Assembly Required

The last weekend of May was a busy one at our house. While out exploring one Saturday, hubby and I stopped at an Ace Hardware in Bellevue and bought four adirondack chairs for our yard. I've always wanted a set, and they just happened to be on sale. The only hitch in the giddy-up was, the chairs came in a box and the box was stamped "Assembly Required." Oh boy!

We opened one of the boxes on the display and got the instructions out to see how hard it would be to put one together. The salesperson assured us it wasn't hard at all if you were organized about how you laid it all out and as long as you just took things step-by-step. Hubby seemed up for the project, so we bought four "chairs" and about nine cans of red spray paint and headed off for home.

We couldn't have picked a worse weekend for an outdoor project! We were in the midst of a record-breaking heat wave with temperatures in the 90's and it was miserable, but as soon as we got up Sunday morning, we found ourselves out in the backyard tackling the first chair. Sid set up a big piece of plywood on top of two sawhorses for our table and we laid out all the pieces of wood and bags of hardware. First step was to paint all the boards. After they were dry, we got out those handy-dandy instructions and started with chair number one.

About an hour later, we had the first chair together and boy was it ever beautiful! Exactly what I had always wanted and absolutely perfect! One down and three more to go! Poor hubby spent the entire day painting, waiting for paint to dry, and then assembling and later that evening, we had four perfect chairs around our fire pit.

While we were building chairs in the backyard, another "Assembly Required" project was happening on our front porch. It seems that two sets of red finches decided to build nests in each of our ferns and they must have been busy all day because that evening when I went to water the ferns, there were two perfectly formed nests that hadn't been there the evening before.

Now, a few weeks later, we've been enjoying our beautiful new chairs and the finches have filled their nests. One nest has five newly hatched baby birds in it, and the other has two tiny blue eggs. All of us are reaping the benefits of a job well done!