Monday, February 14, 2011

It Could Have Been Worse. It Could Have Been a Finger.

I had measured carefully, twice. The piece of bead-board was marked clearly so as not to screw up, and was clamped down for added security. As one final precaution, I had laid one of Mark's kitchen towels under the piece so as not to mar the surface. As I hit the button on the circular saw I thought to myself, I'd better be careful with that towel. Simultaneously, the saw roared to life and the towel disappeared from under the board, sucked into the teeth of the whining saw. Before the saw had even screeched to a grinding halt, I was thinking of how I'd destroyed another one of Mark's things, and how would I get rid of the evidence.

I was in the middle of another one of my home repair projects. A cobbled together window replacement. As is my usual practice, I looked for the easiest, and fastest way to accomplish the task at hand. My thinking for this one was that I'd keep the aluminum window frames of the old jalousies, and use them to hold the new replacement windows. It was a brilliant idea, and in my mind I had the whole thing worked out. Reinforce the old frames with some wood studs, build a little wall under the new windows for support, and then trim it all out so it looked good. The most amazing thing is that I actually did all that. What I hadn't counted on is the fact that it actually was more work, and took much more time to accomplish than if I'd have done it the correct way. The correct way would have been to order the custom sized windows, remove the old windows frame and all, and then install the new ones in their place. Instead I bought off the shelf replacement windows from the Depot, and made them fit into a hole that was much larger than they were. I'm almost done, they actually look good, and I still have all my body parts. All I can say is, I'm a genius, in a weird and sick sort of way.

4 comments:

  1. Looks great! Are you going to do this with all those floor to ceiling windows?

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  2. Wow Alan the windows look great! You're getting to be a real handyman with all these home repairs.

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  3. How many new words did your neighbors learn during the project?

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  4. Mostly the same old ones. The f--- mother of all swear words the most. I find repeating it over and over after screwing up helps a lot. The neighbors did hear new applications of that action however. It included f---ing inanimate objects, and myself on one occasion.

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