Now I Am Ready

It was in the early part of November that I returned from my stay in China. I wasn't ready to return as there was so much left to do there and I really didn't want to leave my time with people to spend time with things. It seems that each return to the states becomes more difficult than the time before.

At home there were two big projects waiting for me - the outside stairs and the upstairs kitchen - and several smaller ones. Teaching in the church, conversation in English with college students at the coffee shop, teaching students at the university, time with my Chinese family and their friends, and especially time with God praying for his work in China hold a very special place in my heart. And when I compare this with working on projects and being in a culture that is obsessed with entertainment and comfort, I am left feeling very alone and long to spend time with my friends on the other side of the world.

While the weather was good I forced myself to work on the stairs and nearly finished, but a weather change had the upper hand and I had to retreat to where it was warmer and dryer. Inside I worked on smaller projects, but I could not get myself to tackle the upstairs kitchen and so I put it off. - I did fix the two doors.

Christmas came - a most difficult time of the year for me - and left, which provided some quality time with family in Arizona and now that January is half gone and I still haven't gotten upstairs to finish the work, but something inside of me was changing. On Friday I went up to assess what I had left and went to the shop to check out my supply of materials. I got out a scrap piece of paper and sketched out two cabinets I needed to build and how to make them out of my remaining materials. One of those cabinets was needed upstairs and the other was needed as a support for my new router table. I moved things around in the shop and cut out the necessary pieces as the day was ending. Saturday morning I was back in the shop, fired up my new router to rabbit out the area for the joints for the upstairs cabinet and assembled the panels and took two pictures.

The first picture shows the space to the right of where the refrigerator goes, which needs a base cabinet.

The second picture shows the cabinet, lacking the front trim, sitting on the table saw in the shop.

Plans for Monday - as you read this - are to finish assembling the cabinet and apply the primer. If I can get the two finish coats on during Tuesday, I can then install it in the kitchen on Wednesday morning. While these paint applications are drying I hope to build the cabinet for the router table.

All of this to say that I am finally back into kitchen building mode and unless something unplanned by me takes precedence, the blog entries for a few days should report on my progress or maybe lack of it upstairs. - I hope Jiajing has early morning classes as she sleeps above the shop and next to the kitchen.