Sure, Eli Manning Won the Super Bowl, But Look What We Did!

Disclaimer:  In this episode, I don't acquire anything old and I don't make a chandelier out of a 1974 model water hose and a rusty beer can. Maybe next time.

Next order of business. So that I don't have to awkwardly introduce certain people during the course of my entries, here's a cast of characters who I may mention from time to time:

Tanya-My wife

Ashli, Katie & Jack-Our kids. Ages 20, 16 & 5, respectively.

Bacchus-Our dog, probably at least 50% Collie.

Today's special guest stars:

My Dad-Played by my dad

Tanya's Dad-Played by Tanya's dad (You were expecting Brad Pitt?) 

About 3 weeks ago, Tanya and I were sitting around talking about a potential fruit basket turnover of 3 rooms at our house.  We decided to move my "treasures" out of the room we called "The Office" into a room upstairs that had been designated as "Jack's Room" since we moved here almost 5 years ago.  We would also move Jack's toys out of "The Play Room" into "The Office".  Finally, Tanya's sewing machine, fabric and associated items along with our vast collection of arts and crafts supplies would move into "The Play Room".


You got all that, right?


Anyway, it's not as confusing as I made it sound.  The first order of business was to move my collection of Coke bottles, Starlog magazines, a styrofoam head and other things I just couldn't live without to the room upstairs.  The upstairs room was relatively empty, so that phase of the operation went fairly smoothly.  One bonus result of this part of the job was that I found stuff that I forgot that I had.  That's almost as much fun as finding it the first time.


So, with that completed, we moved on to the task of moving the sewing and craft stuff across the hall to the former play room.  That was also pretty uneventful.  About a week had passed since we first hatched this plan and we were now ready to move Jack's toys and stuff into his new room.

But, we started thinking that grey-ish beige isn't really an exciting color for a little boy's room.  Friday, 5pm-Maybe we should paint. Friday, 5:30pm-picking out paint at Lowe's.  Friday, 6pm-taping trim and laying out the drop cloth.  Friday, 9pm-Done.  And, if I may say so, it looked great.  I was very impressed with the Valspar paint and I would highly recommend it.  It covered in one coat, so we had almost 1/2 a gallon left when we finished.  Beautiful blue color and the white trim really popped against the blue.  Take a look for yourself.

It's sort of hard to get a real appreciation for how nice it looked from this picture.  (But, that's not what this posting is really about, as you'll soon learn.)


But, as I said, the blue looked awesome.  Then, we decided we might want to do a little something else in the room.  Maybe some shelves, maybe a cabinet of some sort.  Not my strong point.  Time to call in the cavalry.






My dad lives in a place called Odenville, which is a couple of hours away from here, so I don't get to see him as often as I would like.  When I asked him if he might be able to help me build some shelves in Jack's new room, he jumped at the chance.  He was excited to get to spend the weekend with us and also to be able to build something.  As long as I can remember, he's built bookshelves, tables, 302 engines with 4-barrel carbs...that kind of stuff.  So, I was equally thrilled to have his expertise on this project.


He drove up this past Friday afternoon and, after figuring up a material list, we went to Lowe's that night to get lumber and a few other items we would need.  We came back and, for the rest of the evening, we drank some coffee, fine tuned our plans and just hung out.


Saturday morning started with more coffee (I love coffee, but Dad REALLY loves coffee!  Family tradition, I suppose), Tanya's dad coming over and some standing around in the garage.  When the coffee kicked in, we measured, cut lumber, sanded, painted, pre-drilled holes and made changes on the fly.  We came up with ideas as we worked, we screwed some things up and fixed them and, overall, we had a good productive day.  We topped it off with a birthday get-together for Tanya's dad that night.  A splendid time was had by all.


The next day, it was just my dad and me, but the majority of the work was done.  It was all cut, painted and pre-drilled, so assembly would be quick and easy.  This is normally where the story would take a tragic turn and we would discover that we had inadvertently used metric measurements on all our cuts or that the lumber was infested with Brazilian pine beetles, but disaster didn't visit us that day.  We put everything together, put everything in place and secured it to the wall.  It looked good.  I mean, it looked really good!  Check it out:

Before

Before

And now, the after...

 

I'm totally in love with the way they turned out!  I just wanted to stand there and look at the shelves for hours.  But, it wasn't because I knew what I was doing.  I owe the credit to my dad.  He brought years of experience and used it to help us turn out a great product.  Tanya and I couldn't be more happy with the outcome.  Dad even said they turned out better than he expected.

So, we built some great shelves.  Some shelves that will be so useful in organizing books, DVDs, remote control cars and assorted dinosaurs.  I'm thrilled to be able to get this stuff off the floor and onto these beautiful shelves.

But, I'm most thankful for the almost 3 days I got to spend with my dad.  We worked together, we talked and we got the chance to appreciate each other.  He bragged on me a little and I bragged on him.  He got to spend time with his grandkids and they enjoyed being able to see him.  He told stories about his dog and he got to play with Bacchus.  And, we drank some coffee.

I wish I got to see him more often.  I wish he lived closer.  I wish I weren't so busy so I could go see him sometimes.  I know that one day, I won't have to worry about making time for him, so I'm thankful for the time I have with him now.

He headed back home this morning and he called this afternoon to let me know that he made it home ok.  I was glad to hear that, but I was more glad to hear that now he wants us to build a bigger bed for Jack.  I'm looking forward to it already.

If you're able, give your dad a hug and tell him you love him.