A Place I Never Visit Anymore

When we first bought this house seventeen years ago my mind was filled with ideas. Endless possibilities at redesigning our new house and finally, after moving out of a two bedroom apartment, space to work in. I claimed the basement as mine right away, which was fine with my wife because she rarely set foot down there (fear of spiders I think). Within the first few weeks here I had built an impressive workbench and worked on adding a few much needed tools to my collection. Having done a bit of woodworking in the past, mainly finishing and refinishing, I set about to see what I could accomplish with my own workspace. Over the next few years in my basement workshop I turned out shelves, benches, and even a decent set of end tables that looked great. I always wanted to progress into bigger projects, having plans for a new bedroom suite, among other things. Money for material and tools was scarce, however, and when our last son came into the picture there never seemed to be time to start any new projects. We went through several years of living paycheck to paycheck, then my wife quit her job and went to nursing school, forcing us to stretch our budget even tighter, certainly no time to be buying lumber to indulge my hobby. When she graduated and started her nursing career our financial situation go a little better, but then there was a need for a reliable car to get her to and from work so we had a new car payment, along with the student loan payments which merrily made their way into our mailbox each month and have found a permanent place among our monthly bills ever since. Basically, over the last few years I have only gone into the basement when there is something I need to fix or repair, and my workbench has become a catch-all for loose tools and extra parts. I was working on the plumbing today and got to looking through some of the stuff I still have and I realized how little I've actually done in the way of being creative. I think I would like to get back that excited feeling I had when I first moved here, but it just seems like there's so much actual work to be done that there's little time for me to get back to the basement and do the things I like to do. Maybe someday though.