The shelf belongs to the butcher block island that's now in our kitchen. First, it lived in our garage - you can see it here, masquerading as a workbench, under the wood and the drill. That's because, for 25 years, it lived in my parents' basement and it was my dad's workbench. And before that, it was the island in the house we lived in when I was 2-6 years old, and I think in the apartment before that too. So this piece of butcher block and I go back a long way.
We need more counter space in our kitchen and Mom and Dad offered it to us. Lucky us! So we decided to build a low shelf under it to hold all our appliances, which were at that time sitting in boxes on the kitchen floor. And we know Anthony would not build just any old shelf, so he drew up some plans and we had an epic trip to Home Depot (complete with a cameo by Judge Marvin Van Hise himself).
Then Anthony set to work in the garage. Here's what it looked like:
It's gorgeous! Here's the final product. It's strong enough to drive trucks over.
Excuse the sandwich. The shelf-maker must be fed!
We sanded both the shelf and the butcher block, and they're soft and wonderful to touch now. The greatest thing about having this in our kitchen, for me, is its history. We deliberately didn't sand off all the marks on the top surface, and this one is my favorite:
It's in the upper right corner, and I love it because it's from my great-grandmother's meat grinder. How cool is that?!
The first really fun thing we did with it was make banana bread with Avery and Cooper. They stood on my little stool - from when I was little; it says "stand up to be tall, sit down to be small" on it - and mixed and we made fabulous, yummy treats. So another generation got to use it. Made me happy.
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