Over the years, I've had my brilliant ideas, and my not so brilliant ideas...
A few weeks back I started out with a brilliant idea, but in the end I royally butchered it with a can of paint... well... actually four cans of paint to be exact...
This is how the story goes...
It's a Saturday morning and the sun is poking it's bright self in through the slivers of our blinds.
He kisses my forehead and I pull the covers back over my head wishing the sun could go back down and I could stay in my bed forever...
"Good morning Love, watcha you wanna do today?"
He's a morning man, the type that wakes up all chipper and such.
"Did you sleep alright?"
I am not that type and I scrunch up my face and glare in his direction, my eyes not yet adjusted to the sunlight and my attitude not yet adjusted to the reality of the morning.
He smiles big, slips on his work jeans and black t-shirt, and kisses my head one more time before he quietly closes the bedroom door behind him. It's Saturday and I know he's off to the kitchen to make pancakes and eggs and sausage... it's what he does every Saturday.
At the breakfast table, I'm a bit more on the cheerful side and I remember that today is the day... It's the day that I have been waiting for... for weeks... it's the day that we get to start our first masterpiece... together! And if you've known me for some time, you know that I am ALL about being together... Quality time; it is most certainly my love language! :)
I've gone from grouchy morning silliness to giddy-happy, chatty-cathy, and I'm sputtering out all my thoughts on the wood that we should use and how might we take the doors off the barn walls, and how elated I am that we get to create this thing for our home, TOGETHER!
After breakfast we put the smallest treasure down for a nap and the rest of us begin the task of gathering all the pieces.
Since move in day back in November I've been eye-ing this door hanging in our hundred-year-old barn. The door really serves no purpose and I can picture in my mind how it could make a rustic finish to our soon-to-be barn wood hutch.
My Joey smiles big as he eyes my bright orange kitchen gloves..
"What's so funny? You told me I needed to wear gloves and these are the only ones that I could find."
He chuckles a little more and I smile back...
"They'll get the job done," he says with that happy smirk on his face.
I go back to scrubbing the chicken poop off the doors...
My Joey knocks down some wood that once framed our chicken-less, chicken coup and we pile it up outside.
And all the while the kiddos are spending their time trying to push a giant log back up the hill to our farm house. I guess that's how farm kids entertain themselves on Saturday mornings. An hour and a half later they had the log at the top of the hill. :)
And when our Jeddy wakes up from his nap he finds himself a nice little spot by the shed to hang out and watch his Mama and Papa put the hutch together, piece by piece...
We laid out all the pieces so that we could see which ones were going to make up the sides, which ones the back, the top...
My idea, my thoughts were becoming flesh, becoming tangible. And as we were building, I kept going back to when we were teen-agers and we were taking this guitar class together at the junior college near his house. And in middle of the development that he lived in at the time there was this quaint little gazebo that had a wooden bench covered in vines, just big enough for the two of us. Several times a week we would sit on that bench together and he would patiently demonstrate chords for me and I would fumble over the strings. We were doing life together then. And today in the sun struck dirt path, we're doing life together still.
It's more than a decade later, we're standing in the middle of the lane, shaded by this towering barn that we share with our neighbors and dearest friends and our kids are rolling a log up a hill. It's been a dozen years and he still looks at me that way... the way he way he did in that gazebo, with that guitar... the way a man looks at the woman with whom he's walked the hard road with... walked long enough to see the joy on the other side... walked long enough to know that there are still valley's to come... walked long enough to know that the walking is all worth it.
A saw, an electric drill, and a handful of tools that I've never seen, nor heard of, lay in the lain. He's standing behind me, we're shirt to shirt, and he lays his man hands on my boney, chipped nail-polished fingers... places our hands on the drill... It's my turn to drill in one simple screw... three tries later and the screw is finally in... crooked, yes, but in none the less. :)
And when I look up from the boards, I see an over-sized SUV driving in through the farm gates. It's Paul and Sarah, just stopping over for a visit.
It's funny how the Lord works out the details of the things that we can't always think upon ahead of time. I had hoped to build the entire project with my Joey, but the Lord knew that at the rate we were going we just might have been building for days, days that we don't really have to just be building hutches together. So for the rest of the afternoon, Paul so graciously helped my Joey.
Piece by piece they built it with care, from the heart, from our very own land...
By dusk, it has all it's sides. And me in my anxiousness and constant desire for everything to be done "now", I decide to paint it.
It all went down hill from there... The piece had been perfectly fabulous before I took a brush to it. Once the first coat was on... I was crushed... And I know my Joey was too. So I tried to make up for it by painting it a different color.... four different colors to be exact... one on top of the other, each one trying to hide the disappointment of the previous one. Each coat deepening our desire to turn back time.
After the final coat of paint went on, we decided to just leave well enough alone, and we went on to cutting the doors to fit over the lower half.
We moved the dresser that the TV was sitting on to a new spot in our family room and I love it there so much....
Then we moved in the hutch... our hutch. The building of it, a family affair (with Paul's help of course. :)
The first night with the hutch in it's new home, we celebrated with a pizza picnic and a movie...
We've already got plans for round two... A lovely LOOOOONG farm table. I saw one in an Anthropologie magazine for the low low price of $1000!!! Or... we could build one here on the farm... in time, with love, practically for free.
And in Round Two: The Table, I promise to keep all paint brushes tucked away in a nice little bin under the kitchen sink. :)
