Living With Architectural Salvage and Family History

Penny Without Vinyl

I mentioned today that I had a few blog posts rolling around in my head.  One, I did earlier around noon.  The rest, I'm going to try to combine into this one.  It's amazing what a few days of relaxation can do for your mind.  I actually have the energy to put collective thoughts together!!!  When I sat down to write the earlier blog, I realized that there were projects which we have completed in the last six months of Penny's renovation that I haven't brought you all up to date on.  The following is our latest project report for your perusing pleasure.

Kitchen Before

I think the best way to show how completely this house has changed is by showing the before and after pictures.  Sitting on my stool at the peninsula where the oven used to be, I frequently gaze lovingly at my kitchen today.  Before there was a refrigerator, clothes dryer and microwave.  The ceilings were dropped to 8'.  Now there is my dream stove, a beautiful backsplash and the piece de resistance... a pot filler.  The ceilings are 10' high.  There is so much space and warm light in this magical place.  It's a place where people want to stand and gather.  A place where multiple people can work in at the same time.  We are thrilled with the end result thus far. 

Go back to that kitchen before picture, but look beyond the kitchen into the dining room entrance.  There was a pocket door that you can't really see.  It was a vanilla box, somewhat age appropriate - probably the least remuddled part of the house over the years, with the exception of the painted over wall paper.  When we took the house down to the studs to fix all the issues, we decided to change the pocket door into a barn door.  It was too pretty to be hiding in a wall 90% of the time.  Bill stripped it of its years of grime and stained it back into a glossy beauty.  Then we looked at the doorway and decided that we needed a transom window above it.

Dining Room View

Bill cut the area out so that the drywall could be put in, but we had no window as of yet to place in it.  We played with the idea of making a stained glass window.  We even drew up the design and purchased glass.  It was such a big task to do that we kept putting it off.  One day Bill sends me a link to a window at Caravatti's in Richmond, Virginia.  I measure the space and we realize it's a perfect fit.  Before the day was out that window was on it's way to us.  It's a stunning piece and was truly meant for this space.  Even the center pattern is close to our backsplash behind our stove.  I can't tell you how relieved Bill was to not have to make something for that location... and how we're happier to have an old salvage piece instead of something new.

Living Room View

An integral piece to one of the last projects for our kitchen arrived in October.  My grandparents 1940's chrome and yellow formica kitchen table.  My childhood memories at this table include cracking nuts, eating family dinners with other kids while the adults ate in the formal dining room and as I grew older... sitting around drinking and laughing with the women in my family.  Gramma and Grandpa had a L shaped brown pleather banquette booth around it.  Bill's project sometime in 2021, will be to build two benches (think pew type) for us to sit at.  The main reason I chose the blue and yellow backsplash for our kitchen was to incorporate this table into the design.  I almost cried when Bill put it back together and placed it here.  It means so much to me.  I'll be deliriously happy the first time we sit at this table for sure.  :) 

Penny Before

Our biggest news is that "Phase II", our 500ish square foot addition, has started.  We have lived for eight months out of boxes because we don't have a closet... have either used a laundromat or Cherie's washer/dryer because we don't have a laundry room.  Penny went from a three bed two bath house to a two bed two bath house... we're now adding another bed and bath, laundry room and walk in closet.  We are eking out this last bit of remodel before our funds are gone, but we can comfortably live in this house and still work on it for a long time, once we have these rooms.

I have started shopping for the addition.  The squirrel in me has had to be tamed a bit as I can't overspend.  That said, when I see THE piece, I grab it.  One item we needed was another small colored glass chandelier for the addition's hallway.  While junking in California with mom, I found the answer.  The bohemian red etched glass body of this chandelier screamed my name until it was in my hands... I had to have it.  I didn't love the rest of the look, but I knew I could glam it up and make it blend with the others in the hall.  I'm loving how it turned out.  I may still change it up once more before it's hung but so far, so good.

