The Helping Tower

Early in 2012, Meghan approached me with the idea to buy an item that would allow the kids to have something safe to stand on to allow them to help with things that happen at the level of the kitchen counter.  It could be "helping" with the dishes or during food preparation or watching us cook or whatever.  She found something online that we could buy, but she also found a DIY website that had some instructions to guide you if you wanted to build it yourself.  I have almost no free time, and my carpentry skills are mediocre at best, so buying it made the most sense.  But despite that, I decided I wanted to take it on as a project for myself.  I knew it would take me awhile and that it wouldn't be perfect, but in the end I would have something I could give to the kids knowing that I had built it by hand for them.  I worked on it little by little when I had time, and by Christmas it was pretty much ready, and we had it out as a gift on Christmas morning.  At the time it was done except for the polycrylic coating.  But I decided to tweak it a little more before doing the poly.  This year has been super busy, so it took me until last month to finish it.  But I'm really proud of it.  The purple platform slides into any one of the sets of rungs to adjust the height.  I designed the layout and hand-painted the words on the sides.  And it took some precision work on my part, but I even added a modification with 16 hinges that fold at the perfect angles to allow it to fold flat for easy storage (if you take out the platform).  Here are some of the pictures from when I was working on it as well as the picture of the helping tower's debut tonight so Joshua and Clara could help me with the dishes.  Yes, it took me a long time, and no, we probably didn't save much money in the end after all of my supplies, and no, it's not perfect, especially on the curves I cut by hand, but it was made with love, and I hope it's something we'll be able to use for a long time to help us do more things together with the kids.