Knowing when to say 'Four'

Thursday, October 10, 2002
Gloria Masoner

After the past week a question has been raised around my extended family dinner table --  "How many times will it take you to learn?"

Let's see, all told Brad and I have been involved in four remodeling projects...

"Four," I tell them.

The Banzhaf and/or Masoner Family Construction Co. has closed its door and folded. It's gone belly up and is now buried 6 feet under -- and the shovels with it.

In my overwhelming need to be punished, I volunteered to help finish a remodeling project so my Uncle Pete could move in to a small, but comfortable, cottage-style house.

The project started last Monday. I knew we'd have it done by Saturday when he was planning to arrive.

OK, so now it's Thursday, 10 days later and we're about to put the finishing touches on the wood trim around the floors. He's thinking he may actually get to use his own bed in January. And I'm about to die or kill, depending on what the little voices tell me.

It started out as just a simple little project of building kitchen cabinets, painting, and getting the floors prepared. First of all, I hate to paint. That's where my mom came in. She busily painted the living room, utility room and waited patiently to get to the kitchen while my dad and I tried to get the cabinets built. And she waited. And waited. And waited ...

In my own defense, I would like to point out that I have built cabinets before. The ones in my bathroom went together like I'd had weeks of experience and the fish tank cabinet I built for my son was a cinch.

These cabinets, however, were being built-in. For those of you who don't know -- it's a lot easier to build square if you have square to work with.

This house was built in the 1940s as a tract house. If it was ever square in the first place, I'd be surprised. Today, we were considering ourselves lucky if we found a 70-degree angle.

We got the project started and after about 125 mistakes in cutting the boards, a number of broken finger nails, several splinters and numerous expletives (on my part) the cabinets were at least together enough to paint.

That's when my brother, Russell, and my son Jeremy, joined in to help get the kitchen ready to go. We all worked on painting the walls and Russ and I painted the cabinets -- by this time my mom had given up on painting and moved on to better things -- she and Pete were outside trying to figure out how to get rid of all the mis-cut boards. Jeremy pitched in where he could, trying to avoid being walked on in the small area.

After hearing 15 times how much I loathe painting ceilings, my brother finally "volunteered" to climb the ladder and take care of that little project. If he hadn't, we would have had the glamorous look of bare plastered drywall.

Not being one to pass up an opportunity -- and knowing I was a captive audience -- my older brother -- by five years -- was giving me a hard time about aging. It seems he's regressing, he says he's 29, (I'm thinking he's 15) and that would make me about 24 (he thinks I'm 10). I can live with a 16 year age reduction. I just wish he'd convince my body that was the case.

I'm beginning to question the wisdom of getting old. During the cabinet building, my knees bent at least 489 times a day. Now every time I take a step it sounds like the footstep of a ghost on wooden floors in a haunted house. Finally, my dad and I had reached the point where we could build the countertop. I thought things had been going downhill up to that point. The countertop project was like a fall from Mt. Everest.

It all started when we couldn't get the board we needed ripped to the right size. We asked our new-found friends at the local lumber yard to help us out. The cut was perfect and made without a grumble, unlike the experience we had during our own attempts.

When we got back to Dad's shop we ripped the laminate. I carefully laid the piece we would be using outside the door -- thus avoiding cutting the wrong board.

We completed the final four cuts, loaded up the boards and grabbed the laminate.

Funny thing was the laminate was a lot narrower than the board. Seems I had avoided cutting the wrong piece of laminate. Several more expletives ensued.

The new countertop is finally finished and the light blue line it has running down the length of it gives it what I'd like to call a "decorator's touch."

A family friend asked the other day how the project was going.

"Have you heard the old saying, what doesn't kill you will only make you stronger?" I responded. "We're thinking about invading Iraq."

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