It's Never Too Early

It was probably a year ago, if not longer, that Whitney and I were wandering through a Salvation Army store, looking for furniture (well, we've done that a billion times, but we've only ever come away with any one time, I believe). While we weren't hunting for one, we came across an awesome, wooden rocking chair. My family (and many of my co-workers and college friends) will tell you that I love rocking chairs. I don't know what it is, but even if my chair doesn't move, I always do. In fact, I'm rocking back and forth in a stationary chair as I type this. I don't even think about it anymore; it's very much a subconscious thing. That's actually one of the things that difficult about a new job - people noticing it for the first time and calling me on it. But once everyone notices it, I can joke along with them and it's no longer weird. I still think I'm in the weird stage at my current job in that regard.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there. We managed to lower the price on the chair a bit, and for $20, we came away with this:

It may be hard to tell from the picture, but there were quite a few places, especially on the legs, where the paint was old and chipping. We actually had it in our living room just as you see it for months, and even moved it here to Idaho before we started tackling refinishing it, which was our goal all along.

Once we started the adoption paperwork, it was especially exciting to start working on a chair that we can rock our baby in one day. Plus it was fun to have a project to work on together. Here it is after we sanded down all the rough places and stripped all the peeling paint.

And the sanded paint powder got all over our clothes.

Naturally, Whitney couldn't resist making her mark. I felt like an orc from Lord of the Rings.

She had to go and make the event a PG-13 affair.

Several coats of white spray paint later, we were very pleased with our final product. Now it's sitting in the house waiting for the arrival of a little one.

After all, it's never too early.