Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Construction Challenge

I'm Baaaaaack

The Thanksgiving holiday took a lot out of me, or more precisely, put a lot into me. We had three different obligations to attend to that day so of course we ate three Thanksgiving dinners. If that weren't enough the third and final stop was to the home of Gail and Karl. One of the other diners is a wine connoisseur of sorts and brought an entire case of wines of various sorts. Suffice it to say that we had a bit much of the grape that day, having gone through the entire case. In my bleary-eyed stupor, I vowed to not eat or drink again until Christmas dinner.

The extended weekend that followed found me redoing a cabinet in the garage and it is all the fault of the new refrigerator. The new one displaced the old one, of course, and the old one displaced the one in the garage. The problem is that the displaced one in the garage sits beneath a hanging cabinet. The replacement fridge in the garage is four inches taller than the one it replaced so of course the cabinet had to either come down or four inches removed in order to fit the "new" garage refrigerator.

Anybody who knows me knows that if my 10 fingers were unable to type I'd starve to death. If I were a carpenter and you were a lady, I'd surely go hungry and you'd still be a lady. The sensible thing to do is to call in a professional and have the cabinet raised the four inches. But noooooooo, that would not be manly. There comes a time when a man must take a stand! A simple task like cutting four inches off the bottom of a cabinet must be one I am able to handle. So I started by removing the doors of the existing cabinets. Four screws. So far so good.

Next I had to saw out the offending shelf. I have a 30 year-of electric saw that has been used only twice, and I still have all my fingers, so that was my tool of choice. Bad choice. The saw I own is for cutting sheets of plywood draped across two horses. The one I needed is available for rent at Home Depot. A quick trip to three Home Depots finally located one for rent. Saw plus blade.... cost is still about $ 20.00. I sawed out the old shelf, back to Home Depot for material for a new one (they will cut it for you... YES!) and back to install.

Got it all done, then realized that the doors were 4" too long and used my 30-year old saw to shorten them. Finally got it back together. Materials and rentals - $ 40.00. Time: 8 hours for a one-hour job. Language: very salty. It ain't pretty but I still have all my fingers.

Dr. Forgot

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