But what's in it for me?

When he has time, Jim Fortune builds things for his family. We like it when he does that. We moved into our house in 2007, and Jim immediately pronounced the mantel hideous. "Totally hideous," he said. I shrugged. "I guess," I said. "It looks OK to me."

Here it what it looked like:

Not great, sure. But I couldn't really tell what was so hideous about it. Jim grabbed some of his favorite implements of destruction and ripped it right out. Like so:

Then it really WAS hideous. And it stayed that way for quite some time. But Jim worked on it now and then and, eventually, it looked like this:

OK, so then I truly understood why Jim thought the old mantel was hideous. The old mantel WAS hideous because this is what Jim Fortune had in his head when he looked at the old mantel. This mantel is incredibly beautiful. And I get to look at it every day.

Thanks, dear.