The most exciting thing about the addition to me?  The fact that once it's ready to have siding, the whole house will be re-sided.  Bill has been tearing off the ugly cheap looking yellow vinyl siding that I've abhorred since day one.  The original siding that was under that monstrosity gives you an idea of what Penny will look like when her facelift is complete.  Unfortunately there was too much damage to try to repair.  Currently 60% of the house is wrapped in Tyvec and ready to go.  By the end of the year Penny should look finished outside.  The inside, no promises of a timeline... we still can't agree on a crown molding... but at least she'll be able to shine as strangers drive by.

Abundance of Blessings

I woke up this morning feeling abundantly blessed.  I started to upload a picture to Instagram to express this happiness and then realized when I began to caption said picture that I had a blog (or two) in my head.  I haven't had a lot of quiet time in the last few months.  My job has had me all over the United States.  I haven't had enough time to stop and sit, let alone be refreshed enough to know what time zone I was in.  While I've been zooming across the United States, my faithful and amazing husband has continued to chip away at the projects needing to be done for Penny's continued transformation.  Simply put, we were both exhausted.

Bill's Gramma's clock

Bill's sister, Beth, has been talking about driving down from Virginia to see Penny and bring cherished pieces of Bill's past for us to live with.  Between COVID and my insane work schedule, how do you plan a visit?  I decided to have an elective surgery that I have been wanting done.  I told her she could be sure I was home if she came after it.  Two days after I'm back home from the hospital, Beth and Arthur come pulling up our driveway.  I'm tired and sore and she comes in the door and starts cooking.  Hallelujah.  My kitchen is taken over by Bill and Beth.  I'm pushed to the counter stool with a glass of wine.  I could not be any happier at this moment.

Our Pecan Tree

The next morning they're both up early.  Beth makes biscuits and gravy...  OMG delicious!!!  Then she and Arthur are out the front door moving wood Bill had salvaged from the house.  They removed all the nails and then carted the wood to the back of the property to Bill's new tent. I swear I could see relief all over Bill's face each time he looked at that wood pile dwindling.  It was a project he hadn't been looking forward to doing but had to be done soon so that he could get the porch ready for the siding that will be done to the house in the next two weeks.  We have a clear porch that has been swept for the first time in two years. (insert angels singing in the heavens... oh wait, that might just be Bill's heart bursting).

Inside they come at the end of the day and Beth starts cooking again...  Arthur sits at the counter and starts shelling our pecans that we've gathered.  It's another long process but he's doing it with a smile on his face.  I'm sitting on a huge bean bag chair my girlfriend Audra made me take home for my recovery.  Conversation is good, food is amazing and I'm a groggily happy girl.  This shelling is going to continue to happen over the next few weeks.  Our pecan tree is full of fruit.  I'm loving the food our property is providing us, but there's days where I love watching someone else do the work needed to use these gifts.

Door that came with house

Yesterday, I woke up to Bill making waffles.  After breakfast the men ran to Lowes.  Beth and I spend the morning making cookies, pumpkin bread, and sourdough pizza crust while we cooked down another pumpkin.  When the guys come back, Beth and Arthur are out the door to begin another project I've been dying to have done.  Our front door.  I hate the cheap "new" hollow front door on this house.  It doesn't fit the character.  Every time I look at it I wonder what they were thinking.  Last year I found a door in a salvage yard that would replace it but we needed the time to strip and stain it.  Obviously that project was WAY down the list of things to do but it was something we could give to another person looking to help us.   They spent hours on that door getting years of paint and grime off of it.  There's still a bit of sweat equity that I'll have to do but once a project is started, I somehow find the motivation to finish it.  The goal is to have this baby stripped, stained and fitted for the front door replacement when the new siding goes on.  This solid vintage craftsman beauty is going to fit right in with Penny's facelift.  Here's a few photos of the progress they made.

Abundant blessings indeed this holiday season... 

• The gift of health insurance and being able to fix my body as needed. 

• The gift of a husband that works tirelessly to get this dream of a home I have completed.  I know each hour he puts into this renovation is an act of love for me.

• The gift of our family history - I know Bill will love the chair, mirror and clock for years to come.  We're both thankful to have these pieces lovingly delivered.  

• The gift of bonding with future family members.  Arthur, you are officially brother and sister-in-law approved.  We both look forward to warmly welcoming you into our family when you two make that step.  Thank you for your time here, and thank you for loving our Beth.  She glows in happiness now.  You have our undying gratitude for that gift.

