What fun and busy weekend it was. We finally got the window seat / storage finished. Well almost, a couple more tweaks and then we are finished. But we are doing the celebrating now :). This was such a big project for us. Making sure to get the measurements right and at the same time adjusting for the 100-year-old wonkiness of the walls and floors. Bear, I think, is the happiest about the new bench. We put her bed up there and I think she has only left it for the bare necessities.

Since this is a built-in and hope that it stays even after we are long gone, we burned our names and year into it. I think this is one of my favorite parts :). And as you can see from the pictures, we were cutting the cedar for the front into the late hours of the evening. But it was totally worth it!

At the same time as the bench, we were taping off the bathroom, priming, and painting it. We successfully got that done as well. To say we are zonked would be an understatement. Wishing we had a weekend to recover from our weekend. :) But when it's all said and done, we are both so excited to have those two projects finished. What a joy to have this time together, that we can work on building our house into a home.

At the start of the weekend I (Jennifer) always say, I sure would like to rest at some point this weekend. I really need to stop saying that. haha. This weekend we busted out the frame for the window seat that will double as some much needed storage. Keil, as usual, was amazing at taking my colorful drawing and turning it into a strong, sturdy, and beautiful piece. We had a few parts that were rocky, but we got past those and we got the frame up. All we need to do now is get the tongue-and-groove cedar front put on and the hinges and lid on. Here is how far we got today and yesterday.

Before we get to the “good stuff” I am going to refresh your memory on what the top of our stairs used to look like when we first bought the house….

OK, now on to building the pantry part. Last week we replaced the door at the top of the stairs so it would open in to the kitchen. This freed up the space behind the door to build shelves and make a small pantry to hold all our jars. Keil worked really hard to get the wires run and the wall closed up so we could install the tin. The next step was to build the shelves to fit in that space. We chose to shorten the shelves on the left so it wouldn’t cause a problem with coming up and down the stairs.

The quick version of the process...

Now we just need to decide if we are going to put little lips on the shelves to keep the jars from moving. Also I would like to put some hooks to the left of the shelves to hang aprons and such. And then we need to fill it! YAY! Will post more pictures once we are finished.