How to Build a Bench

Down by the pond lived a shed housing a large mystery engine and all its accompanying wires and pipes.  The shed was a bit falling down with the doors coming off the hinges and a few shingles missing.  We weren't exactly sure what its function had been - one person told us it was a turbine engine to produce electricity.  We eventually decided it had probably been tied into the sprinkler system for the yard.  Whatever it had done in the past, it did nothing now but provide a home for an astonishing variety of spiders.

We had originally planned to put new doors on it and paint it and just leave well enough alone, which has worked out *so* well for us in the past.  Next thing I know, this happens:

The shed was torn down and most of the pipes cut away.  The main pipe and the engine itself were both too entrenched and heavy to take out, which left us with a cement slab and an engine.  A suggestion was made that we could put a bench there and maybe built some sort of table over the 

engine.  And then this happened:

I guess technically that could be considered a bench and a table.

The brand new deck overlooking the pond with a bench seat and chairs

Come on Inn, Y'all!

Taking down the old sign

So many moons ago (23 of them to be exact), we set up an obscenely tall ladder on the gentle slope that is our road and spent some time fixing up the Chestnut Walk archway that presides over the entry to the Inn.  Although the arch is pretty solid, it is also quite tall and sways alarmingly when one is fifteen feet or so up on a ladder.

We painted the chipping sign and removed the old bed and breakfast sign that was hanging from the archway.  This was necessary both to take down the old name (which we had no ownership of) and it helped slow the flow of people coming to see the Inn.  We love visitors, but at the time parts of the house and grounds were unsafe and we had all kinds of projects in various states of completion.  In other words, it's been a bit of a mess.

But now the honey-do list has shrunk from a thousand things to a mere five hundred and we are actually getting ready for our grand opening!  So we decided to put up a new sign.

We decided on a painted wood sign for now, in the shape of our leaf logo.  What, you thought we would do a simple rectangle?  Crazy talk.

We painted the sign grey and then hand painted the leaf outline in red laquer

Next we hand lettered the Inn name with a black Sharpie paint pen  - I love these things

Hanging the sign - a little to left, honey!

The finished sign, mostly straight and almost centered