A Tale of Two Fireplaces, or The Loft Gets a Facelift

The plans for the three-day weekend were to finally build the bookshelves in the loft. During the first steps of purging and rearranging on Saturday, Adam casually brings up the suggestion that we put an electric fireplace along the sloped wall - which of course we will need first, to build the shelves around. Recognizing this for the clear stall tactic that it was, I still fell for it, so we went fireplace shopping. Unfortunately, while we were shopping for the electric fireplace, Quin put a log into the wood-burning fireplace downstairs when Mom was chasing the other kids in a different room. Evidently she placed it nicely, but must have touched the top of the fireplace with her hand in the process. The poor thing has blisters on three of her fingers, but she must have the pain tolerance of a Navy Seal, because according to Mom she never even made a sound. She just walked up to her, showed Mom her hand, and said "hurts."

She had broken one blister rubbing it before Adam and I got home, but we treated it with burn cream and dressed it for the night. She had some pain on Sunday, and is fine today. But we didn't get much more done on Saturday night.

Sunday we planned to start building the shelves. But it turns out the router won't lock on the table, which means we can't piece the boards together the way we want to. So after storing all of this lovely red oak in our garage for three months, we end up taking it back to Lowe's and shopping for pre-fabbed shelves. Rough work we can do; finish carpenters we are not!

So the pre-fabbed road we go, and the remainder of Sunday and all day Monday I live with a screwdriver in my hands. We're pretty happy with the results; I can't wait to work from home on Wednesday!

Next weekend, we start hauling up boxes of books from the basement to fill the shelves. . .