Day 5

A house for Stonewall Jackson

... Before you start to think that I am being responsible and teaching my children a wonderful history lesson in mid-summer, think again. My hubby is a history buff, and we have two Civil War Generals names for our dogs. Our Black/Chocolate Lab is Mosby the Grey Ghost, and our Chihuahua is named Stonewall Jackson. We built Stoney a new dog house for our Day 5 project. He is rather small, and we have large predatorial birds around our hosue, so he has always slept inside, in the mud room. But I wasn't happy with the way the room looks with his bed on the floor. Also, the dog items took up the entire mudroom bench, which was suppose to be for the kids to sit on while taking off/putting on their shoes.

When you see the pics below, please go easy on me- Remember this is a mudroom, and I store all my hangers in here, so I can air dry clothes on laundry day! Sorry for the mess...

So on a whim (those usually get me in big trouble), we went to Lowes with our measurements. The nice men at Lowe's cut all the partical board exactly to my specification, which means a) it was much easier to get the small peices home, b) I wouldn't have to cut them myself, which leads me to c) my husband banned me from his power tools 8 years ago when I almost cut my thumb off with one, so he was happy the work was already done... actually, he had no idea about this project until he got home that night, but you get my point. We anchored the corners with 2x2 boards for stability. My Chihuahua is a porker.

Alex did a lot of the work himself. He has an engineering-type mind, and loves evaluating how things will go together.

Then, we all took turns spray painting the house black, inside and out.

As you can see, Ashi is in the midst of a very dramatic story right now! :)

We staple gunned a pillow case to each side of the front, making curtains for Stoney, then I tied each back with a big maroon bow! We had to coax him into it at first with a peanut butter treat, but he still wasn't so sure...

But it wasn't long before he loved his new house. I was able to use the top of it to house all our pet items and accessories- dog food lids, leashes and collars, and (ahem) Stoney's clothes. Sweet dreams, Stonewall!