This weekend, I managed to cart an enormous mound of drywall, carpet strips, and drop ceiling components up to the garage for later disposal (thanks Chris – I’ll be borrowing that punch bowl).  After that, I framed in the new bathroom and tied it all together with screws and the Desa 476 Power Hammer.

This is the coolest tool ever!

Load a special 2 1/2″ nail in the barrel, chamber a .22 caliber round in the breech, set the point where you want the nail, and smash the butt with any old hammer.

BLAM!

The fragrant aroma of cordite wafts from the tool.  With one blow, the nail penetrates the stud and a half inch into the concrete beneath.

I could do this all day.  I started looking for other things that might need to be affixed to concrete.  I considered a career as a Power Hammer Specialist, traveling from jobsite to jobsite, pausing only long enough to attach various objects to concrete foundations.  Lesser nailers with un-powered hammers would be forced to stand aside in shame as I loaded the breech.

Maybe I need to go with the semi-automatic model?  After all, who needs to pause and reload after each mighty blow?  Passe.

Next step, plumbing.  With both PVC and Copper.

Last night, I tore out two panels of drywall in the basement to confirm the leakage is indeed confined to one small section, easily fixed. The irony here is in discovering I didn’t need to rip it out, but if I hadn’t, I would never know. Sometimes destruction provides solace.

With the saw in hand, I cast my gaze to that closet containing what seems to be a toilet stub in the floor. There just HAS to be a drain buried in the wall someplace, and I’d love to install a bathroom.

Saw. Drywall. Potentially obscured sink drain. Obsessed saw operator.

This confluence of circumstance and wants yielded rapid results.

In short order, I figured out there was no drain. And now there isn’t much of a closet. Diane yelled down the stairs, inquiring if she should gather the kids and abandon the house, since by the sounds of things the whole structure was facing imminent collapse.

I gave up chasing my phantom drain, and now I’m not sure what I’m going to do. There are plenty of immediate tasks, such as carting away enough shattered drywall to strain a landfill. And replacing what was removed. And deciding if I want to replace the closet, remove it completely, or continue to pursue this bathroom idea.

I probably should call a plumber and figure out what I would need.

In the meantime, I’ve been thinking of expanding the ‘finished’ portion of the basement to the unfinished area. I would just have to move a wall…

And I have a saw for that.

Technorati Tags: basement, remodel, drywall, bathroom, saw

I’ve just been stupid-busy lately.

In November of 2004, my nicely carpeted and finished basement – my dream room…that place I had spent many years dreaming of and yearning for, ‘flooded’.  No, I didn’t have six inches of raw sewage, but there was persistent water infiltration beneath the carpeting, resulting in a completely water-logged carpet and pad.  My investigation revealed this had been going on for a very long time, probably longer than my ownership of the house.

So, with two kids in the house and concerns about mold, I ripped out the entire carpet and worked on the water problem.  It turned out to be more of a landscaping/gutter/drainage issue than any serious defects with the foundation.  But for the past two years, I’ve lived with a bare, concrete floor and a couple of very confused cats who tried to claim the entire basement as the world’s largest litter box.

It hasn’t been pleasant.

So a few weeks ago, I finally set the Restoration in motion.  Ceramic tile was purchased at a bargain.  Paint was identified and brought home.  The old carpet tacks were removed and all furniture relocated.  I was on the road to recovery.

And then the project scope kept changing on the fly.

While I’m at it, I thought, I should go ahead and cut out some drywall by the drainage problem and just make sure it’s all clean back there.  So I cut a small patch.  Then a larger patch.  Then I found rotting studs.  So the patch expanded, and more rotting studs popped into view.  Now these aren’t load-bearing studs, so the problem isn’t enormous.  Replacing them shouldn’t be too hard, but it takes time.

So, since I’m ripping out both drywall and lumber, I turned my attention to the closet in the corner, which happens to contain a stub in the floor for a toilet.  Maybe I could rip out the closet walls, frame it larger and put in a small bathroom?  How hard can it be?  I’m already tearing the place apart.  A little more demo can’t make much of a difference.

And then there is the ‘library’.  Maybe I could rip out one wall there and extend the finished area back into the unfinished ‘storage’ area?  All it would take is a little drywall and one new wall.  Hmmm.

And then there is that drop-ceiling I’ve never liked.  I’m going to have a nicely tiled floor with a cheap drop ceiling?  How can I make space for the ducts and pipes and get drywall up there?  How hard can it be?

Thus my idle time is consumed.

