My Hope Chest

While I was out of town with my girlfriends a few weeks ago, Nik got to work on a surprise wedding present for me. He built me a beautiful hope chest, totally from scratch, and totally his design – he didn’t even look for plans to base it off of! He got red oak lumber from Lowes, and the feet were salvaged from a thrift store find a while back. All the lumber joinery was done with biscuit joints (Nik’s grandfather gave us this biscuit joint-maker device which I was certain would never be used, Nik has proven me wrong again) and the Kreg jig pocket hole drill I got Nik last year. The impending tropical storm got me home from the beach a day early and derailed his plans to line it with cedar boards…but this will come soon, when we have some time after the wedding.

Here it is – I meant to take some better pictures, but there’s a lot of other things distracting me this week!

What is a hope chest for? Traditionally, an unmarried woman would have one to add special clothing items and linens to as she grew up, in anticipation of married life. I believe my grandfather (or great grandfather?) built one for his wife when they got married to collect items from their life together. Nik and I refinished this particular hope chest a couple years ago, and it resides in my parents’ bedroom:

So what will I use my new hope chest for? Well, it’s beautiful, so I imagine it will always be a special piece of furniture in our home, wherever we are.  I don’t know what we’ll put in it yet, but as I look forward to beginning my married life with Nik, there is so much that I hope the future will bring – and perhaps these hopes will help us fill the chest over time. I hope we are always happy and healthy. I hope we always have a home that we love with things in it that we love. I hope that we always enjoy the things we do, for work and for play. I hope that we have chances to travel to unique places all over the world. I hope that we can someday experience the joy of raising our own children. I hope that we can always remember to respect each other and our differences. And most importantly, I hope there is always love. I hope that our love for each other does not fade over time, but instead grows and changes with us as we get older. But hope is just hope – and I know it is impossible for all these things to happen perfectly as we go through our lives. I believe this is what a partner is for – to help each other get beyond the challenges life presents that may not have been hoped for.

I think these thoughts, these ‘hopes’, are what I’ll be stashing in my new hope chest for now, and they may end up being more important than the physical items that will accrue in there over time.  Together, refinishing furniture and our home was something Nik and I discovered a love for together, and working on and completing projects together has also helped make our relationship stronger and more complete. I hope this hobby is something we enjoy (and I can blog about!) for years to come, and I think Nik picked the perfect wedding gift to sum up our past renovation adventures and bring hope for the future.

There’s only 3 more days until our big day, and I couldn’t be more excited to marry my best friend!