My tip of the day: Find a cute individual who can do EVERYTHING. Woo them, marry them, then convince them to move to your hometown and buy the most disastrous monstrosity in London. Continue to be in awe when you come home from work and every day there is a brand new project completed.

Case in point: Ian bought this old reclaimed barn board and made a harvest table. Just made it. No lessons. When I asked him how he knows how to make a table he replied, "I just made it".

Footnote: Jodie just arrived and said "what a beautiful table! you need to change the benches immediately. the top of those benches suck-change them to match the table top".

Okay, nothing like motherly love.

Although we would never dream of buying a 'new' house (anything built after 1940!) one sad thing about beautiful old houses is that there is NO closet space. Or, maybe that just happened in our house since, let's face it, we do live in the ghetto.

Anyway, to combat that, people who have multiple hobbies, shopping addictions, and those who generally rely on various kitchen accessories to keep them fed need to create storage in the old house.

As such, Mister has built multiple benches in our house which serve dually as places to sit and places to store:

I was not home when he built the one above, but he reports that yes, it really did feel as though he was building his own coffin.

And here we are building an IKEA kitchen into our dining room as one way to maximize storage.

Although I am taking the pictures, do not believe that I had nothing to do with it...at this point, neither of us even need the included building guides with the weird little creatures with happy and sad expressions that take the place of written instructions.

Of course now this hutch is empty except for the first cabinet, which is housing our take-out menus only. oh well, at least it looks good!

Last weekend Ian's Dad came to visit us. We were so busy that we did no renovations and I took no pictures. However, here is our guest bedroom after he left. Poor Plum...she really misses him.