I have pictures for posting later.  The Basement Project will be an ongoing thread here, and if it is anything like the kitchen sink story, you’ll want to stop back from time to time.

Until I came out to get the mail on Saturday and noted three gaping holes where the plants used to be.

Someone stole my plants!

I mean, what is that!?

And I don’t think it was a bunch of kids screwing around.  The plants have been neatly excavated, roots preserved, and without a stray clot of dirt in the road, sidewalk or driveway.  Someone literally uprooted them in a way to maintain the health of the plants.

We’re talking $30 in plants here, so it wasn’t like we planted some super exotic rare thing that feeds on the hard-to-find rotting carcass of the Amazonian squeek monkey.  It’s a patch of grass!

Unreal.

When we last left our intrepid amateur plumber, he was kneeling under the counter, scratching his head over a steady leak coming from somewhere in the dark recesses. Just when I thought I had things handled, it wasn’t quite right.

If you are keeping score, this is Wednesday. The sink replacement began on Sunday. Up until this point, I have made four trips to the hardware store associated with this project.

So, time to fix this leak. Getting back into my painful yoga position, I easily determined that one of the compression fittings wasn’t quite tight enough on the copper lead from the faucet. This has been a difficult thing to tighten anyway, so I’m not entirely surprised when I see the problem. I go back to my excruciating double wrench routine, operating by feel rather than sight.

A few cranks of the wrench seem to reduce the leak, until something pops and I get a face-full of hot water.

You’ve seen it on TV. The commercial advertising some plumbing gadget at two in the morning while you are zoning out with a bag of chips. Some schlub breaks something under the sink and gets comically sprayed with water, while the announcer voice offers a way for you to avoid this humiliation for the reasonable sum of $20 (per month, in three easy payments).

Well, that was me. I managed to get the water shut down and survey the damage. My upper wrench, the one tasked to hold the copper faucet lead in place while I torque the connector, slipped. As I was twisting the connector, the soft copper pipe was taking on the shape of a Twizzler, until it split open.

So where does one go to get emergency plumbing repairs at 10 PM on a weeknight? I took the faucet apart, dismounted it from the sink, and examined the problem. A few minutes on the internet suggested this could be solved, so I went to bed and tried not to think about the project.

Thursday after work, I make my fifth trip to the hardware store to see what options are available. I don’t have the requisite soldering equipment to cut the pipe and patch it. I start adding up the costs and discover a $10 bagged kit consisting of a fiberglass wrap. You soak it, wrap it, and let it dry for a half hour. It claims to offer a permanent seal on cracks like I am dealing with.

$10? Sure. I’m gullable.

I go home and wrap up the faucet. In thirty minutes I have what looks like a leg cast, hard as a rock on the copper pipe.

You know what comes next.

I inverted the faucet, filled the pipe with water, and then pressurized it by blowing into the pipe.

I’m guessing that leg casts aren’t effective moisture barriers. Maybe that’s why you can’t bathe with one.

So here are my remaining options.

1). Buy a new faucet.

Or…

2). Chisel off the cast, purchase soldering equipment, cut the pipe with a pipe cutter I don’t own, flare the pipe with a pipe flaring tool I don’t own, master a soldering skill I’ve never tried to replace pipe, then solder on the connecting fixture for the compression fitting.

After spending a second reviewing my experience in earning the sink installation merit badge, I give Diane the good news that she can get that faucet she really wanted.

So she makes the sixth trip to the store on Thursday evening. I’m thinking I’m going to do this one right. I’ll mount the compression fittings and hoses BEFORE putting the faucet on the sink. That way I’ll simply be able to drop it in place and connect things near the floor where I can reach without a problem. Yeah, I’ll get this one right.

Until she comes home with a faucet with a completely different mounting system. The now broken faucet had mounting pegs that served only as mounting pegs. The water hookups were different things entirely.

This new faucet actually mounted to the sink with threaded connectors that also served as water hookup points. This meant that the clamps that anchored the faucet HAD to go on first, screwed completely in place, and then you attached the hose to the same stem.

The yoga posture was completely unavoidable.

I couldn’t even apply the teflon tape before putting the faucet in place, which meant more one-handed application idiocy.

So, back to it. By now it is 11 PM on Thursday, and we have dishes stacking up like crazy. I push aside all physical discomfort like a Zen master, narrowing my world to nothing but wrenches, tape and hose. Time vanishes in a haze.

I attach the first line and turn on the water feed.

This time, the plastic flex holes splits in half and douses me with hot water. (Why does the hot water line always fail?!)

