We have big renovation plans for our house, and when I say we, I mean Kara. She has big plans for our house. With big plans comes big money. We want to do as much of these things that we can by ourselves. We want to build shelving for our closets, possibly build some shelves in the kids' closets, and build some shelves or storage for our front room. Basically, we just want to build a bunch of shelves. This seems like an easy task. Shelves are basically wooden boards sitting on top of wood with some support so it should be pretty easy. At least that's how it looks on the YouTube channels as they start cutting, staining, and building the shelves in under ten minutes. However, it's been two weeks and all I have is one cut board, and it's cut incorrectly.
Being a novice (or as my kids say a nube) at building, we thought we would start with some corner shelves for Kara's plants. They currently reside in our bathtub and so they need a better place and of course these plants can't live outside.
Triangular corner shelves should be pretty easy since they are basically just a triangle placed on the wall somehow. The first hurtle that I came across was that I don't actually own any tools apart from a drill, some basic saws, and a measuring tape. These invaluable tools have in the past been able to accomplish all my other building tasks around the house (hanging pictures) but are not sufficient for such complicated tasks such as cutting wood, which I also did not have. Thankfully, Kara's father is a general contractor and owns more tools than my kids have Legos so we could borrow (permanently) some of his tools.
I started planning the shelves on a Sunday using precise measurements with my meter stick, realizing that we live in the US and a meters stick is completely useless, and then placed lines on the wall where I wanted the shelves, two on the left and one on the right. Kara quickly came in to correct my design and said that two should be on the right and one on the left. That's ok though, I don't mind pencil marks all over the wall. I then used the time honored tradition of finding the studs in my wall by tapping all over the place trying to find the studs. Unable to actually find anything after 30 minutes, I went and bought a stud finder. I also noticed that my 90 degree angled corner walls were in fact not 90 degrees, but were larger on both walls. That would mean that my small bathroom walls move closer together ever so slightly, giving the appearance that the room is smaller than it actually is, like a funhouse.
After I got my measurements, countless pencil marks on the wall, found the studs and marked them all with tape, I then ignored all of that for the better part of a week in hopes that the shelves would then be built by themselves. This did not happen so I had to go and buy some wood. Being a nube, I don't know one wood as opposed to any other wood. Kara's dad said to get grade A birch something or other so I went to the Home Depot, found that they only had one board left that was severely damaged and figured that I would just not get this project done. Her dad suggested I buy the crappy looking wood that costs about $72 for a 4' x 8' board and ask for a discount since it was all banged up. The manager gave me a great discount so I picked up this 486 pound slab of wood and wheeled it to the biggest vehicle that I own, our Buick Enclave. One thing to know about most SUVs is that even though the board is smaller than the interior of the SUV and it should fit nicely in the back of the vehicle, it will not actually go inside the back door because the door hole is much smaller than it needs to be.
Kara had to pack up all of the kids at the house, change around all of the carseats from the Honda Odyssey and place them in the Buick and then we could pick up this 486 pound board and place it in the Honda. I could tell by the silence and the strained face that Kara was really excited about being able to reinstall all of the seats from one car to the next in the Home Depot parking lot while experienced handymen walked by shaking their heads at our complete incompetence.
We are just starting this journey on crapmanship and will update the blog as we go along to show how we have gone from complete know nothings to experienced blog writers that have completely ruined their house.
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