In One Hour

Today I had an hour before I had to leave to go to work for the afternoon, and I decided to use that hour to be my most productive self, finally starting--and finishing!--a project that I've been planning for months. Our beloved carpenter friends recently finished putting up a bunch of shelves in our kitchen (we designed the shelves to match our kids' play kitchen, and they are so perfect), and I'd been eyeing the empty space between one set of shelves and our kitchen stove, sensing its potential.

the before picture

Our Hearth is finally finished now too (all that had been missing was the wooden rim around the edge, but it had been driving me crazy). Our talented pals used some of the cherry leftover from the kitchen shelves project to make the rim.

Finished!

And I can't tell you how overjoyed I was to find out that there was still a bit more cherry remaining, a piece that wasn't needed for the Hearth. I knew exactly what to do with it. One piece of cherry wood (2" x 34"), and one wooden dowel were about to add a wonderful touch to our kitchen.

the materials

first I drilled 11 holes in the cherry, each 3 inches apart

next I cut the dowel into 3-inch-long pieces, sanded them,
and glued them in the holes
(note my helpers' feet!)

the final step was to add some beeswax polish . . .

. . . and then hang my finished work on the wall!

I love the way this simple, simple project that took no more than one hour to complete, has added so much to our kitchen. The new-and-improved stove set-up:

And I apologize, once again, for my continued difficulties in finding time to write in this space. Because I would like to be writing here more--much more--I am going to give myself a bit of a jump start by blogging every day for the rest of this month, hoping it will start a trend for the rest of 2010.