• The gift of time with family... it's the most time I've spent with my sister-in-law.  Love you bunches Beth.  Thanks for this weekend.  It truly was priceless to both of us.  We need to try to do this annually.  Georgia or Virginia... maybe trade years driving...  Miss you already

From our farmhouse to your home, we wish you all a Thanksgiving where you too are filled with gratefulness at the blessings around you... 

Gramma's chair with Kimberly's pillow 

Evolution of a Country Burn

Bill and I both get spiritually rejuvenated when we sit together, drink in hand, in front of a roaring fire.  It's why we built an outdoor kitchen and fireplace at our last home.  We spent hours out there, enjoying the fresh air, the smell of burning wood... and the simple peace of being home together.  When you both have careers that take you far away for days at a time, these moments are precious.  When we moved down to the farmhouse we figured it would take a while to find that spot again. 

We started with the practical - a burn barrel, where we burned the branches that were forever falling down on our property, or trees that we were cutting and needed to dispose of.  We had the barrel too far away from the house, so Bill found a spot that made sense behind the house - in the center of a circle of trees.  Near the burn barrel he placed a few chairs to sit in while we were waiting for the trash to burn down enough to feed the fire.

As you know from the previous blog, we ended up tossing the barrel, and making a fire pit.  We found stones from around the property to encircle the fire.  Then Bill decided we should put all the chairs around the pit to make a great spot for social distancing gathering.  One night, he decided that he needed to hang lights around the circle so our area could have mood lighting.  It looks like a little fairy grove and makes my heart happy every time I see it lit up.

One night he mentioned that we should get stones, place another circle around the chairs and put gravel in the secondary circle so we wouldn't have to remove the chairs when our gardener came.  I told the story of moving those 77 stones in the last blog...  We ordered weed blocker and the egg rock last week - it was delivered today.  Two cubic yards.  At 2 pm and 83'.  I told Bill that my kids will love the fire pit because we were gonna die moving all that stone in this humid heat.

We spent three hours, but we did it.  This project is done.  So are our backs... but we're excited how it turned out.  The next two projects are inside.  Thank God for air conditioning in Georgia... but we'll be back out here later to enjoy the fruit of our labors...  MoonCrest is open for visitors around the fire... just holla out y'all!  The more the merrier any day. 

It's All Fun and Games Until a Tick Bites Your Ass and Other Gardening Stories

Corona time this week has meant a lot of work in the garden for both Bill and I.  One project is seasonal - our mulberry trees and our blackberry patch are in full bloom and producing faster than I can harvest.  So far I've picked:

*  18 cups of mulberries.  We've made a pie, muffins, scones and 4 jars of jam.

*  18 cups of blackberries.  We've made two pies, 8 jars of jam and maybe ate another cup as we've been picking.

To put the amount that I've picked and we've used into perspective... 3-4 cups of berries is a pound...  So I've harvested approximately 9 pounds of berries this week.  The mulberries are still raining down from the trees and the blackberry patch is filled with red berries starting to ripen.  I'm about to start freezing berries to use when summer cravings hit.  It's truly a bumper crop this year, and I'm totally grateful that I bit the bullet and bought my Pampered Chef Deluxe Cooking Blender.  That thing is a rock star!  I drop berries, water, pectin and sugar in it and 30 minutes later I've got jam.  I've always fought making jam because I remembered the time and labor intensive process it was for my mother.  This makes it a BREEZE!!!  I even made orange marmalade and applesauce this week in that baby!  If this makes you think "I totally need to look into that", hit me up... I started selling Pampered Chef a month ago as a side gig until I can start flying again.

One of the funny things about Corona life is I'm not showering as much... don't judge... y'all know you're in your pajamas as much as I am.  Yesterday I spent most of my time shaking the mulberry trees to get the fruit and making jam...  today, after I worked in our vegetable garden, I decided it was time to shower.  As I was showering, I looked down at my feet and there was a full mulberry just sitting there...  I'm not sure if it landed on me as I walked through the garden today or if I actually... SLEPT with it in my hair last night...  I know I should show some amount of shame here but I just cant bring myself to do anything other than laugh at that.