So it is midnight. I have no more hose, no more compression fittings, and no functioning sink.

I think my wife was considering divorce.

Midnight and I’m at Meijers, looking for anything that can carry water over a twenty inch span between two pipes. I mean, come on! I’m not trying to divert a river here.

Meijer doesn’t have what I need, but they do stock a flexible, metal jacketed hose with built in connectors for around $8 each. Who am I to dawdle over price at this point?

Nearing one in the morning, and I’m back under the sink with these new hoses. This time, I toss aside the stupid teflon tape and grab a big chunk of plumber’s putty. I’m smearing this stuff over the threads in great lumps, working it into every crevice I can feel. If this fails again, I’ll at least be able to say I tried everything.

That’s when a lump of putty landed squarely in my eye. The blink reflex then smeared it out over the eye and actually pushed a portion of it down under the lower eyelid. I can literally feel it floating around back there while the rest of it coats my contact lens.

Being a contact wearer, I’ve developed a tolerance to eyeball manipulation. With the wife’s help, we manage to fish the lump out of there and some eye flushing gets me back to being able to see what I’m doing (or not doing, to be precise).

Now if the sink would simply fall through the counter and crush my head, the comedy of errors would reach an appropriate conclusion.

Fortunately for me, the end wasn’t all that dramatic. I managed to tighten the hoses, dodge falling putty, and turn on the water supply at 1 AM on Thursday night.

As of this writing, Tuesday, the sink has not leaked a drop. I’m declaring victory. A Saddam-level victory in 1991.

The next major project? Pouring a 15×12 foot foundation for an outdoor shed.

How hard can it be?

Original post follows:

My last entry on home improvement left off with the kitchen sink project.

Time to finish this sorry tale.

A few months back, my wife bought a kitchen sink and a new faucet to replace the battered, ugly sink that came with our house. Knowing my limitations, I asked my dad for help on it and let the sink sit, unopened, in the garage until he had time to come up and instruct me on the dark arts of plumbing. He’s been busy, so when I finished my manly hose reel project, I decided I probably could handle this one on my own as well.

Pride goeth, and all of that….

Saturday night, I opened the box and examined the instructions for both the sink and faucet, while taking inventory of what I might need. A quick run to Home Depot supplied plumber’s putty, Teflon tape, and a new gasket for the garbage disposal. My wife picked these up. After all, the hardware guys kind if expect a woman to look a little lost (all hate mail can be sent to the address in the upper right…I’m not endorsing it, just observing the glass ceiling of the hardware world).

Later Saturday night, after wargaming the operation, I realized the flexible water hoses weren’t long enough to span the distance from the copper pipe to the new faucet connectors. I would have to replace the compression fittings. I knew about compression fittings because my dad mentioned them once, when I was still living at home fifteen years ago. I knew they had something to do with water…

I ran to Home Depot at 9:40 PM, twenty minutes before close. The first interaction should have been a sign as to how things were going to go with this project.

“Excuse me, I’m looking for plumbing.”

“Aisle 11.”

I look up to see I am standing in front of Aisle 11, under a sign that read PLUMBING. The employee glanced at my hands but I ignored him.

I scanned that aisle and found the compression fittings, confirming my idea that these are important to plumbers. The Depot has a nice layout, with an example of each of a gahzillion different fittings mounted to a board, behind which hangs bagged, saleable product. I had the forethought to bring along the connecting nut to the faucet, so I started scanning the area.

“May I help you?”

“Yeah, I’m installing a sink and I need a compression fitting.” I had just exhausted my knowledge base with that statement.

“What size?”

“Uh.” Then I remembered the nut and held it out.

“Half inch. What about the other end?”

I froze. He glanced at my hands (stop that!). I think he took pity on me right then. “Usually they run to a three eighths hose. “ He yanked one from the massive grid of product without looking. “Did it look like this?”

I examined the fitting. “I think it was smaller.”

“Smaller?? How old is the house?”

His question implied that a smaller hose was a possibility. I had already regretted speculating the hose was smaller, but I didn’t want to look like an even bigger fool. I was stuck with the small hose paradigm, and I’d go down in flames with it rather than backtrack.

I’ve always had a knack for sensing ‘outs’ when it comes to awkward moments. It isn’t a skill I’m proud of, since I think it has helped me more than once get a job I may not have been right for. It reminds me of some political skill that is less than honorable. But God help me, I used it here.

“It is a pretty old house (actually seven years). I expected three eighths too, so this surprised me. That’s why I’m here ten minutes before you closed. Who’d have guessed a quarter inch hose?”

