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Cracking the Whip
What does a router saw, a butter knife, a sliding compound mitre saw and an air compressor all have in common?
Well, besides the ungodly amount of money I spent on all of them (or rather, winced as the hubs forked out the cash), they are all in my kitchen. Right this second. Apparently, they’re more useful to me than say, a stove. Or a countertop. Both of which are covered by an assortment of tools, wood pieces, carpenters glue and sawdust.
This is what happens when I have a dream. Or a delusion. A vision of a perfect kitchen. All it took was fifteen hundred smackers on a few pieces of cabinet trim, a henpecked husband, some patience and an iron will.
Sure, the hubs and I will probably murder each other before he goes back to work. Sure, we have neglected the kids and fed them cereal while we farted around with measurements and tools and argued with one another while our kids rotted their brains out playing video games.
All in the name of progress, baby.
What the hell was I thinking when I decided my kitchen, just three years old and in perfect working order, needed an upgrade?
And just how deep are my husband’s balls buried in my purse that he actually agreed???
It’s all fun and games around here. Until some one loses a finger. Courtesy of the power tools sitting in my kitchen and the hubs and my mutual annoyance with one another until this task is finished.
In a fit of desperation, I called my brother, Stretch, and asked him for his professional assistance. After all, he’s a carpenter by trade. Surely, he wouldn’t mind spreading the love, enlightening his favourite sister, and in the process, save her marriage.
His advice?
Don’t cut the fifteen-dollar-per-linnear-foot trim in one inch chunks. It’ll look bad. Remember, any project you think will take six hours will unerringly take three days and a pound of flesh. Oh, and my personal favorite? Remember to measure before you cut. Apparently, it’s important.
With those little gems, the hubs and I set out to kill one another finish our cabinets.
Cabinets that looked fine before we started screwing around with them, my darling husband snarled at me as he Brad nailed his finger to the trim.
At that point, it was hard to disagree with him.
I almost felt bad. I mean, the man is only home for 96 hours every 24 days. This is his down time. He should be kicking back, with his feet up and tossing back a cold one while I make gourmet meals for him wearing nothing but an apron and a pair of stilettos.
Or at least, this is what he keeps telling me.
I keep telling him the only whip I’m gonna wield is the one that is gonna motivate his ass to get my cabinets done, the garbage moved to the dump,and the wood chopped and stacked.
Apparently, we are having a bit of a break down in communication. And not a lot of sex. It’s hard to get close to one another when we are both covered in sawdust. Neither of us wants slivers in sensitive places.
We have made some progress. (With the carpentry. Not the sex, sadly enough.) By the end of today we should be finished. As long as no digits are forcefully removed by rotating blades, no eyes are lost with flying nails and no lives ended by the throttling hands of an angry, annoyed spouse.
Soon we will be back to our regular, loving selves, ready for some romance as we take in our newly completed kitchen cabinets.
The question remains, will we be romancing each other or new spouses? At this point, I’m thinking the odds are fifty-fifty.
Remind me of this nightmare the next time I have the urge to start a do-it-yourself (or nag your husband until he does it) project. While you may learn new tricks and skills about home improvements, you may also learn that you and your husband morph into scary, ten feet tall, angry monsters; each capable of shooting death rays from your eyeballs while attempting to destroying one another. Or just to shut the other one up for one freaking moment of peace.
I’ll have to remember to try and avoid getting any blood on my the cabinets during the carnage.
November 5th, 2007 at 8:49 am
I can’t wait to see pictures of the remodeled cabinets!
Or a picture of Boo trying to strangle you. 
November 5th, 2007 at 8:52 am
Hey, I’ve heard that post-DYI sex is the BEST.
So, you know, HURRY.
Good luck with the kitchy!
November 5th, 2007 at 9:11 am
That kind of dust is death to all but shopvacs.
Love the pics!
I just discovered your blog a short while ago, and I pushed it way up on my list of bookmarks.
Canucks rock!
November 5th, 2007 at 9:18 am
Let me get this straight…
Fact #1: Boo gets 3d off every 24d, or 1/8 of his time.
