electric mist

on heredity and saw disasters...

My dad called me yesterday when I was in line at the bank. He was working on putting up crown molding in his kitchen and had hit a snag. For reasons beyond his understanding, when he cut a piece which had to butt up against the first piece he'd installed, the angle didn't match and it wasn't working. He had made one cut and he hadn't wanted to screw up that long stick of molding (because he wanted the piece along that prominent wall to be without a splice), and so he'd come to the quick solution that he would use one of the smaller "drops" or "leftover" pieces, hold it up to the place where the crown had to butt up against the other crown and draw a pattern. Once he was able to match that angle, he would transfer the pattern onto the longer piece and cut it.

Now, this was a good idea, and logical, except that it didn't work. And he couldn't figure out why, so he kept trying over and over and over. He wanted Carl to come out there right then and figure out what he was doing wrong. (We're all about the patience, my family.)

Me: Well, it should be easy enough to do it with a pattern, right?
Dad: When I started, this damned molding was four feet long.
Me: And?
Dad: It's now six damned inches long. I'm about to throw that damned miter saw through the window.
Me: I'll call Carl. Right now. Step away from the saw.
Dad: Why are you laughing?

I am my father's daughter.

What he had forgotten about was my own little run-in with a saw and measuring fiasco.

When I was twenty and pregnant with Luke and we moved into the haunted house (see the ghost story below), the kitchen was shockingly antiquated. There were only two cupboards, no drawers at all, (no pantry), and no place to keep things like cutlery. Nor was there free wall space for a piece of furniture. The sink was one of those humongous cast iron jobs that have a long, shallow bowl section flanked by draining areas on each side. There were no cabinents below, where perfectly functional space went to waste.

This bugged the living crap out of me.

Carl went to his dad's antique store, rummaged around, came home and proudly showed me a little chest sort of thing he'd discovered. It looked like a piano stool with pretensions. Slightly taller than that sort of stool, it was too low to comfortably use as a work surface (and I'm only 5'3", so you know that had to be short), but too tall to sit on. Its only saving grace was that there were two drawers side-by-side which Carl had surmised would solve all of the kitchen's problems. (I'm going with "optimist" here.)(Bonus points if you know what I was really thinkikng.)

Anyway.

He placed it in the center of the kitchen as an island. As I was growing gargantuan in size with the pregnancy, I would move into the kitchen and forget the damned little table thing was there and impale my thigh on the sharp corners, multiple times a day. You'd think I'd remember it was there, but no, my hormone addled brain refused to accept the existance of such an awkward piece of furniture in the middle of the room.

And then I had a brilliant idea. I'm telling you, the genius of it made me feel like there should be announcements in the paper the next day, saying "GENIUS WOMAN SOLVES KITCHEN PROBLEM, WINS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE."

The kitchen sink had empty space beneath it. The table thingy was kinda short. Why not shove table thingy under the kitchen sink, therefore keeping usable drawer space and getting rid of nasty stabby table corners (which I was starting to suspect were leaping out and doing the stabby thing on purpose after the table heard me call it ugly.) See? Brilliant.

Only, table thingy didn't ~quite~ fit. It hit the outer rim of the cast-iron sink and needed to be about 1/4th of an inch shorter. No problemo. I figured that since Carl was a contractor, he must have construction-type tools outside somewhere, and I would just go find something that looked saw-like. So I marched (waddled) my pregnant self out to the garage and started rummaging around and found only one thing that sort of looked like a saw, though it was bow-shaped across the back of the saw with a large-toothed saw blade that wiggled. I wasn't sure what it was a saw for, but hey, it was a saw, it would do.

(I later learned it was the kind of saw that you use to cut small limbs from trees. It never got to live long enough to have that joy, I am sorry to say.)

So. Had saw. Had table. Had space. Easy peasy. Lay the table on its side, oops, remove drawers which are now completely jumbled. Start cutting about 1/4th of an inch off one of the legs.

The saw was hard to control in a straight line -- the blade quivered and jumped out of the groove more times than not. I felt like the table was putting up a fight. No problemo, just keep sawing. 1/4th of an inch is easy right?

Um, no. Not so much. Finish cutting all four legs, stand the table up and it wobbled. Badly. I must've cut a little more off one leg than the three others. I figure no one will notice, so I try to push it under the sink... and it hits something. I bend down to see that the "shallow" bowl part of the sink is ever-so-slightly lower than the lip, so now I have to cut all of the legs again so that the table will fit under the sink bowl part.

Lay the table on its side, saw about 1/2 inch off each leg, eye-balling it, because really, how much of a fluke was it that I didn't get it right the first time, and I'm sure I'm doing it about the same each time now, so no worries. Hand is hurting like hell, baby is kicking full-out, table keeps scootching on the kitchen floor, sawdust is in eyes, face, hair, nose and mouth, but this is NO problem, because am almost done and will have table thingy under sink and no more stabby corners.

Stand table up. Table wobbles like a motherfucker. Am seriously not happy. Figure fuck it, doesn't matter, just going to go under the sink, so start to shove it under.

Doesn't fit. Don't know what happened, but the lowest portion of the shallow bowl was not so fucking shallow after all.

Table is laughing at me.

Lay table on its side. Saw table legs. Blister on hand bursts. Sawdust now in everything, including uterus. Baby punting it back out. Stand table up. Wobbles way worse than before. Now it's really noticeable, and even though it now fits under the sink, it's extremely lopsided, so much so that anything inside will all roll to the right. Looks like a drunk built it.

Lay motherfucking table on its motherfucking side. Get the saw from hell. Try measuring. Hands hurt so much when sawing, realize that I can't hold it steady on a straight line. Realize it's already crooked, even with the measuring.

Decide that no stupid stabby table is going to beat me. Nosirreebob. Take saw, cut all the motherfucking legs completely off. Table now sits flat on kitchen floor. Drawers are one inch above floor, too low for big ass pregnant self to bend down to open to get anything out of them anyway. Kick table half-ass under the sink, throw the saw down in the middle of the pile of leg parts and saw dust and storm off to the other room to see what other furniture I can mangle before Carl gets home.

Carl walks in the door. Takes one look at the table (now on floor), the parts and the sawdust and said, "Would you like to go out and get some ice cream?"

I married a very very smart man.

Posted by toni at November 3, 2004 11:32 PM