The wife and I drove up to DC recently to explore our old haunts and visit some friends. Some things looked different and some things looked the same, but the biggest change was in the Navy Yard area where the new Washington Nationals stadium was built:

We moved away from DC just before the stadium was built and were amazed by the development in the surrounding area. Although still in the early stages of gentrification, the neighborhood is much nicer and more developed than it was when I lived there.

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One random morning a few years ago, I got the itch to build something. My wife has a fetish for teacups, but didn’t have a place to put them. I had recently made her a corner cabinet to display her wedding china and tea service sets, and I thought I’d make something to show off her favorite teacups. We really didn’t have much spare room in our cramped DC apartment, but we had a small area between the pantry and laundry doors in the kitchen. I jotted down this design and got her to sign off on it:

If I remember correctly, I had some leftover 1x3s and some beadboard from previous projects, so I really only had to buy some molding and hardware.

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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.

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When we lived on Capitol Hill, we kept our copies of the free community monthly, the Hill Rag. The cover art was usually pretty good, and we thought it would be fun to frame them someday. So for an anniversary gift to one another a couple of years ago, I made this piece to rest on the mantle of our new house:

I made it in such a hurry that I forgot to take pictures of it during construction.

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