I held my breath.

He stepped past me and pulled out a quarter inch compression fitting. “We don’t sell many of these.”

I accepted the fittings and shrugged. “It’ll work. Thanks.” I turned away to examine the PVC piping (premonition of my future) until he wandered off. I grabbed the three eighths fixtures and took off for the register.

No, I’m not proud.

Sunday morning dawned with the task ahead of me. I had a sense of what I had to do, and it seemed doable.

It didn’t take long to unhook the water hoses (three eighths…), unscrew the PVC fittings, unplug and unhook the garbage disposal, and figure out the sink was secured to the counter by clamps that needed unscrewing. Within twenty minutes of starting, I had a big hole in the counter where the sink used to be.

Surely this was a sign that this task was within my competency.

I brought up the new sink and demonstrated my smarts (S-M-R-T! I am so smart!). Installing the faucet BEFORE placing the sink in the counter was the obvious way to go. After all, who wants to crawl under the counter and wrestle with all of these bolts later? The faucet went on easily, and forty minutes after starting the project, I was ready to drop the new sink into place.

The old sink had clips. This sink didn’t. That didn’t seem right to me, but repeated readings of the instructions assured me to apply the provided silicone to the sink and drop it in place. That is, after cutting the hole in the counter to precisely fit the sink profile.

No mention about what to do if you already have a hole in place. I recall from physics class that holes generally aren’t movable, nor do they change shape easily unless one wants it to be larger.

I slid the sink in dry, as a test. It wasn’t a snug fit. As a matter of fact, the hole was almost too large. With some careful positioning, the sink would cover the cut, leaving me with a properly appearing sink/counter interface.

But I worried about the lack of lateral stability. Would the sink slide around even with the silicone in place?

I didn’t have much of a choice (see hole physics above). Diane slathered on the silicone (to the sink) while I held it in the proper orientation by the drain holes. A few minutes later, we had the sink on the counter, positioned, and were witnessing the proper level of silicone ooze. Things seemed to be going along ok.

After giving it some time to cure, I started in with the compression fittings on the new hose. The thing about compression fittings is the irreversibility. Once it is in place, the ability to remove it sort of defeats the purpose. I installed one end, eyeballed the needed length to span the distance between pipe and faucet, and cut the hose.

Too short.

It was an inch too short. Hoses are the inverse of holes when it comes to modification. You can’t make them longer.

And, of course, I only purchased enough compression fittings to accomplish the task without error.

This is where the Hardware Store Law of Increasing Returns comes into play. It states, to be concise, that one must run to the hardware store one time for every two hours a task takes to complete.

I knew exactly where the fittings were in Home Depot. It is closer to my home than Lowes. I would simply have to risk being seen by yesterday’s employee.

I went to Lowes instead.

Yeah, yeah. I know. But that extra thirty minutes was worth the potential embarrassment. If you are a man, you understand.

Back home with the proper fittings, I took care to actually measure the distance and add a couple of inches. I attached both lines to the copper pipe and then confronted another learning opportunity (or as I prefer to think of it “my idiocy”). Sure, I attached the faucet ahead of time. It might have been even better if I had attached the water lines and let them dangle down to the copper pipe. But no, gravity never occurred to me.

So there I was, laying on my back, inside the cabinet, reaching up into a very cramped area with two large wrenches, trying to apply Teflon tape with one hand. An hour of this reminded me of some particularly demented form of Yoga (I call this pose ‘the stupid plumber’).

The wrenches were particularly exquisite in how they mocked me. I would engage the nut that needed tightening, turn it about six degrees, encounter the sink body limiting my motion, and then have to remove and re-engage the wrench for another six degree turn. I wasn’t even turning the nut enough for the wrench to latch on to the next nut face. I ended up with some odd variation of turn, release, engage in the vertical plane, turn it like a doorknob, release, engage properly, turn, repeat.

For about a week. Or until my arms grew so weak, I risked clubbing myself in the head with these ill-suited tools.

Then there was the marvelous game of ‘turn the water on, watch it drip, turn the water off, and repeat tightening action only this time on wet hardware’. I can’t imagine a better Sunday.

Later, I learned that sinks do not have standard drain hole positions. The immutability of hole position came into play again when none of the existing PVC drain pipes were where they needed to be. Fortunately, they were assembled with this nice screw fittings, and come apart in a matter of seconds. Using the existing pipe sections, I managed to construct a means to mate the non-disposal drain with the terminal drain running to wherever dishwater ends up. Fortunately, PVC pipe can be made to bend slightly with enough determination. Stay tuned to see if there are any long term issues with that.

