friday facts: I have a handy husband

One of my husband's many talents is working with wood.  He's good.  And he loves doing it, too.  We have many of his creations/fixes all over our house, and the other day I was thinking about just how much he has done since we moved into the house 4 years ago.  Well, there is one thing we use daily that he made before we started dating:

This trestle table. He brought it out on one of our dates to show off.  I was duly impressed.  It's important to be impressed when it is needed.  And now it's been through 3 moves and two kids.  It's a solid piece that pretty much blends with almost any decor.  It's perfect for us.  He plans on making chairs to go with it, and a couple months ago built the bench to go with it:

Perfect for the kids!  Soon it will be perfect anyway.  The beautiful quilted runner was made my my mother-in-law for my birthday.  It looks good in the dining room and goes perfectly with one of my favorite stained glass pieces.  See?

Pretty!                                                           

Unfortunately, because he does have a full-time job, and because I actually like for him to hang out with the littles and me on the weekends, some things take a while.  Like our deck.  Brian decided against anything so mundane as right angles for a deck.  Corners are dumb, according to him.  So it took two summers (and some cold spring and fall days) working with our fathers to get this finished.  There was blood, sweat and tears involved in this project.  Mostly tears from Brian working with his father and father-in-law.  It is a fact that for any manly project, each man will have his own strong opinion on how to execute said project.  It is also a fact that such strong opinions can be somewhat dulled by a beer or two (but not when working with powertools- we practice safe sawing around here).

Look ma, no corners!  And he even put a gate at the top of the stairs to the lower deck so that I can corral babies when needed.  It's great in the summer when I'm in the kitchen and I can just throw the kids right outside the sliding glass doors where I can still see them.  He added a cool little patio that we put our firebowl on and sit around in warmer months.  We have the wood ready and waiting.  (*hint, hint* Mother Nature, you cold-hearted bitch, you)

Further afield, you will find our outdoor playscape that Brian put together with our friend, Andrew.  It only took about a half a day!  Including all the cutting, etc.  Since it comes pre-designed, there were no fisticuffs between Brian and Andrew.  I like the word fisticuffs and think I will try and bring it back into popular use.

Fletcher loves this spot- his favorite.

More recently, he put up a shelf with a wine rack for our glasses.  This is especially awesome since it cleaned out a lot of space in our cabinets.  He took bare wood and matched it to a dry sink that my own dad built before I was born.  Spare me the antique jokes.  It gave him some problems resulting in a hole in the other side of the wall.  Luckily the other side of the wall is the staircase to our unfinished basement.  It still turned out great:

{on a side note, this is the piece of furniture that we get the most compliments on.  thanks, dad.}

                                                                                       

His current project is replacing the glass patio table top that shattered last fall in a windstorm.  (We both swear we thought the other took down the damn umbrella) We'll see how it turns out.  This time he has to use right angles.