When I saw this on pinterest a long time ago I put it on my project list. Then it made the list 'to do before baby 4'. And there it stayed...and stayed. On Saturday I mentioned to David, somewhat on a whim, that maybe we could go get a piece of wood and start. David liked the idea of this project from the beginning, a way to measure our kids' growth and have it be transportable in case of a move, plus it just looks cool.
David knew where to go to get some wood (he made our flower beds remember), he found an awesome piece of solid Teak Wood. While David had the guy plane and sand it some and get it looking good, the kids and I danced in the car to our catechism songs, they still LOVE them. We waited at least 30 minutes, with NO complaining....buy the album! We went and ate noodles, egg pancakes, and lemon drinks for lunch, and David bought an 'L' measuring thing (have no idea what this is called), to make sure we would get things straight on our board. Without this instrument this would not have turned out well at all.
We really did not quite know what we were getting into. Online we found the
paper/poster kind starting at $30, the wooden variety were never less
than $100 and we found one of solid oak that was going for (gasp)
$456.00. We were just browsing for ideas of how to put the numbers on,
and since we live in Asia, we knew we had to do both Metric and Feet.
We chose a side, and then started practicing on the back. I did buy some decent stencils last time we were in the U.S. and these are what we used! We opted out of paint, too messy, we used a sharpie. I could write an ode to this sharpie pen, seriously.
It was a Saturday, Tobin was napping, Bella was allowed to watch a video because Sophia went to the movies with a friend. Bella also colored and watched us a lot. We got a solid 2.5 hours of work in and had a long way to go.
We toyed with the idea of starting a business, rare teak wood, made-to-order. After hour 4 we said no way.
Lighting is bad, but it started to take shape and we were pleased.
We had to stop for dinner, and to take care of kiddos! We still had all the metric measurements to go! Ugh. We wanted this to end in a day, so as soon as the kids were down we went back to it. Because David is even more meticulous than I am in measuring, aligning, perfecting, we spent some time on trying to get all the numbers straight, spaced correctly, etc. Not to mention the fact that we were constantly re-checking to make sure that we were actually writing the correct numbers!
We aren't super sure how long it took us total. We always stopped in-between to take care of kids, etc. But I think about five hours is a good estimate. It was tedious and nerve-racking, but every time we finished a number we would fix any smears, and be encouraged...it was looking really good. In the end, we loved it, smudges and all.
It is ours, we did it, home-made, with all its flaws, it was worth it!
The actual centimeter to inches may be a little off, but just by a little, we do not care! It is 6'2" tall, and will be mounted against the wall somehow. We can always cut the bottom off and mount it necessary, most on-line did not start at zero on the bottom.
Major props go to David, who really spear-headed this whole thing after I made my passing comment. And he always sees things through and needs completion, so we stayed up until 11 p.m. and finished it! He was amazing, and patient, and encouraging. He didn't consider this one of my 'home-decor' whims, he considered it a great/fun thing to add to our family traditions.
The only question now is: how to mark it? A different color for each child? Initials, etc? we have not decided! The kids love it too! Thanks David for doing this with me!
