Pergola for family gatherings!

So, with 7 kids, we are finding it more and more difficult to fit everyone together comfortably for outdoor meals (one of our favorite family activities), especially when we have guests joining us.  We used to have a little 6 person glass outdoor table sitting down on some concrete in the back yard with an umbrella since it is a sunny location.  It just wasn't functional for us anymore.  Then, we came across some outdoor tables at Home Depot on sale that would be the perfect size for all of us if we bought two of them and benches and chairs to match, so we snatched them up.  But we wanted to be able to use them end to end as one really long table when we have guests or side by side as one big square table when it is just our family, which presented challenges when using umbrellas for shade.  So, we thought, "this would be a really nice spot for a pergola!"  But, the prefab pergolas just weren't very exciting.  So, I found a Pergola manufacturer that was willing to do custom orders and I designed this pergola for the concrete slab to fit over our new table set-up.  My husband ordered some wisteria to grow on it that should be here in a few days.  Meanwhile, the parts were sent out for the pergola I designed but some were missing.  I have assembled it so far and am still waiting on the missing parts.  I've had to do some fandangling and jerryrigging and had to drill some new holes to correct some problems with the prefabrication (no project goes perfectly the first time around), but it is coming together nicely and is so beautiful.  I am waiting for the missing parts to be delivered before I anchor it to the concrete so the posts are not perfectly plumb in these pictures, but they will be once I get everything anchored.  It is redwood with a dark mission stain and just gorgeous!  I CANNOT wait until the missing pieces show up so I can finish this project and start using the space!  So exciting!

Desks for all!

I've been so caught up in building up our business that I forgot to take pictures of the projects I've been working on at home!  So sorry!  I started building desks for our library before Christmas 2018, but then got very sick and didn't get them done in time for Christmas.  I finished them up (mostly) in January 2019.  I probably never took pictures because I haven't actually finished them yet.  I still need to build the organizers that will sit on top and stain everything.  But, I thought I better get them documented now and add the organizers later.  Little did I know that this year (2020) we would be facing the global COVID-19 pandemic and these desks would become invaluably useful for my kids as we had to switch to home learning and Zoom classes for 5 of my 7 kids!  After the school kids all started needing the big desks at the same time and took them over so the little ones had no desks to use anymore, I decided that I better build the little ones a desk of their own to do their drawings on.  So, last week I built a cute little mini-sized desk just the right size for the 2- and 3-year-old kids.  My 6-year-old has been enjoying it as well.  My 13-year-old suggested I make the stool with 3 legs instead of 4 and I think he was right on pointe with that suggestion.  The matching stool turned out SO cute!  Glad I have smart, artistic kids that are now old enough to give input and start contributing!  These desks are all taking a beating and holding up beautifully!  They are hard-working pieces of furniture for sure!  The big desks all share one long desktop but are separate pieces so could be separated into two separate large desks in the future if we ever want.  Here are some more pictures of the building process (what few I remembered to take--sorry I'm not better at remembering to document the process:  I'm always to focused on what I'm doing):