I mentioned the vegetable garden... it's coming along beautifully.  The tomatoes are getting big enough that they needed to be staked.  I had Bill cut us 50 stakes out of leftover scrap from our old hardwood floors.  Each of the stakes in the garden are pieces of original hardwood that broke as he pulled them up.  They couldn't be reused but he put them to the side to somehow be recycled at a future date... and ta da!!!

Cherie and I have learned a wee bit about gardening from our Master Gardener class two years ago, and from working in the charity garden in Fayetteville.  She recently even learned a trick on how to do the twine without bending over.... attaching the twine box to your belt, working the twine through a piece of pvc pipe and then making the pvc pipe do all the lower work.  It went by quickly.  When we were done with the twine we laid down hay mulch that our fabulous neighbor, Tiny, dropped off a couple of days ago.  It actually LOOKS like we know what we're doing... and LOOKS like a vegetable garden.  We're pretty excited about our progress.

Speaking of progress, we've been working on our fire pit area.  A place where we can hang with friends and family... or just the two of us, and enjoy the outdoors like we're camping but have a big bed to go sleep in.  A couple weeks ago we upgraded from a burn barrel to an actual pit... it was a big stretch... we removed the barrel and started burning on the ground...  I grabbed a few stones from around the property and Bill finished the pit's circle.  He then grabbed all of our outdoor chairs and put them around the pit.  A few days later he strung white fairy lights in the trees around that circle.  The one thing he complained about was having to move the chairs when our lawn guy came, so that he could mow the area.  We talked about getting more stone, putting another circle around the chairs and filling the area with pea gravel.  I put it in my mental to-do list and figured it would take a minute to feel financially secure enough to put money into an outdoor space.  Then Bill went away for two days.  One of those days I was outside and I looked at this... planter?  old fountain?... something that was a big square of stacked stone filled with dirt right behind our house.  I stared at that stone and had an epiphany.  This area has to be demolished when we start our addition... here was the stones we needed to do the outer circle... all that it would take would be a sledge hammer, and a chisel to remove the cement from the stones... if it's free it's for me...  

Bill came back and I pointed out the brilliance of my discovery and waxed poetic on the beauty of the plan.  He put it on his "Heather's list of 1000 things to do yesterday"... and walked away.  I went into his shed and grabbed a crowbar.... when he saw what I was doing he handed me a sledgehammer and a mallet of sorts...  and I went to town.  By mid day I knew why he'd walked away and let me do this.  It's not sooooo easy to deconstruct stacked stone.  I did it.  Nearly killed myself with my stubbornness, but I banged those stones out, chipped off that cement, shoved them in the wheelbarrow and plunked them down around the chairs.  Ladies and gentlemen how many stones do you think I needed to do that project???  Seventy freaking seven.  With my dying breath I counted those bloody tons of torture.  When the last stone was placed I marched my middle aged butt into the house, tossed off my clothes and crawled into the claw-foot tub with a Grapefruit White Claw...  I might have been crying "mommy"...  This project still has a chance to kill me though... as my weed block fabric comes Thursday and I'm scheduling 60 cubic feet of pea gravel to arrive the same day...  Pray for me y'all....

Pray for my hub while you're at it...  While I was whining about moving a gazillion tons of stone, he was in the back spraying the kudzu. It's coming back... we're on year 3 of fighting this battle.  It's an insidious plant that will kill everything in it's path if you let it be.  We can see grass now where it used to be in our back 'cut'... it'll take a couple more years of spraying before we can see it gone for good.   Anyway, spraying a poison seems to be relatively easy right?  Unless you're on top of a slope and you make a misstep... and you find yourself on your knees mid slope staring at the rear end of a copperhead.  Bill ran like a 10 year old, went to grab a shovel to kill it but it disappeared... Don't know who was more scared.  Bill went back to spraying 30 minutes later and saw a scurrying by his feet... he thought 'here we go again'... and then realized he was staring at a lizard.  He came over to me and asked what lizard has a pink head???  Funny enough we found that answer out later that day when someone posted this picture in Facebook asking what it was....  Apparently skink males heads turn pinkish orange during mating season.  Good to know lol.

