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By Valentine’s Day 2007 our dream of a Craftsman style interior had begun to take shape. We found a rug we LOVED. It became the inspration for all of the other colors we are using in the room. We’d gone out on a limb and ordered the Motawi tile for our fireplace surround. We’d begun crafting the mantel to go over and around the tile. For as long as I can remember, I had dreamed of my husband sitting in front of a grand fire, reading. Taking one more step toward my dream come true, I gave my beloved a Morris chair for Valentine’s Day that year. We found the rug and the chair at our favorite home interior store, Craftsman Revival Home Furnishings in Solana Beach, CA.
After 8 long months of reading and writing, being out of town 4 days per month, balancing a new assignment, a daughter in her first year of college, a family adjusting to one less person living in the main house and one more person living in the back house, Dewey graduated from the Sherman Block Supervisory Leadership Institute in July, 2007. To celebrate another of his many successes I gave him a hand hammered copper table lamp to read by as he sat in the living room, in front of a grand fire, in his Morris chair. But something was missing.
In no time at all we figured out what it was. We didn’t have a table to set the lamp on! Thank God for the Internet because in no time at all, we found the perfect end table. (See www.missionstudio.com/endtable.) Nothing being as easy as it seems, the table was way, WAY, WAY out of our budget at a whopping $1,495!!! But I wasn’t worried; I have a secret weapon. I have a husband who can build ANYTHING, and better than that, he let’s me HELP him do it!!! How blessed am I??? Very, I say. We wanted to use the leftover tile from the fireplace for the top of the end table, but of course, there wasn’t enough. I called our new best friend Tom Gerardy, the owner of the aforementioned Craftsman Revival Home to ask if he had any sample tile that matched ours. He did! I bought it on a Wednesday and it was on our doorstep by Friday afternoon. How cool is that? And so, without further ado, I give you, the making of an end table, Heath Family Woodworks style.
Right bottom corner 
Dewey sanding 
Upper left corner
One night about a month ago, after we finished making our first mortise and tenon picture frame (we’ll talk about those in a seperate article), my DH (darling husband) and I were sitting on the couch, admiring our efforts. To our left, above our mantel, hung the newly framed Anita Munman lithograph, Valley. To the right (and even farther right) of that were the window frames we’d painstakingly stripped, sanded, stained and shellacked. Directly in front, between our ‘his and hers’ chairs stood the tile topped table we’d just finished and brought into the house just a few minutes earlier. To the right of those, our famous (or infamous) door. Our eyes continued tracking through the room to the right, and what to our wandering eyes did appear? A blank spot on the north wall, between the door and the entry way into the front hall. We sat and stared. What could we make to fill this vast peanut butter wasteland? And then it came to me, as if in a dream. A mirror! I recalled having seen one in one of our inspiration Craftsman style magazines, American Bungalow. You can find our inspiration piece at http://www.dardhunter.com/shop/index.php?shop=1&itemid=141. Our’s is a bit larger than the largest one they offer for $175. Our’s cost under $40. We invite you to view the pictures of our mirror in progress, and on the wall. A vast wasteland no more! 
We didn’t have enough money to buy an Arts and Crafts style front door so we took the old oak door apart and rebuilt it in the Arts and Crafts style. This is our work in progress. Stand by for progress pics. 
