Trent’s Christmas Projects

I almost don’t know what to say about Trent’s Christmas projects.  “If you’re gonna be a bear, be a grizzly” seems appropriate.  When he decided to really jump into woodworking and make Christmas presents, his creative, hardworking, perfectionist spirit took over.

After full days at work, he spent night after night in our garage and our neighbor’s garage to design, build, and paint an incredible kitchen for Rush and managed to finish 8 (eight) cutting boards as well. 

I think our neighbor put it best when he saw the finished kitchen:  “Well, I think you’ve created a family heirloom.”  We are not getting rid of it, ever.  Either our grandkids will be playing with it at our house or Trent will have to make something cool every time we have a new child so they all have something to take to their own homes for their kids to play with.  

I really like that it’s painted just like our kitchen.  It’s not just that our kitchen walls are blue and so is the toy kitchen.  It’s the same paint that we used for our kitchen walls, so in fact it matches perfectly.

The cutting boards, or excuse me, serving boards, were a lot more work than either of us anticipated, but they turned into a beautiful finished project.  The end result is so smooth and polished that I almost wouldn’t believe that Trent actually made them, other than the fact that as Christmas day drew closer and closer I was nagging him for daily updates and schedules.

He pulled it off and finished everything.  The kitchen received its final coat of polyurethane on December 23 and the serving boards were still leaking mineral oil into their wrapping paper as they sat under the tree, but all were finished and beautiful.

Trent did walk home from the neighbor’s house the other day with a stack of woodworking patterns.  I think he’s getting an early start for next Christmas.