This is the house that Tom built

Remember when Tom and Peter demolished our old garden shed last summer…

…and then Tom began building a writer’s retreat for me?

(Carol? Wake up!)

Er, I mean when Tom started building his workshop man cave?

Well, somewhere during that period of time Tom got laid off – which meant that his literal man cave became a figurative one as well, and he threw himself into his new “job.”

This is the result:

Even the inside is amazing! Every surface is covered with peg board (which must be to men what shoes are to women).

Now “all” that’s left is building a workbench, assembling some cabinets, and the fun part (for me), moving all his man stuff out of the garage and into his man cave.

I know what you’re thinking. Tom’s unemployed… he does beautiful work around the house… he should do this stuff for a living. Right?

Wrong.

Tom is a total perfectionist when it comes to building and remodeling! The fireplace downstairs took him two years to build.

From this:

To this:

The upstairs fireplace took a year.

From this:

To this:

Our bathroom… Well, I don’t even have before photos, but here are a few “afters”:

And the downstairs bathroom went from this godawful mess…

To this (also over a period of more than a year!):

If he weren’t such a dang perfectionist and if he could just so schlocky work like I do (around the house, anyway), maybe he could make a decent living at this, but would YOU wait a year for a fireplace or a bathroom?

We haven’t begun remodeling our kitchen yet. Guess why?