When we lived in our tiny basement apartment on Capitol Hill, we had to maximize every inch of space. We had a little patio that was sunken beneath the deck in the back yard, and there was a space that was too low to stand, but just right for sitting. So when my wife (fiancée at the time) was out of town planning our wedding, I made her this porch swing as an engagement present:

Actually, I presented it as a swing that would go with the porch on a house I would buy for her someday.

If I remember correctly, it took me six hours to build and paint the swing. If I’d had a miter saw and a helper, I could have done it in three. Instead, I was working so fast that it’s a miracle I didn’t lose a finger.

Unfortunately, my fiancée was flying into BWI, so I had to leave to pick her up well before her plane landed. I bought some the lengths of chain and eye-bolts on the way to the airport, which cost the same amount as the rest of the porch swing materials combined. All together, this swing cost me $150 to build, paint and hang. She was so thrilled that she didn’t mind being drafted to help hang it when we got back to the house.

She eventually bought some cushions to jazz it up:

When we moved to SC, one of our prerequisites for a house was a porch that would fit a swing. It wasn’t long after we moved in that I crawled up into the attic and braced for the swing mounts. We let the cat test it for safety:

When I finished the new planter boxes a couple of weeks ago, the porch was finally finished. Everything was designed around the swing:

The other day, the lady driving the ice cream truck stopped in front of our house to tell my wife how much she liked our porch. Sometimes the best compliments come from the strangest places.

Random thought… Thanks to summers spent chasing the ice cream truck in my youth, I hear The Entertainer playing in my head whenever I think of Popsicles and ice cream. And whenever I actually hear the tune playing, I yearn for a bomb pop. Has anyone else been conditioned like this? I feel like Pavlov’s dog.