This morning I woke up, went to use the restroom - this isn't too much information, y'all know it's the ONLY thing that gets you out of bed on a lazy morning...  anyway, when I was done, I stood up and stretched and scratched my ass... yes... y'all do that too... don't lie... and when I scratched I felt a bug bite...  but it felt like there was a scab... and I thought "Lord please no"... I can't see my ass... I went into the other bathroom to find my big magnifying mirror... I still couldn't quite turn around enough to see so I walked dejectedly into the bedroom with my underwear half down, walked up to Bill and asked "Do I have a tick on my ass".  

I am here to tell you, it's not really what any woman wants to have to ask a man.... and I'm pretty sure most men don't want to have to answer that question... but my hub looks from across the bed and replies calmly... "It looks like you've been bitten by something"....

"I feel something there.  I think there's a tick."  Next thing I know, I'm hanging over my claw-foot tub with my ass is in the air.  My hub has put his headlight on his head to see better.  He's verified that there is indeed a seed tick hanging onto my ass.  He gently takes it off with tweezers then says in his deep southern drawl "make sure you put peroxide on that baby..."

So yes... ladies and gentlemen... the moral of this whole blog is working in the garden is all fun and games until a tick bites your ass.

Put Down That Paint Brush

Let me start this blog by saying, we are not all going to agree on the end result... but I think we can all agree that the chairs I had were a mess.  A catastrophe of another DIYer.  I can't believe a woman would let her husband paint these chairs puke boring beige.  So for my soul to not be deeply wounded, I'm going to have to believe it was one of two things... 1)  a man that had spare beige paint and wanted to update his chairs at no cost... or 2)  this horrid color was a primer and the couple meant to put a color on it but never did.  I truly have to believe that it's one of those two things, because otherwise I have to question humanity. 

When I purchased the chairs in an estate sale they had a 'matching' hideous beige table.  I love vintage 50's metal lawn chairs.  I can't pass up these when I'm junking.  Especially when they're rusty or had a previous owner that was color blind.  I've had these for a year or two now.  Waited for the time and color to come to me.  Last week I tackled the table.  Sanded it then painted it Robin's Egg blue.  Came out adorable!  You'd think I'd go to the chairs and immediately make them the same color right?  Nope.  I'm not the matchy matchy furniture person.  Plus this furniture is all over my property.  So I waited until I was inspired.

Last night after everyone left, I stared at those chairs and decided today was the day I'd get them done.  I went into Bill's paint cabinet and chose the color they'd become.  Fire Orange... deep red with a orange tint.  They'd pop in the garden.  This morning I grabbed the sander, the paint and got down to business.  As the beige chipped off, I started to see remnants of the color's they'd been in their lives and the chippy aged look started to grow on me. 

For the record, I've never managed to allow myself to paint one of these chairs.  I don't know why I thought I'd be able to do it today.  I went from "They're all going to be Fire Orange", to "maybe I'll just paint the seats" to "Bill!!!!  What do you think?"

"You're gonna need some matte enamel sealer... at least two cans..."

He get's me.  Somehow that chippy aged look just pulls at my heartstrings every time.  I like to SEE the history.  Covering it is a shame.  Add to that, we've moved to the country... to an old home we're renovating.  Some stuff, that is age appropriate, just shouldn't look TOO new.  I just love how they came out.  I know, there's gonna be a few of you reading this that wish I'd just sprayed the Robin's Egg Blue... or the Fire Orange... and I understand you... these though, are going back to the fire circle and I'll smile every time I look at them.

Some Things Just Need to Be Blogged

Somewhere around three years ago Bill and I bought an antique portrait at an estate sale.  We loved the oval tiger maple frame with convex glass.  It's hard to find a frame like this with the original glass still intact.  The portrait was torn at the top but it was the frame we were sure someone would want.  It went into our booth and was still in our booth when we closed it.  I hung onto the picture for the last two years.  I couldn't bring myself to Goodwill it.  I've been staring at it trying to figure out what to do.  Last week I decided I'd try to sell it on Facebook Marketplace.  There were no nibbles.  I kept looking at the frame thinking it was a darn shame to get rid of it.  Yesterday I removed the listing on Facebook.  I'd decided we'd use it ourselves.

