He goes along with my crazy ideas. He willingly does what he can to make them happen. He doesn't even laugh at them... even when I'm laughing, because let's face it, some of my ideas are pure ridiculousness. And that is a primary reason for why we're married (since it was initially my crazy idea).
My most recent idea that he materialized was open shelved cabinets for my kitchen and a cupboard above the stove. You see, our kitchen had nothing permanent but a sink by the door and an old, unreliable stove when we moved in six years ago. We have slowly added cabinets and moved the sink to an island in the middle of the room so that a bench and coat hooks could take its place by the door. We replaced the fridge, the oven, and the old, ragged flooring. Slowly, but surely it is shaping up to be a useful and lovely kitchen.
The last project before throwing up trim was the south wall. Home of the oven and a stretch of lower cabinets, the wall above them awkwardly boasted one lone cupboard hung in the corner and then nothing the rest of the way. You can kind of see what I mean by looking at the background of these two pictures:
My dream was to have a cupboard above the oven and then open shelves on either side of it.
Originally Patrick planned to build a gate like I had wanted at the top of our stairs for Christmas, but after deliberating about the specifics, we determined that it didn't make sense to install a gate there, so he offered to make me something else. And the first thing I thought of was that kitchen wall.
We don't have a garage or barn and January was cold and snowy, so most of our work was done inside. He cut and I sanded outside, then I brought the pieces to the bathroom where I ran the ventilation fan so the wood could be stained and polyurethaned. He put the boxes together on the bathroom or kitchen floor while Nolan or I acted as a brace and then the two of us worked together to hang them.
I just made that sound so simple and easy. The truth is, what seemed like a straightforward task turned out to be pretty frustrating and puzzling. What was measured twice maybe should have been measured four or five times. Cuts that seemed straight looked a lot less so when trying to fit them together snuggly square. The polyurethane started to do a weird thing to the stain later in the project so the trim turned out a little funky. There were times when we had to frantically wipes off adhesive and pull out nails because we pieced together the wrong pieces.
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| This is me (frantically) trying to sand an edge down enough to allow the next piece a snug fit |
To my husband's credit, he stuck it out and now our kitchen is a lot more complete. The shelves are lovely.
I'm so grateful that he doesn't roll his eyes when I say I have an idea. He doesn't grumble in anticipation of all the frustration and headaches in our near future. He trusts me and as it turns out, my ideas usually corporealize into things both functional and beautiful.
