Hope Chest

I think was one of my first furniture requests to my husband after we were married.  We have a TON of blankets and quilts for the various different sized beds in our home, without a good place to store them that don’t take up precious closet space.

We had some spare space at the end of our bed to house this beauty.

To my surprise she is lined with cedar to make everything smell fresh, which brings back so many memories of my grandparents and their cedar closet.

(Please stop judging our master bedroom.  It’s slated for a makeover, just trying to finish one of the other 3 rooms in limbo right now).

The husband truly has an eye for putting my vision into a reality.  Thanks to my “handy” husband for yet another project.  Stay tuned tomorrow you’ll see one of my FAVORITE pieces yet!

Secure and recharge

Our beloved first child (our dog) happens to LOVE bread.  When we leave, he finds a way to get all the bread an eat it.

(How can you get mad at this face)?!?! He’s a pure bred Weimaraner if you’re curious, whose can rest his head on a “normal” sized dining room table.

My husband came up with a solution, that not only secures the bread from the dog…it also helps to store the toaster and also serves as a recharge station for all of our cell phones, iPods, iPads, etc. every night.  This is one of my husband’s favorite projects. You may have already seen this here.

To appreciate this here’s what our little kitchen corner looked like before.  A useless spice rack (since I store all of my spices in the cupboard), weird empty space, and a smorgasboard of cords.  One of my BIGGEST pet peaves is having cords showing! Have I also mentioned that I like the spaces in my home to be not only pretty but functional whenever possible.

Here’s the inside- deep enough for house the toaster freeing up some space on one of my two pantry shelves.  It’s also wide enough for several different bread products.

You can kind of see how he made it above.  The door is made by “a bunch” (real technical, I know?!?) of thin wood slats glued to a piece of canvas.  There is a curved groove on the sides that the door travels up and down in.  There is a small open space in the back to allow the board from the toaster to pass through.

The top shelf has little slits in the back to fit our cell phone and iPod charging cords, with felt glued to the back to hold them in place.  I love that our phone and iPod have a place to rest peacefully each night to recharge without 17 cords spread out throughout the house!

This is just one more example of how I can tell the handy husband an idea of something I want, and he brings that idea to life!

Multipurpose Arbor

The next of my handy husbands project started 4 years ago, when we were planning our wedding.  We were married outside at my parents front yard, and I wanted some to serve as the focal point for the ceremony.  So he made a simple design that I could attach our rustic swag to and everything was perfect.
 

Of course I have a problem making something for a one time event and I wanted to reuse as much of our wedding decor as we could.  Just so happens we completely landscaped our yard the following year and the arbor was a perfect addition to our garden under the big pine tree.  Unfortunately for the arbor, an insane wind storm took the arbor to a state of disarray to the point that it was completely twisted.  RIP wedding arbor.

Last summer I talked my husband into creating a garden path into our garden under the big pine tree, by using the left over stone from our basement fireplace. (Yes my 1 year old little man supervised this project). He also laid all the landscaping stone you see to make this a raised bed.

Ooo, that wooden wagon you see in the picture above was made by my husband for our wedding too.

I digress.  Sorry, back to the arbor.  Turns out I really wanted out garden under the big pine tree to have a little welcome place, especially now since we had a cute little path.  And I love planting Morning Glories and they like to climb! So one day I came home and this is what I saw.

Apparently my little man liked it too!

Unfortunately my husband doesn’t capture the process of his creations for my blog.  All of the projects you will see this week he creates in his head.  if you are looking for plans for something email me and he can maybe help you  out!

The “handy” Husband

Once upon a time there was a creative crafty kind of girl who had big ideas.  She married a very handy man who helped her ideas come to life.  Together they’d find a way to make projects work regardless how impossible they might seem.  They’d also raise 2 children (for now) and a dog, and genuinely enjoy life together.

While our life is not exactly a fairy tale every day, I’m pretty fortunate to have an amazing husband who does all the handyman work around the house.   With Father’s day coming next week I thought I’d dedicate some posts to showcase his work and highlight how fortunate we are to have such handy man in the house.

Believe it or not, you’ve seen him around, but often only from the elbow to the fingers, and sometimes the top of his head.  Such as when he poses for me to get a picture of him cutting MDF for the chalkboards

or placing Disc hangers on plates to hang on the wall for the nursery

You’ve also likely seen the top of his (shiny 🙂 ) head while I was catching some action shots to redo our son’s dresser

or his back as he installed barn board on our son’s wall.

These are just a few on the ways you’ve seen him helping me out.  Turns out he’s an amazing wood worker and DIY kind of guy too.  Stay tuned tomorrow to see how he completely transformed our basement, and throughout the week to see his amazing skills.

While I love the fact that my husband is a handy DIY kind of guy, it’d be shallow of me not to mention one my favorite things about my husband….the time he spends with our children!  He’s certainly an amazing dad and wonderful husband, and “handy” to have around (Ha, lame right?!)