We have no wedding pictures of us in our house.  I've been meaning to frame one, I just didn't have the time or the right frame.  Funny how quarantine cleaning works... You have time and you find the right frame.  I grabbed a picture, added a warm sepia tone to it and then ordered a 16x20 poster from Walgreens for next day pick up.  The picture was ready in an hour so I grabbed it last night.  End of story right?  Nope.

While I knew Bill wouldn't be able to do the project last night I wanted to see how the picture would work in the frame.  So I took out the original portrait to have a look see.  That's when I found the writing on the back.  I now knew the woman I was looking at.  I couldn't just toss this piece of history that one of her family members had sold.  I needed to record it.  I've been big into genealogy the last couple of years.  I know how amazing it is to find an ancestor that has a portrait that another distant relative has uploaded into the internet.  So for her kin, I sat down and looked for her.

Sallie Boyd was born June 11, 1868, in Upson, Georgia.  She married William Oscar Kelly on November 5, 1888.  She had nine children - John (1889), James (1891), Emmet (1894), Mozell Coulter (1897), Bessie (1898), Jeanette Pate (1901), Robert (1903), Connie Goff (1907) and Hattie Marlow (1908).  Hattie, the youngest, lived until May 21, 1992.  I can only assume that whoever wrote this information on the back of the picture wanted to insure the family would know who the portrait was of, since the last living child of Sallie's had just died two days before (inscription is May 23, 1992).  With research completed, I uploaded a photo of the portrait into her files.  Hopefully a family member will find it in the future and be glad to have access.

In the meantime, Bill's project is done.  I just have to hang it tonight.  I'm glad I kept the frame.  The whole piece is simply beautiful.  Sallie, your photo is out there in perpetuity for your ancestors to find, and your frame will be lovingly hung in our home for years to come.

Upcycling For The Win

What do you do when you and your husband have moved into your new home and COVID, the pandemic of the century, strikes?  You sweetly, somewhat subtly, suggest projects that he could do to improve your ability to unpack specific items.  Thus changing his plans for the day hourly... This is the predicament that my sweetie has found himself in.... He's been begging for more time with me over the past two years, and now he finds himself quietly wishing he or I might go back to work soon...

My first not too subtle nudge to move a "to do" up to the top of his list was our coffee/wine bar.  The original concept was to have him build a cabinet to hold what we needed.  Then one day as I was flipping through Facebook Marketplace and drooling over a Hoosier cabinet an idea came to me.

Me:  "Um, honey what do you think about Hoosier cabinets?"
Bill:  "They're cool, why?"
Me:  "Do you think we could take one and cut a hole in the base for the wine fridge... For the wine/coffee bar?"
Bill:  "That could work"....

I began my search for a Hoosier cabinet that isn't in perfect condition so we won't feel bad for cutting it up... and found one with an enamel top in near perfect condition... that's in the price range we want to pay.  We buy it, put it in the spot it'll stay in... and daily I ask if he's figured out how to fix it up.  He's looking at it, scratching his head and walking quickly away muttering something about being busy with another project... I sweetly point out that there's at least 3 boxes that could be unpacked if this beast project was done... and the next day it's outside, up on his workspace... and he's figuring it out like he always does....  It looks AMAZING!!!  Even Bill is happy with how it turned out.  I might have even ordered wine to fill the fridge.  Cause something that pretty can't be empty right?

While I was looking for the Hoosier, I also came up with the next honey do project for Bill that entailed retrofitting yet another piece of antique furniture.  Really, it sounds like I'm working his butt off but I'm trying to make the projects easier for him.  Instead of designing from scratch, I'm finding him pieces with good bones... That's my story and I'm sticking to it...  Anyway, we don't have a garage and the only place that really made sense to place our tankless water heater was in the end of the hallway where the addition will start.  Places the water heater dead center of the house for all our water needs - the addition will have another bathroom and laundry room.  You can imagine how it's not something I'd want to look at daily though.  Bill had planned to build a cabinet around it.  I suggested getting a cool old armoire and cutting out the back to slide over the water heater.