The disposal side was another ‘opportunity’. The new gasket was too thick to seat properly in the mount. It was the right size, but years of compression had made the old gasket a breeze to mount when I tested the disposal attachment mechanism. I really thought, in the planning phase, that this would be a snap.

If you’ve never tried this, it can be deceptive. You must press the disposal unit up into the mount, compressing the gasket to get a good seal, while then engaging three tabs on a circular collar, rotating it in a threaded fitting until it seats. Let’s do a quick count –

Hold disposal – Two hands

Line up three tabs at once – three hands.

I’ll leave it to you as an exercise to imagine how long this took me to accomplish.

Later, the disposal was in place and I was ready to make the final connection into the ‘T’ junction from the disposal to the terminal drain.

It wasn’t even close. Remember what I said about PVC pipe being able to bend a little bit? We were well beyond that option.

So, back to the hardware store. This time I went to Menards. Hopefully these hardware guys don’t talk to one another. In two days, I visited five stores.

It seems that my problem was a common one. They sold a flexible pipe for disposal attachment. Provided I ran it downhill (and I was) it would work fine. I was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The flex pipe did not mount properly into the disposal. Nor did it mate with the PVC pipe already in place. And by the time I noted this, the stores were closed for Sunday.

Sitting at my desk on Monday, I figure out a new solution. The drain came with a five inch metal pipe that mated with the PVC ‘T’. My problem was that the ‘T’ was not high enough to mate with the disposal. So, why can’t I cut the metal pipe, move the ‘T’ up, and make the connection?

But I didn’t have a saw. Nor do I have a pipe cutter.

Back to the hardware store after work. The pipe cutter was about $40, while a small hacksaw hanging on the next peg was $7. Easy choice.

Until I started sawing. Fifteen minutes later, I have made a fine notch on the pipe…I think. If I run my finger over it, I can feel a little dent. At this rate….

I go back to the flex pipe idea and take a closer look at the mounting system. The pipe came with this huge gasket. I rejected it initially because there was no way it would replace the old gasket and still let me hook up the mounting bracket. Why would they provide such an obviously oversized gasket?

Then I noticed the groove cut inside. The gasket slipped on the pipe and sealed, providing enough of a flange to mount properly. Instead of re-using the old gasket (which is what I did), this new gasket both sealed the connection and gave extra material to connect to the bracket. In my defense, this kit did not come with directions. I guess they figured they didn’t need to explain how to mount a single pipe…go figure.

By late Monday evening, we turned on the water and watched it leak from the disposal. My five handed solution did not adequately seal the gasket, so I had to remove the whole thing and start over.

I learned that raw, blazing frustration CAN solve problems. I still can’t explain how it happened, but sometime during a blinding haze of rage, the disposal mounted itself properly.

The job was completed. The sink was in place. It works. (Never mind that little leak my wife discovered this morning…)

That wasn’t so bad, was it?

ORIGINAL POST STARTS – It started when he looked at my hands and smirked.

I make no claims to being a handyman. I’m certain my father’s biggest disappointment in me is my concept of the word ‘router’: I think of a packet router with a bunch of Ethernet plugs, while he thinks of a tool that does….something. So I spend a lot of time agonizing over home projects, making a bunch of phone calls to my disappointed father, reading up on the internet, and wandering the aisle of whatever Home Depot-equivalent searching for the surely just invented tool that will do precisely what I need despite my raging ignorance at how to actually do what I need on my own. It usually takes me awhile to figure out that this magical invention is called ‘money’ – as in giving some to someone who does know how to do the job.

Works every time.

But it is unmanly. I think all men have this underlying need to master certain basic skills. A century ago, a man was expected to start off with a forest and turn it into a house. Today, the tools are better, and the expected competencies are smaller, yet I still feel overwhelmed.

We have a good house, but shortly after moving in it turned on us a bit. An upstairs bath tub leaked, leaving a wet spot in the kitchen that eventually turned into falling plaster and unsightly damage. That’s a twofer – fix the bath tub, then figure out how to repair a textured ceiling. Then we had shingles blow off and water began to intrude on the master bedroom ceiling. See kitchen reference above. Then the basement leaked. A finished basement, with nice pad and carpet. I had to rip out two year old carpet and figure out how to stop water intrusion. I went for that magical money tool, but recoiled when the quote came in at $11,000. Alas, the basement is still unfinished.

