This weekend, I installed a storm door. It was a two-person job, so I enlisted the help of my father-in-law.
Actually, any home improvement task that involves me is automatically a two-person job. I can put things together, but anything that involves sawing, precise measurements, or installing leaves me in a fetal position, sucking my thumb. When this happens, Ella calls her Dad, who built houses when he was younger and can do all this home improvement crap with his eyes closed.
Sometimes, I wish he would do these home improvements with his eyes closed. Because what he does is far worse: he does them without Instructions!
He'll eyeball a project and say, "this goes here, that goes there" and start putting things together. And then I'll notice we're on Step 6 without doing Steps 1-5 first. And I break out in hives.
But the worst part of his disregard for Instructions is that we always end up with unused parts. I have a drawer full of carefully labeled nuts, bolts, and such, waiting for the day when something falls apart and we need to fix it by adding its previously uninstalled part.
Our storm door had extra pieces after we installed it. But you know what? It works properly. And if I had to install it by myself, I would still be lying in the corner, fretting over the Make the cut 1/16" less than the mark made in Step 4, taking into account the angle of the threshold step.
Song of the day: Merry Merry Merry Frickin' Christmas by Frickin' A
Cut Once And To Hell With The Measuring