Fact #2: You plan those 3d full of a DIY kitchen rebuild effort
Fact #3: You come here and bitch that you’re not gettin’ any because he’s too busy acting on Fact #2.
Priorities determine outcomes.
{ducking for cover and hoping she knows I’m ribbing - a little}
November 5th, 2007 at 9:28 am
Our motto around here is live with it until you can pay a professional to do it for you. I suggest you learn it and tattoo it where it can be seen by all.
November 5th, 2007 at 9:28 am
“Next time, I’m hiring a professional. It’ll save my sex life.”
Wise words.
November 5th, 2007 at 9:40 am
I have found it is almost impossible for the BF and I to work on a DIY project at the same time. So I usually end up hiring someone to do it…
November 5th, 2007 at 10:04 am
I’m in the middle of comtemplating a kitchen overhaul as well… and considered a DIY approach. I have learned from your mistakes. There will be a strange hairy man in my home, and I will be paying him to be there.
Thanks for the warning…
And uh.. start hiring people. I know they got them up there in Canada. As well as cable.
November 5th, 2007 at 10:06 am
Is the picture of the brown leather chair where Boo likes to sit?
Shop vac! It’ll suck up everything! Hair, dust, wood bits, money, time….
November 5th, 2007 at 10:35 am
Careful, an ugrade in the kitchen may lead to the assumption of an upgrade in the meals prepared in said kitchen.
November 5th, 2007 at 10:40 am
Cooking dressed only in an apron and stilettos is not a good idea. The stilettos will slip in the construction dust. Especially don’t cook bacon dressed like that unless, you know, you’re into pain.
November 5th, 2007 at 10:56 am
OH NO! The only think the Redneck and I can do is canning together. Any other project we leave to those best suited to handle the frustration. Hence, the fucked up yard, the water damage still damaged in the bathroom and the broken window with a piece of plywood over it in the playroom.
I don’t do home improvement.
November 5th, 2007 at 11:08 am
The only way my hubby can help me with DIY projects is to take both toddler and father-in-law, and get them the hell out of my way until it’s finished. Because, even pregnant, I am more handy than the two of them put together.
November 5th, 2007 at 11:16 am
Good Lord, I’d hate to have to clean that up. I like to pretend to be allergic to dust, just to get my husband to tackle that job.
November 5th, 2007 at 11:51 am
Oooooh. We remodeled a bathroom in our old house and the cast iron tub sat in my living room for 10 months. It was not pretty.
November 5th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
We’ve been renovating our house for ages, and I learned very quickly that gypsum/sawdust snot isn’t pretty. Or tasty. Or very nice to breathe in. Dust sheets, woman. Dust sheets!
November 5th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
‘Atta girl. Put him to work. Then send him my way…I have some wood paneling that needs painting.
November 5th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Your adage, “Next time I am hiring a professional, it will save my sex life”
Now, that could mean, I said could, not will mean, that you could hire a professional to provide YOU with sex. You did say “MY” sex life, not “our” sex life.
So, yeah, next time, have the hubs do it, hire a professional, and you get both the project and some sex LOL.
But as a person doing a DIY project right as we speak, my wife of nearly 10 years has learned that if I say it will take 3 whatever, hours, days, weeks, she KNOWS that that time is on the short side of something 10 times minimum the real time. And if I say it will cost $X dollars (US), she knows it will be $100 + 3X. The 100 is for a new tool I will just have to get to do the job, the 3 times is again an average, the real price could be higher!
LOL
Our simple bathroom retile job, 100 bucks TOPS is now at 500, but its down to just the baseboard painting.
November 5th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
Girlfriend - you consistently make me giggle when you want me to - gems like “just how deep are my husband’s balls buried in my purse that he actually agreed” - oh yes, you slay me.
November 5th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
We’d have been in the ER at least 24 hours ago.
November 5th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
DIY projecst IS foreplay for me, but my husband doesn’t understand.
November 5th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Very funny post. Thankfully for me, my Wild Thing learned to remodel at a very young age. Her Dad was a carpenter and general fixer upper.