Then there is the yard. My neighbor is a lawn fanatic. He mows two or three times a week, shaving off millimeter layers and walking in complex geometrical patterns that have something to do with the Nazca Lines in Peru. I can watch him pushing the mower toward the boundary between my ratty desert-like scrub and his lush Amazonian bio-preserve. He pauses on the border and I can see the scorn in his face.
I try. I have tried. Last year I decided to use a large bag of fertilizer left in the garage after the previous owners moved out. I filled up the donated spreader and walked precise lines in my front yard. I felt outdoorsy.

Until the grass grew in dark, thick strips, separated by the aforementioned desert shrub where I had failed to walk a proper overlap. Add a field of stars in the corner and I would have an American flag replicated in shades of green.

My neighbor stopped looking at my lawn completely. Winter was a welcome relief.

So with all of this as background, why would I buy a table saw last week?

Good question. I’ll let you know when a coherent answer forms.

The simple reply revolves around garden hoses and my father. He has done a wonderful job of facilitating my mother’s landscaping at their house. One simple thing that caught my eye was his emplacement of one of those hose reels in a box. He wasn’t content to simply wind the hose and set it next to the home. He took 4”x4” lumber sections and built a support frame, buried the frame partially in the flowerbed, built a border around it and secured the hose box to the lumber so it won’t move when my mother pulls the house around.

I could do this!

So, since I had other crazy expectations of building some bookshelves, I picked up a $100 light duty saw from Lowes, along with the requisite lumber and screws. As I’m stacking this on the cart (those 6’ sections of lumber are unwieldy), a Lowes worker comes over and offers to help. He looks at the saw and the wood and asks “You sure you want that saw?”

I nod and say “Budget.”

That’s when he looked at my hands and smirked. I didn’t pick up on it until later, when I had assembled the saw and realized the guy had asked a good question.

But why the hands?

I am a desk worker. I don’t like landscaping or other forms of hard labor. Most people prowling the hardware store have these immense calloused hands, suitable for pushing nails directly into the wood should they ever suffer that rare (and often tragic) hammer failure. These guys don’t much bother with saws if the wood is less than an eighth of an inch thick – they just rip it like a piece of cardboard.

I have keyboard hands. I need gloves to swing a golf club, let alone manipulate a thick, splintery piece of wood without drawing blood.

I have the hands of an amateur, and this guy knew it immediately. So he let me buy the saw.

Later, after putting it all together, I learned the saw only cuts three inches deep, and I bought four inch thick boards. You’d think that this information would have been displayed. Sure, it says right on the box “3 inch cut”. Why couldn’t it say “This saw can’t cut 4 inch lumber used to make a silly hose reel support frame”?

Then there is the even more obvious issue of table area. I mentioned those heavy, six foot boards? Now try cutting twenty inches off of one with four feet hanging off the small table. Then you have to turn the board over and cut it again to get through the full thickness.

Multiply that by my sheer hubris at demonstrating my abilities to my dad. Not only would I build a simple square frame, I would miter cut the ends to 45 degrees (while wrestling heavy, oversized boards on an undersized table with a miter gauge more suitable to guiding a piece of floor trim the size of a pencil…and then have to flip it over, reverse the gauge and make a matching cut to finish it up.)

So there I am. Massive board on a table saw already groaning under the weight while the overhanging section is partially balanced on a ladder made wobbly by the need to have it partially closed to raise a step to the height I need.

I look across the street to see a couple of neighbors staring at me. After a moment, their families joined them. Certainly what was about to happen would provide a lifetime of power tool safety indoctrination to their children.

I closed the garage door and decided to work in the dark. That way I wouldn’t have to see the results.

It took me about thirty minutes to make the first board section. It looked better than I expected, provided I didn’t try to match the miter edge up with anything else. Later, when I had a second board, I could see some problems with the miter gauge’s idea of 45 degrees.

The entire process took two days of work. I managed to avoid losing any fingers, and the boxes generally went together as intended. Just don’t look to closely at some of those edges. The first box, hose reel and hose is now installed in the front of the house, and it looks pretty snappy from greater than fifty feet.

So, what did this experience do for me? A couple of months ago, my wife bought a new kitchen sink and faucet, and I’ve been waiting on my dad to find some time to come up and show me how to install it. Saturday night, after the first box had been installed, I opened up the sink and read the directions.

This can’t be that bad, right? I just built lumber boxes! I can do anything!

Sunday morning, the old sink was in the garage and I began a long day of humility.

But those details are for another post.