We are building an awesome wall

It's probably not The Wall that first sprang to your mind. This one is a happy wall. An inviting wall. A wall that says, "Hey, come on in here and stay a while."

That's of course as long as we don't get divorced getting it up.

The Before, though in my defense this was a rare
time we used the porch as a storage shed.

The Captain and I don't have a stellar record of working closely together. Years ago, before we were married, he dropped in on me at work to spend some quality time just hanging out. I was at work. I may have given him the hand.

Later, he came home to find me rebuilding the walkway from the driveway to the house. "Have you done ANY research into how to do that right?" he asked.

Talk about a project delay. The Central Avenue bridge project has nothing on Jeff Reed interrupting my divine inspirations.

No excuse for letting this go so long.

Our project right now is covering up the ugly, painted concrete block wall that serves as the garage wall on one side and the back porch on the other. It's going to -- one day -- be covered in wine crate panels. I did all the grunt work of stripping old paint, repainting and removing some fairly hideous linoleum tiles from the floor, cleaning, prepping, etc... The Captain kept measuring the wall in his head and comparing it to the size of the panels.

I was all set to start gluing the panels we had on hand straight to the wall. He kept muttering about the effect moisture and extreme temperatures have one wood. (The porch isn't heated or air-conditioned.)

I maintained that the wooden ceiling is in pristine shape and, I thought to myself: "Wine crates survive in caves and coolers and out in the vineyard. They must love weather shifts. Plus, imperfections in the wood is what will make the wall extra cool.

He decided we needed furring strips so we could test the glue on painted concrete and we could adhere wood to wood. Sigh.

"Did you wait for that paint to fully dry before you put on a second coat?" he asked me after inspecting the door.

I wisely did not answer. A few weeks later, he said, "You're going to have to do more painting around that door."

As he's was paying way more attention, I waited a loooooong time between those coats.

Then, he said we needed to coat the wine panels with urethane. The guy at Lowe's agreed with him, so he came home with more brushes and rollers and other home improvement paraphernalia.

Him: "Two coats!" "Get the edges and the grooves." "Don't drip on the edges!" "Go slow! It bubbles if you don't and I have to sand that down." "Slow down!"  "Let it dry!"

Me: Sigh.

While he measured and muttered and chastised the wood for not being exactly what he wanted and wondered if the panels had grown or shrank since his last measure, I spent a good hour or so arranging the first section of the wall with the panels that were -- finally! urethaned and properly dried.

I used an old sheet on the garage floor that I'd marked with the dimensions of the wall. (Not my idea; but it was a good one.) Except the sheet was old and stretchy, and my lines didn't match up exactly right. In my defense, you try using a Sharpie to mark a straight, 88-inch-long line on a sheet that you don't discover until later is already not straight. I could have used Donald Trump's expertise at this point.

"Hmmm," said the Captain, later examining my work and mentally judging it against the actual wall. I went to bed. He stayed up and reconfigured.

Over the years, we've learned a few things about working together.

1. I will never have his patience and when it comes to needing to measure stuff, I should just let Captain OCD do it. 
2. He will never like grunt work or cleanup and I should play to my strengths.
3. When he talks to himself, don't engage. He's arguing with the wood or the faucet or the glue. Entering those conversations just delays the project.
4. What I lack in precision and detail, I make up for in energy and flexibility. You've got a better idea? Go for it. I'll be watching TV. And I'll bring you a drink and a snack later.

This explains why today on our full day of wall work, I'm at my laptop and he is buzzing about outside measuring our latest panels, and doing his own version of the jigsaw puzzle of how the panels will fit. He's become more committed to the project of late and when asked, "How's your wife's wall project coming along," His response was, "It's my project now."

Truth be told, I need him on this. I may or may not have glued one panel upside down while I was working solo the other day but caught and corrected it before the glue dried, and, more importantly, before the Captain got home. It was perfectly positioned in its place but for the upside down thing...

Do I need his concern that we not have two French wine panels right next to each other? Nope. But I direct you to Rule No. 1 of The Rules of Working Well with Captain Reed. If we ever finish, it'll be better fitted together than had I done it alone. Will anyone really notice but us? I say no. The Captain disagrees and reminds me that HE will notice.

There's not a lot of uniformity when it comes to wine panels when it comes to width, length or thickness -- a fact I'm counting on to make the wall interesting.

I scored the top of a wine barrel a brewery in Colorado uses to age beer. Seems like a perfect way to merge my wine appreciation and Jeff's craft beer fixation. Plus, it's wicked big, round and will take up a lot of room. Configuring around it will be a chore for Captain OCD and his new/old saw he brought home from Maine.

Some of the panels we got at local stores, but Jeff has been eBaying like a demon. We have had and even still have some of the bottles from the brands, but not most of them.

All in all, it's been a fun project. He's occasionally mentioned the cost of all the panels that he's been ordering. I remind him that my wall will stand for years while his craft beer is literally pissed away, remembered only on his beer app.

Here's where we were yesterday. We're hoping to finish the short wall today. Judging by the conversation going on in the porch right now, I'd say that's ambitious. If you're within earshot, I apologize for the language.