Bill loved the idea.  Technically it's a quick fix right?  While he worked on the Hoosier, I looked online trying to find something not too expensive and, like the Hoosier, not in perfect shape so we wouldn't feel bad cutting it.  The day after the Hoosier project was finished, we were sitting in our living room discussing the final run we had to do to empty our old house.  Bill was worried about us not having enough space in our shed and fretted about how he was going to store his tools that were still in our old house's garage.  It was then that the proverbial light bulb went off in my head.

When we purchased the farm, the previous owners had left an old armoire with a broken leg in the shed.  We decided to keep it because we knew we could fix it up one day.  I thought about that piece and how much room it was taking and asked Bill if it would work for the water heater project.  Out of sight out of mind right?  Neither of us could understand why we hadn't even thought to use it.  Bill took it out of storage, placed it into his work area and began the plans to retrofit it.  It needed to be raised 25" and he wasn't sure how he could blend that large of a skirt into the piece.  I asked if he could build a fake drawer front so it wouldn't look like it was sitting on a box.  He thought that would totally work, and when we got to the old house later the next day we found an old drawer front he'd saved in his workshop from our old booth projects.  Both the cabinet and that drawer are walnut!  PERFECTION! 

Well mostly... some of the veneer on the cabinet wasn't perfect so we decided it would be partially painted.  Bill wanted to paint a fun design in the ovals on the doors.  I suggested he use the MoonCrest logo that was designed by Ashlyn Downing, the daughter of my childhood best friend.
Bill spent about three days building the base and shoring up the cabinet interior so he could cut off the back.  While doing so we discussed what parts would be painted and which would remain stained wood.  Ashlyn changed up the dimensions of our MoonCrest logo to fit in the oval and Bill made a stencil to paint it. 

The cabinet had small white porcelain knobs on the doors when we got it.  We happened to have a handful of similar knobs that we'd gotten junking sometime in the past six years.  The paint was left over from projects we've done over the last two years.  The only cost for this project truly, was Bill's time.  Once again he knocked it out of the park!  When all was said and done an ugly appliance was covered up with a fun piece of furniture that no one knows is solely decorative.  I love it.  Sooo much better isn't it?

You'd think I'd be happy and let him rest then right???  He made the mistake of putting the drawers that were in the cabinet into the house for a minute to stow them away for some other use.  I took one look at the thick oak with the tongue and groove notches and said "Honey!!!!...."  He hates that... he knows what it means... more work for him!!!  It was quick... really...  Bought some small casters, he put those on the bottom, added the porcelain knobs and we now have pull out drawers at the bottom of our pantry!  SCORE!

Now I'm done... Not really...  being Coronatined together just gives me more time to come up with another honey do... daily... maybe hourly...  He's getting ready for me to go back to work but he's got at least two months before he gets that reprieve.  Pray for him... and if I go missing, go look in the 'cut' in our backyard...  😆😆😆

Actually I've made up for it somewhat.  Going back to a comment I made in the beginning of this blog, his exact words were "when this is over, I want to be with my wife, somewhere, with a drink with an umbrella in it"...  I had planned to take him to Mexico when our old house sold.  Then when COVID was heading to America I'd changed my plans to take him to the Kentucky Bourbon Trail... and then that was dashed as all travel basically stopped and people were sheltering in place across the country.  So when I signed the sales papers last Friday, I went to the local liquor store.  Bought 7 bottles of bourbon that neither one of us had heard about... and surprised him with them in an Easter Egg-esque hunt... AND made sure there was an umbrella in his rocks glass. 

If that wasn't enough... for our anniversary yesterday... I made sure we had toilet paper... Today y'all understand how important that is... 10 years from now someone is going to read this and think that's a really shitty present.... It's ok... when they do, I ask they google toilet paper anomaly of the Corona pandemic... 30 rolls baby... Pure Charmin Gold....

Happy 4th anniversary baby... We've got a roof over our heads, two pots to pee in and TP to wipe with... Life IS good.