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.

I used to go to a Taco Bell on South Capitol, about four blocks from where the stadium now sits. You had shout your order through three inches of Plexiglas to workers who were exemplars of incompetent disrespect. Once you placed your order, you waited 20 minutes to hear your number called. If you were lucky, you only had to entertain one or two con stories from panhandlers who lurked among the customers.

In order to get your food order, which was almost always wrong, the employees put the bag in a bulletproof compartment that had two doors. They couldn’t open their door unless yours was closed, and you couldn’t get your food until they secured the door on their side of the clear wall. Sometimes they left their door cracked and walked away to do who knows what in the back. If you tapped on the glass, the person working the register would shoot you a dark and piercing glare. The message was clear; “You just bought yourself another minute of waiting. Tap the glass again and see what happens.” You felt like a caged rat, wondering what trick you had to perform to get your cheese.

When the Gods of Taco Bell finally graced you with your grab bag of fast food, which may or may not include random side items from the KFC section of the menu, you had to run through a gauntlet of red-eyed bums to get back to your car. The whole endeavor was so bad that I eventually started driving out to Arlington to get my fix. That Taco Bell is now gone, and the whole area looks cleaner than ever before. I still wouldn’t want to be alone on the street after midnight, but the progress is impressive.

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.

At the time, we had recently bought a table and ladderback chair set from a thrift store on half price day. (Ah, the salad days…) It was a great set, but the finish on the tabletop was terrible. That deterred a lot of people, hence the low price, but we saw the value in it. We stripped it down and re-stained the top, but the rest of the table and chairs were painted a nice shade of green:

The idea was to paint and stain the teacup rack so it would match the table and chairs. I stained the beadboard the same tint as the tabletop, and I used the same painting technique that worked so well on my bar to give the teacup rack an antique look. I painted everything with a thick coat of brown paint, and then gently brushed on a thin coat of the green paint I had leftover from the porch swing. It came out great:

She was thrilled to have a place to show off her latest finds. She used to rotate them in and out depending on the season.

As luck would have it, there’s no place for this teacup rack anywhere in our new house. She wants to try to shoehorn it into our kitchen once we complete the remodel, but I just don’t see that happening. I’d say the odds are better than even that it’ll stay out in the garage along with her corner cabinet and the old table and chairs.

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, the 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 her 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 the 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.

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

I bought a couple of pieces of molding from the hardware store for the facing and then built a 1.5″ deep frame to hold the glass above the raised magazine covers.

We cut all the Hill Rag covers to the same size, used double-sided tape to adhere them to foam board, and then glued the foam board to a piece of stained oak paneling. I wanted the piece to have a ‘coffee and cream’ look (similar to our old corner cabinet) so it would blend in with our leather furniture and our honey oak floors.

I wanted the color of the artwork to really stand out from the dark backboard. Everyone uses monotone matting with a sunken focal point to give depth to a picture frame. I wanted to do the opposite, and I think we got the effect we were going for.

This angle lets you see the cover art a little better. Notice how the colors seem to jump off the oak:

The top row, from left to right, depicts:

• Eastern Market
• The Capitol at Christmas
• Alfresco Dining on 8th Street (Montmartre?)

The bottom row, from left to right, depicts:

• Baltimore Harbor
• The DC Skyline
• A Snow Day on the Hill

I still have a few dozen covers, so maybe we’ll make a sister piece when we move to a larger house.