1 post tagged “my dad rules”
As I mentioned a while back, my Dad offered to make me a piece of furniture as one of his Christmas presents to me this past Christmas. See, every year for at least the past eleven (twelve? thirteen? fifteen?) years he's come up with a "Drosselmeyer present" for my brother, my sister, and myself, sometimes variations on a theme (nightstands one year, where he carved a butler stand for my brother, a French side table with fluted legs for my sister, and a wooden Doric column for me, doorstops another when I wound up with an amazing ceramic Maltese Falcon), sometimes similar presents (carved beach terns poised on driftwood, Native American Navajo storyteller dolls), and a couple years back he and my Mom collaborated and did Father Christmas statues (carved, painted, gold-leaved). This year he decided to give us each "a piece of furniture of [our] choice". I didn't need to think long - I wanted a butcher's block table.
So the 2 foot by 2 foot by 4 inches Boos Block (from Effingham, Illinois) arrived about a month and a half ago, all 75 glorious pounds of solid hard maple with edge grain. All the while he's been building and assembling and staining and waxing the base for it out of pine, 32 and 3/4 inches tall so as to be the perfect height (with the additional 4 inches of the block) for chopping and slicing and doing wonderfully barbaric things to sides of meat. And it went into the post last week, via DHL. And lo and behold, when I arrived home this evening, a bigass box was awaiting me in my lobby.
Into the elevator and into my apartment, I lay the template he provided me on the bottom of the block, fired up my trusty Black and Decker drill with the 1/2 inch bit that he sent along, and drilled the four holes into the block so it would sit into the pegs at the tops of the legs. And with a(n) (un)healthy amount of stubbornness (and the spoils of a daily boxing and lifting routine), hoisted up said Boos block, gently navigated it over the pegs, lined up the holes, and set it in place. And it's fucking awesome. And so is my Dad. Thank you Dad, for another amazing piece of furniture, and for, as always, you and Mom making Christmas such a magical time of year.