She gets a strange look on her face when I ask intelligent questions like “What’s a three quarter inch wrench?’ or “Which saw is that?”
Dang good thing she loves me.
November 5th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
We fight even when the professionals do it! We barely stayed married while we had our house built. That stuff if tough!
November 5th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
Reno’s make me crazy. Next time get a professional. I wanna see pics of the results tho!
November 5th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
Please keep all your digits…so you can keep on typing! Have FUN!!
November 6th, 2007 at 12:35 am
It’ll be worth it when all is said and done. I hope!
November 6th, 2007 at 4:55 am
ahhh…home improvement, i know it well…well honestly i know clearing out rooms for it and living in the mess of it well, it seems i’m always pregnant when we actually tear the house apart-or keeping small children away from the mess( and the tools that could kill them) good luck, at least your kids are old enough to dust!
November 6th, 2007 at 8:04 am
This reminds me of a joke my friend told me: A guy’s male member gets severed off in a horrific car accident — but at least his willy is miraculously retrieved. At the hospital, the guy and his wife discuss options with the surgeon.
“For 5 grand,” the surgeon says, “I can reattach it. It’ll work, but it won’t be pretty. For 10 grand, I can reattach and make it look decent, too. But for 20 grand, I can reattach AND enhance. It’ll be bigger. Better. Stronger. Take some time to decide.”
The surgeon leaves the room so the husband and wife can discuss. He returns to find the husband in tears. “What’s wrong?” he asks.
“She says she can live without it,” the guy sobs. “She’d rather have the money for a new kitchen!”
November 6th, 2007 at 8:56 am
My husband gets mad because I don’t help him enough on big projects such as the one you describe. So we don’t have sex, either. I think home improvements are one of those no-win marital situations.
November 6th, 2007 at 9:06 am
My husband and I cannot even assemble IKEA furniture without a fight. I try to do things like that when he is not around.
It will be totally worth the risk to your marriage once the cabinets are done though. Can we see photos please?
November 6th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
This is, perhaps, the only downside to having a handy husband. I feel your pain, I do, as we embark on our own special hellish journey of repairing a shower leak and resulting foyer ceiling damage ourselves.
But you know what? At least your kitchen will look better after the fact. Our bathroom will just look….repaired. (Sigh….)
November 6th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Um, shouldn’t you be the expert in the only “do it yourself” project that is EVER worth doing?
November 6th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
DIY projects are best left to those people on HGTV who should be doing it for me.
November 6th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Been there…done that. I feel your pain.
November 6th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
I hear ya, sister! I’m reflooring the whole house, and painting too. Without the help of my better half! Insomnia ROCKS for getting home improvement projects done!
PS–we want pics of the cabinets!
November 7th, 2007 at 1:24 am
We just moved into a rental house and are building a house on our property. I told my husband I built the lawyer fees into the construction loan.
November 7th, 2007 at 9:48 am
LOL, I have SOOO BTDT. We have a ridiculously ill-made railing on our second floor landing (yes, THAT’S safe with little kids) thanks to my Hubsters DIY-delusions. His friends call him McGyver because he will jury-rig anything out of bungee cords, duct tape and construction adhesive. If there is a RIGHT way to do it, he’s not interested. So when we re-tiled the foyer, I sent him away, strapped on my knee pads and did it MYself. After all, as I said to him, which one of us has made a profession out of watching home improvement shows for the last two decades? Me. I rest my case. I swear, if only they hadn’t cancelled TLC’s “The Operation” I could be making the big bucks as a surgeon now…
November 7th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
my husband and i almost divorced over replacing our living room floors.
home DIY projects with your significant other does not = a happy marriage.
November 8th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
Huh. Maybe the THREE MONTHS it took to do Pumpkinpie’s new room explains why the baby making is not happening… Oh crap. We’re about to start the upstairs now. Next year, perhaps.
November 12th, 2007 at 8:40 am
Dude. Our kitchen took a year. A year of work, 12 weeks of it being completely unusable.
I feel your pain.
It is worth it in the end I think.