The Dow Is Up!

It's tool time!

One of the joys of having a month off of school is that I get to work on the house a bit. And believe me, it needs a lot of work. We recently painted our living room and dining room. They used to be an annoying shade of peach or pink, but now they're green. It's amazing how much better the rooms look. I was getting quite annoyed with my house because it lacked any color. Apparently, the people who lived here before were blind or needed no stimulation whatsoever. The rods and cones in my eyes were literally (yes, literally) dying from lack of use. Now, life is much better.

One of the benefits of painting the rooms is that the windows stand out a lot more. They're simple white windows, but the white contrasts against the green much better. The problem? The Wife thought it'd be a good idea to add crown molding to the rooms. And so that's my project for the day. (Though I suppose that if I write a long enough blog entry, I won't have time for the crown molding.)

For those who don't know what crown molding is, it's a strip of wood that goes around the room where the wall meets the ceiling. I didn't really know what it was myself. That's one of the benefits of having a wife. She's always more than willing to patiently explain these things to me. Okay, that was sarcasm. "What do you mean you don't know what crown molding is?!?!?!" I swear sometimes I feel like AJ on The Sopranos when Tony told him to clean the gutters (as a punishment) and AJ asked where they were.

Our dining room (my first adventure/attempt) is about 12' by 14'. So after dropping off Luke at daycare, I headed over to Home Depot in my BFT. I never realized how empty it was at 7:30 on a Thursday morning. What else could people be doing at that time of the morning? Oh right, WORKING! I keep forgetting about that.

So I stroll on over to the wood section. I find some pretty sweet-ass crown molding. It's all fancy and intricate. Then I remember The Wife's instructions on what she wanted. "Nothing fancy and intricate." Hmmm. Should I buy the fancy stuff or not? I decide to pass on it (even though it would have pimped our dining room quite nicely). I strolled down and found exactly what I was needed. And to my joy, it came in 15' pieces. This means I won't have any unsightly seam marks in the middle of the wall. (You're probably 3 steps ahead of me, so just wait for it.)

I buy my four pieces and try to make it to the checkout counter. It was no easy task. I nearly took out a display of doornobs and I actually hit some guy. Well that's what he gets for coming to the Home Depot so friggin' early in the morning. Jerk.

As I'm wheeling my cart out to my BFT, I have a revelation. The bed on my truck is only 6' long. But the pieces of wood are 15' long. Hmmm. I think they might be a little longer than my truck bed. Now if I can just think of a way to fold down the pieces of wood to be less than 6', I'll have it made. (By the way, this is why I shouldn't be going to Home Depot this early in the morning. Or at least not until after I've had some coffee.)

After much hemming and hawing, I say "screw it" and just throw the pieces in the back of my truck. I leave the tailgate up, so that the first 6' are on an angle upwards. Meanwhile the remaining 9' are dangling off the back. Now, this crown molding stuff is kinda thin, maybe an inch thick. It's very flexible. So, these pieces are bouncing all over the place whenever I move, which is a great way to drive through the morning rush of traffic. At one point, they almost bounced out of my truck, so I had to stop and weigh down the ends in my truck with a tire that was fortuitously sitting in my back seat (don't ask).

I finally made it home without further incident. Now I have the enjoyable task of measuring, cutting, and nailing up the wood. For some reason, this seems like the easy part right now. Personally, I'm really looking forward to when I cut one piece of wood an inch short and have to go get more. Ah, will the fun of homeownership ever end?