have us working our fannies off to, shall we say, git 'er done.

On the docket this weekend? Desk building (and prepping the yard for Spring).

Desk Building

Oh the chronicles of what is henceforth referred to as "The Desk." As you could gather from any post written pretty much from November to December, we have been in the process of turning our bonus space - a once garage, now three rooms - Utility, Laundry/Pantry, and Den - into legitimate spaces. From the land of mauve and purple and paneling, bad carpet and linoleum, and bad, bad lighting... we've revived it. Literally brought it back from the dead. From the day we closed, we've repainted, put up molding, patched ceilings, put in new lighting (and lighting in general, in one of the rooms), and tiled. A couple of weeks ago we took a road trip to IKEA and have recently finished outfitting the most wonderful displays of particle-board shelving and cabinetry known to man.

above the washer & dryer

where once stood metal brackets w/ open wood shelves

don't even get me started on this... it's my lifelong dream

and so beautiful, even, at night w/ the lighting we installed

So enter, The Desk. For months and months we've been planning this from start to finish and all along was the character known as Bedford.

Oh Bedford, you rascal.

I have a love affair with Pottery Barn, and had been saving and scheming forever to have this desk. I'd done the measuring, working, etc. to have it and after spending 30 minutes in the store one day, walked out and it was all mine. I brought it home in boxes, took one last measurement before unpacking, and subsequently sat on the floor near the point of tears because IT WOULDN'T FIT. How had this happened?

In walks our little moment of DIY ingenuity. What if we bought similar cabinet pieces (which we found both pretty and less expensive options at JCPenney) and built our own desktop. Our own BEAUTIFUL desktop that we'd stain the color of the floors we'd just had refinished. Du-nu-nu-nuuuuuh (phonetically, I think that's how a trumpet sound is spelled).

So this is what Saturday looked like:

Supplies.

Refreshments.

Plywood layer.

Oak board layer.

STAIN!!

And Sunday:

The Desk.

This was the part where we had let it sit and become prettier with time, another coat of stain, two coats of polyurethane (the first of which it had last night). So out came the lawnmower, giant trash bags, pruning shears, and shovels and we had ourselves a grand ol' time cutting and bagging the Water Oak tree leaves which fell in January, chopping back our dwarf crape myrtles, ridding other bushes and trees of their "suckers".

I think final count on the load we took to the dump was 13 bags, too many landscaping rocks our previous owners had left that we've been dying to get rid of since, a mess-load of limbs, suckers, and pruning leftovers, and our measly attempt at shoveling the wood chips left from the six stump-grindings that have taken place in our yard since January (we're now hiring someone to take care of that).

Off to the dump.

It feels good to get these sorts of things done, but like Cliff said last night, it makes the weekends go by all-too-fast. 

But honestly, we need these kinds of weekends. Not just for our home, but for our marriage. I love sharing that sense of accomplishment together, though everything in me is screaming to not be caked in the old, cruddy leaf dust flying at me from the back of the lawnmower. I love that through project-weekends like this, we become intimated not just with the precious things we are care-takers of - like our land, and all of its imperfections - but with each other, as well.

I wouldn't trade that for anything.

Plus, there's usually a Sonic drink in the deal, somewhere :)