Little House-Pa's Project

At our little house, Eric may not be one for assisting with dishes, vacuuming or laundry (at least not too often), but he IS the go-to guy for anything "handy"! My wishes for a couple shelves for the office to store all our school books and supplies came true after a well-timed arrival of the Dec/Jan issue of The Family Handyman magazine.

Since recouping from knee surgery was going to keep Eric out of his usual winter basketball league, the man needed something to do. And, in true form, if he was going to build one shelf, why not build three? Yay for me!

After a lot of planning and purchasing of a ton of lumber, our garage was suddenly a full-scale wood shop, assistant included.


Before I knew it, there were recognizable pieces of cabinetry!

Piles and piles of them:

He LOVES it when I take his picture while working!


There we go! Hidden hinges and functioning drawers, whee!


The stain was tricky. I finally found an awesome paint guy at Lowe's in Lee's Summit who custom matched the shade of our office armoire. We tried using brushable lacquer as the finish for this project, and though it was stinky, the results were fab! Before trying it, I got an outlandish quote from a place in Overland Park to spray the finish on...can't remember exactly, but it was a 4-digit number...we decided to do it ourselves, to say the least, and it wasn't that difficult.


The first one in, still w/o hardware.

Woodworker of the year around here:

My shelves, partially loaded and oh, so wonderful! Those are my awesomely fun turquoise-satin-peacock feather window panels. They make me smile.


And the one in the living room all set to go:

It even holds all our family games, guitar music and etc.


I really am thrilled and very proud of Eric for undertaking such a huge project. Having a nice place to store all my beloved books and family "stuff" makes organizing all such stuff so much more pleasant! Thank you my love, you're my Dr. Awesome (and I'm so glad to have my parking space back)!