Home Alone
Great moments in building history: Some people just can't be left unattended
Like most people with access to a woodworking shop, I have a long list of projects that my significant other would like me to complete.
And like everyone else in this situation, I haven’t the time to plan, build, install, and then clean up after myself in the average evening, Saturday, or weekend. Therefore, I do what everyone else does: I postpone. Some projects have been postponed for days, weeks, even months. One particular project—the bed for our master bedroom—I postponed for 26 years.
I always have hated to clean up every day if a job isn’t complete, but because my wife dislikes stepping over chopsaws in the bedroom or ladders and compressors in the living room, I end up having to stop work several hours before I want to so that I can clean up before she comes home. This severely cuts into the amount of work that I can finish in a day.
Ultimately, the need to balance projects and tidiness led us to develop our own routine: My wife goes away for a weekend or sometimes longer so that I can complete my projects fully.
In the past, she has traveled to Calgary (floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall bookshelf and entertainment unit); Frankfurt, Germany (front porch and two skylights); and for one week, Nairobi, Kenya (the removal of three wall sections, a phone nook, and a closet to open up the living and dining rooms).
During one Labor Day weekend, she and our three children went away so that I could install wood flooring throughout the house. I had removed all the furniture during the day and brought in all the tools and materials I would need to finish the job before they got home late Monday evening.
By 6 p.m. Friday, they were gone, and I had the compressor charged up. By 6:20, I had the first row of flooring planks nailed to the floor. By 6:30, I had nailed my hand firmly to the floor. A carelessly swung nail gun brushed against my hand and fired a nail through the webbing between my thumb and forefinger and into the floor, trapping me securely.
The hammer that would enable me to free my hand from the floor was a mere 2 in. beyond the reach of my outstretched foot. So was the telephone—not that I was willing to call anyone for help because this predicament was humiliating enough. Besides, I could wait the three days until my family returned; this could be an effective way to lose that 10 lb. I had been wanting to shed.
Shortly after making this decision, though, I realized that I really needed to use the washroom. I also was getting bored and knew I couldn’t just lie around for three days without something better to do than watch a line of ants slowly making off with everything in the house that wasn’t nailed down.
I stretched my body as far as tendons, muscles, bones, and the nail would let me and was just able to hook a piece of flooring with my foot. I then used that board to drag the hammer closer. Using the back of my hand as the fulcrum point for the hammer proved to be somewhat unwise and quite painful. I used the piece of flooring instead and managed to pry the nail out of my hand just in time to make it to the washroom.
I was able to complete the floor and get it varnished before my family returned home. Now, though, whenever my wife goes away, she takes me with her.
Drawing by: Jackie Rogers
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