Sunday, September 18, 2016

What do you get a girl who has everything?

Just ask, she'll come up with something.  This time it was new shelves for the BTC.

And she's so much fun to spoil, and there was an excuse, (wedding anniversary,) and there hadn't been anything fun to build in a while...

Last week I went out to the stacks of oak wood that we turned the barn into earlier this year. (There are pictures of that process somewhere here.)

A few jigs for the table saw to make angled legs, many planer blades, endless sand paper, and we were off and running.


Old rough sawn oak boards, left in the Mississippi sun to bake for 70+ years, take a bit of time and effort to persuade into shape.


With the lowers laid out, it was on to the uppers.


Many uppers.  Keeping in mind an office nook Alexe wanted tucked away behind one section, and the ability to relocate and reassemble the whole thing when the time came.


Many coats of urethane.  These will be abused, and hopefully cleaned, often. 


Tin backing to strengthen and square the sections with permanent uppers.  (Also helps keep things from falling off the back of the shelves.) The two floating sections, have removable shelves and rely on the brick walls of the BTC to function as backstops.


Bump outs for display and to create product nooks.


Installing on Sunday, our 11th anniversary.  Old store shelves removed.


New installed.  Four trips between workshop and the store to move them.  They're thick, old oak, i.e. heavy.


I'm sure Alexe will reorganize these dozens of times in the next week to see what she likes best.


With all the changes and the expectations she hasn't quite made it to the smile that is my payoff, but I know it's coming.


Eleven Years

Once upon a time I met a girl.  We liked each other, but we were young and it took a couple years to figure out what that strong gravitational force meant.


We got engaged.


Then married.  We were still young, 22 and 24.  But we knew, and the step was not taken lightly.  (Look at those serious little kid faces.)


We started our own method of adventuring together.  This is one of our first projects. (We had bought the land together before we were engaged.)  You can't quite see it in this picture, but we're holding up one finger each, celebrating our first anniversary.


The next year, we were celebrating our second anniversary in Mississippi.


Fast forward a bit.  Children, travel, jobs and home and life and a level of happy that we didn't expect, or know enough to hope for.

I don't see that much difference between these slightly older kids, and the ones that first laid eyes on each other all those years ago.