a bench built for two

thanks to the extreme carpentry skills of brian's mom's cousin dave, we are now the proud owners of a a lovely bench. house builder by day, bench builder by night, dave handily built us some awesome new seating for our porch. farewell, lawn chairs! (they've at least been set aside in the basement, until actually needed come summertime).

here it is hanging out in dave's shop.

no nails - he notched out all the fittings

(ok, that's not technical carpentry language)

and even pre-drilled some holes for us.

not only is the bench aesthetically pleasing, but it is also environmentally awesome. it's made of salvaged redwood from the old deck railing at the lubansky's montana home. dave planed the wood, designed the bench, dry-fit all the pieces, and showed us how to assemble it while we were in the bitterroot over christmas. yeah, he knew it wouldn't be able to fit into the jetta as a complete project. so we put it together when we got home and have been enjoying it ever since.

thanks dave!

our creative use of climbing rope to clamp the pieces together.

yeah, it really shines against the pink back drop.

enter here

so, we decided to take apart the entryway. and apparently, we shall slowly rebuild it. here's how it went down.

friday evening while hanging out in front of the television, a conversation about what to do with our weekend sparks up. oh, i know, we could get to work on the entryway. we could rent the truck at lowes, buy up some sheetrock and crown moulding (another household-wide side project). we can totally do this. let's start by prying up the vinyl tiles. ps - original wood floor under there! this was an exciting, yet frustrating find...as we assumed our refinishing adventures were over. now, we're hopeful of what may lie underneath the disgusting kitchen floor tiles.

mmm - varnish. look at the bright side,

at least it has likely protected the floors for the past 100+ years.

saturday morning, we headed to lowes and picked up the goods, then got to work deconstructing the little entryway. enter plumes of plaster dust.

green plaster, slats, and the door that we hate, but have yet to replace.

look - here we are hard at work!

several hours later, we emerged victorious, or at least slightly so. the plaster was all gone. just the good old slats were left. next up, drywalling the ceiling.

small room plus high ceiling made this an extremely challenging task. with one failed attempt and one lost piece of sheetrock, we were a little more generous with our cuts. we shimmied the next piece up...almost to its resting place (this was a serious test of arm strength), and with the help of the bottom end of a swiffer, we got it into place. seriously. it was kind of insane and highly awkward. but we got it up there and then brian put in part of the new light fixture.

ceiling!

no, we did not get ourselves a new coffee table.

on sunday, we finished up with the drywall. after we got in the pieces above the doors, things moved much more quickly, and our confidence with cutting the sheetrock grew. next up is actually taping and mudding the walls. then on to wainscot, trim, moulding, paint, and more.

here's a horrid shot of us in the newly drywalled space (that's right, it was so bad that i felt compelled to turn it into black and white and blur it a bit). the space is so small and tall, this is all we could come up with. i'm assuming the plaster fumes meddled with our decision making.