As I was sitting in the courthouse hallway waiting to be a witness in an armed robbery case I happened to be sitting next to a gentleman that was a builder, as we spoke, he mentioned that he was building the model home of the year for the Home builders Assoc. of Thurston County. He went on in great detail about wanting a special kitchen and bath. As my imagination ran away with me while the boredom of waiting to testify was starting to get the best of me, I said, "I can do that." His response, "bring me some drawings." I went home that night drew up the kitchen and bath took the drawings to the builder the next day and got an overwhelming response. I had never made a kitchen cabinet in my life. I went to the folks house, showed Dad the drawings and asked him if he wanted to help me build a kitchen, he looked at the drawings and with great enthusiasm said,"are you nuts?" We did build the cabinets with a lot of inlay and marquetry. The whole back side of the island is veneered and inlaid. The best part of the whole experience though came when we installed the cabinets, we had not left quite enough room between cabinets to install the trash compactor, after some discussion on how to resolve our problem, we found a piece of cardboard and placed on the front of the compactor, we then sat down on the floor together and pushed it in with our feet. I can't remember laughing any harder than we did that day. Father's hope was that the appliance had a lifetime warranty.Sunday, April 13, 2008
An unexpected project
As I was sitting in the courthouse hallway waiting to be a witness in an armed robbery case I happened to be sitting next to a gentleman that was a builder, as we spoke, he mentioned that he was building the model home of the year for the Home builders Assoc. of Thurston County. He went on in great detail about wanting a special kitchen and bath. As my imagination ran away with me while the boredom of waiting to testify was starting to get the best of me, I said, "I can do that." His response, "bring me some drawings." I went home that night drew up the kitchen and bath took the drawings to the builder the next day and got an overwhelming response. I had never made a kitchen cabinet in my life. I went to the folks house, showed Dad the drawings and asked him if he wanted to help me build a kitchen, he looked at the drawings and with great enthusiasm said,"are you nuts?" We did build the cabinets with a lot of inlay and marquetry. The whole back side of the island is veneered and inlaid. The best part of the whole experience though came when we installed the cabinets, we had not left quite enough room between cabinets to install the trash compactor, after some discussion on how to resolve our problem, we found a piece of cardboard and placed on the front of the compactor, we then sat down on the floor together and pushed it in with our feet. I can't remember laughing any harder than we did that day. Father's hope was that the appliance had a lifetime warranty.
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4 comments:
That is a beautiful and one of a kind kitchen.It represents lots of hard work. Steve must not have been taught that some things are impossible. If we look very close, I think we will see the cardboard sticking out!
I think I want one of those! What a beautiful set of cabinets - and what a great memory of working with Dad. I wonder how many times Dad would have said to Steve, "Are you nuts?" as he has built light fixtures that he didn't know how to build until after they were done, and other projects that were creative.
One thing about Dad, he could snort and say he would quit on a project, but he never did - or, when he got in the middle of a difficult picture, state that he would never do that again. And then turn around and do something more difficult. Actually, he was a lot of fun to work with - after Steve left and I married Ron, he decided that I needed to learn how to do marquetry, so I did.
What fun it was to hang out with Grandpa and Steve at the shop that summer! I loved learning to mortise face frames and puttying and sanding cabinet boxes and drawers to prepare for finishing. Of course, what really made it all worth while was listening to those two hoot and holler along with the radio preachers in between trying to sing along with some of the old-time country singers!
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