I'll be on the porch

It all started when Ali and I fixed the door from our garage to the back porch. It failed to shut properly since we moved in back in 1998 but it was the back porch and we had other other priorities.

The ugliness of the concrete block wall into which the door fit was an annoyance that I lived with, tried temporary fixes and groused about. For years, I had an item on my Christmas list for wall board to cover it up.

Then, earlier this year, on a trip to a local liquor store with Jeff, I saw an entry way paneled with a small mosaic of wooden wine crate panels. "That's it," I said. "That's what we should do with the porch."

In July, I started prepping. Was I putting off my angst over Alison's imminent residency at Purdue by scraping off the hideous brown, square linoleum flooring until I wore a hold in the center of my hand? Yes, of course.

We'd considered the flooring so terrible we didn't care if we spilled paint and glitter and glue from our various art projects when she was so little she didn't know I have no talent with paint or glitter or glue. I had happy flashbacks with every splatter I found as I tore off those squares.

It was another couple of weeks stripping the peeling paint from existing wood and the door, then priming and painting them.

Finally, we were ready to address the wall. I won't bore you with the hours of varnishing, measuring, cutting, re-measuring, re-cutting, sanding, gluing, mixing and matching it took to get us to the finished product. Notoriously impatient, I had Thanksgiving as a deadline for it all to be done.

We went through four tubes of "all weather" Gorilla Glue, two cans of paint stripper and have, of course, leftover primer and paint. I used most of our Goo Gone and probably will need more if we're to keep the floor. Jeff hates my idea of using wine corks as a baseboard, so we have that battle still to come. But miraculously it was a project with little marital discord.

Mostly because I gave Jeff moral support and fetched this and that while he worked out what when where. Our neighbors may tell you there was a fair amount of cursing and muttering. They're probably exaggerating.

More than 130 panels made it onto that wall; some in their original size and some pared down to fit.

The circle is a French oak red wine barrel top we scored on a trip to Casey Brewing and Blending in Glenwood Springs, CO. Seemed fitting that we included it because it blends Jeff's love of craft beer with my wine appreciation. (They age some their beer in wine barrels.) John, our tasting guru was kind enough to sign and date it for us.

Other than the wine barrel lid and my insistence in the spring (long before I saw the wall in that liquor store) that yes, we would find a use for those cool wine crates,  it was Jeff who secured the 170-plus wine panels we had to work with.

Some of the panels came as actual wine crates from local liquor stores. The last-minute donation from John and Chris at Kahn's Fine Wines saved us from the terrible fate of having to use duplicate panels.

Jim at The Wine Shop and the crew at SoBro Spirits contributed crates and panels, as well. Others were sourced by the bargain-hunting, eBay surfer, Captain Reed.

In addition to his procurement skill, Jeff is the master when it came to execution. Mostly because math and I kind of hate each other's guts and it turns out that math skills are key when trying to fit mismatched shapes onto a flat surface.

The Captain and I are at odds over whether to keep the floor as is. I kind of like it. It's old and has character. I can see it on the floor of a wine cellar. We'll get the curtains back up soon and I'll figure out what furniture will go in there. There's no heat or cooling out there, so we won't likely keep wine out there except to serve. There will be a lot of serving...

I'm settling into the idea that Ali doesn't live here anymore. Typing that sentence did make me cry, so maybe I'm not really there yet. It is so weird that she's not here. Sigh. But she's doing so well at Purdue. And she'll be home to visit soon. It's all good. All good.

Man, I might need some wine. Or I'll get started on the floor. Or the furniture. Or a care package for my little Boilermaker. Or actual PR work. Maybe I'll get back to what's going on in Claymont, and you know there's a ton of stuff happening there.

Until winter sets in, I'll be on the porch. Come on by. We'll have some wine.

We said it would be a month

Thirty days. 3.0. A month before we'd see our little Boilermaker.

It's advice gifted me by my friend Chris Austin in the form of "The Naked Roommate: For Parents Only." It's designed to ensure your child goes off to college and forms relationships and routine such that he/she will be more inclined to survive, if not thrive, their freshman college year.

But I forgot about Labor Day and its 3-day weekend.

"Let's go get her," I said to the Captain.

"We can't," he said. "She needs a month. You said so."

I huffed a bit but decided he was right. She made plans to visit a friend in Chicago and arranged for a bus ride to get herself there.

Back in Indy, we had an awesome time with Eric and Tracy at the Indians' game (Tracy's first baseball game, somehow), dinner with them, Jeff & Susan and Jack & Karen on Saturday; then a jaunt on the Red Line's debut day and dinner with Tracy & Eric and Karin & Dale on Sunday.

I checked on Ali -- she had a great time other than having to step around a pile of steaming vomit on a Chicago bus. Her friend Allie, shrugged and said, "You get used to it."

Sometime during the weekend, I lamented the 30-day thing to Jeff, who coughed and hesitated. "Yeah, about that," he said.

I narrowed my eyes.

"Remember that I go to the Purdue/Vanderbilt football game every year with Andy and Bryan?" he said.

I nodded.

"It's next weekend," he said. "We have an extra ticket. For Ali."

I wanted to complain. OK. I complained.

But I did want one of us to get eyes on the girl. Did I want it to be him without me? Nope. But such is life. Plus, I'd asked for a lot of additional work to keep me from being helicopter-y and the universe delivered. So I needed a day to catch up.

They had a great time. She showed up with proper spirit and appetite, hung out with them a while and ditched them to watch the game with some new buddies. 

As for the Indy weekend, here are a few shots. Should have taken more but we were more in the moment than I thought. It was a great weekend.

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.