Chris and I booked a few days off work this week to go up to my stepdad's cottage and have a bit of a vacation. Trouble was, the place is in Magnetawan, which is way, way, WAY too far for me to ever reasonably go again unless I am bribed somehow. The only sunshine we got the entire time happened during the four-hour drive. We arrived, got excited about the amazing new deck they just built, took note of the canoes and paddleboat and the scenery, tossed some food on the barbie, and there it was. Rain.
And more rain, and more rain, and more rain.
We practiced ballet moves to the Timber Timbre record for a while (mostly me, while Chris judged), napped, played tons of darts, napped, got better at darts (see above photo), went to the general store for a giant filet of salmon that we never ended up BBQing due to the aforementioned inclement weather, napped...and finally drove an hour to Huntsville to see the new Harry Potter movie. (Bonus: we found a Little Caesar's in town and got a pizza and Crazy Bread, which almost made up for the missed salmon experience.) Had a bit of a nightmarish drive back in super creepy fog, maaaaybe thought we were gonna die for a second there, but we made it.
On Saturday, greeted with (what else?) more rain, we decided to pack it in and drive to my mom's place in Rockwood. An overnight in the country less than an hour from the city is better, in my opinion, than a cottage an hour from anything that you can't take advantage of in that weather. Plus, there's only so much Chris and I can drink by ourselves (a theory that two years ago I would have proudly disproved), but my mom and Bob like to party!
We ended up getting tasky and using their awesome wood shop to build something I've been meaning to for a while: a storage bench for our back deck.
We rounded up some tongue and groove boards, treated them, and glued them together for the sides and top. Got some pressure-treated planks for the bottom panel and the skis the entire thing sits on. After the glued pieces dried, Chris stained them black, and we assembled it.
And here it is after being carted back to our house, a trip during which I looked back into the truck bed and realized...WE JUST BUILT A COFFIN.
At any rate, it's a coffin that holds tools and all kinds of junk that we just don't have closet space for inside the house. SUCCESS! I honestly just sketched this thing on a napkin when I took it to Home Depot for supplies, so I really wasn't too sure HOW to do this, but I did it anyway. Hopefully it's right; it would definitely be horrible if guests crashed through the top due to inferior support and poor construction technique.
I'd stolen a couple of Sunbrella-clad bench cushions from the garbage outside my gym a while ago after they'd caught fire during a duMaurier-sponsored party. (Yes, that's right, they had a cigarette party AT MY GYM...and THERE WAS A FIRE. There's a lesson in there somewhere.) I'm hoping Angelune will come over and help me sew up the cut-off burnt ends so that they don't look like a blind child stitched them up. I may have a sewing machine, but Ange is way more of a wizard at that stuff than I am. All in all, I think we made up for the doomed trip up north (and I mean north...seriously, it is three times further away from Toronto than outer space is) by being super-productive at my mom's house. yay.Labels: DIY, playtime
