The Project

I'm not really the only worker around here. The Lord blessed me with a helpmate in my husband. Rick's especially helpful with the boys and cooking. In fact, I rarely have to bathe the boys or cook a weekend meal.

But what has been taking up most of his free time for the past two months is this:
That table is an antique that my parents gave us or loaned us (I guess now is a good time to ask...Mom, am I supposed to give it back?) when we moved into this house. The five of us gathered around it for 4 1/2 years.

With the boys getting older, we were finding 5 to be a crowd around that table. I dreamed of a large table where we could sit comfortably and even have company join us without adding a dinky card table to the end.

Nothing says we have class like a blue card table standing adjacent to our beaten-down breakfast table.

Early in December, my sweet man surprised me with this:

My dream table. It's so perty. It's so roomy. We can all sit around it and not rub elbows.

And it says, "We have class."

During Christmas break, Rick was home for a little over a week, and he became restless on day 3. And I told him, "If you can't be happy at home, why don't you go back to work?"

He quietly planned a project and went to The Home Depot to gather his supplies.

(As a side note, I had to add "The" to "The Home Depot". It cracks me up every time I see an ad for them and how they proudly add "The" to their name. We don't shop at The Walmart or The Albertson's, but we do shop at The Home Depot.)

I was shocked when he came home an hour later with supplies to refinish our table. I had mentioned how I wanted the little table to look nice for our dining room, but I assumed it would be another one of those projects that we would put off for another 5 years. But my man is full of surprises and spontaneity.

That's when the sanding and refinishing of the little table began. Let's call it the Refinishing Project of 2009-2010. I don't think either one of us realized it would take two months to finish this project. If we had, we might have stuck with the plan to put it off for 5 years.

But I'm so glad my man finished. It looks so pretty.
Rick, thank you for working so hard to make this look nice for me. I know you did it to please me. And I am indeed pleased with how it looks. But more importantly, I'm proud of you.

I replaced the seat cushions and fabric. Now, all that room needs are curtains and a centerpiece. Maybe a rug. There's always something.

Incidentally, we have not used the table for eating yet. But it's a great place for folding laundry.