Bob the builder, can he build it?

So I had initially approximated my stint in construction to last a few long and painful weeks but pleasantly surprised myself by finishing (almost) all on Day 1. Here's a rough outline of what my schedule looked like today:

8:00am Wake up to buy materials

10:30 Come home, spend way longer than necessary making calculations.

11:00 Take a break before venturing into power tool situation.

11:15 Measure everything, everything, everything!!

11:30 Cut everything. (In the process, inhale a forest's worth of sawdust.)

12:00 Realize our drill is missing, walk down to campus to pick one up.

1:00 Grub

1:30 Realize we don't have the right drill bit but decide to carry on anyway.

1:32-2:30 Assemble everything and get frustrated when things don't fit where they should.

3:00 Struggle getting it all in the car before taking it to the jardin de ma mère!!

Or if you would like to hear in greater detail the struggles of my day, proceed:

After trying numerous hardware stores and nearly being coaxed into buying wood that was $$$, finally got redirected to Truitt and White by my ever so faithful father. I swear there's some sort of magic spell cast over the property because as soon I drove into the yard, my car immediately shrunk about three sizes. After narrowly escaping some forklifts I managed to park between two pick-up trucks that must've been like twice my height.

Anyway, it's not until you actually walk in to the store that you realize all the calculations and plans that you've been hatching in your head up until that point aren't really that important. With the help of a few large old men with beards you get pretty much every suggestion and opinion on anything you need. I swear, even with the neat list I had written up before walking in, I changed my mind about what I wanted to buy at least ten times. In the end, the answer came to me by wandering through the yard until I talked to enough people that told me what I really needed was rough redwood. Bought two 12' planks and got half of a broken one for free! Sweet deal. (...or so I thought. Until I found out as I was assembling everything that the board was warped)

All in all, a pretty interesting experience. Though I must say, going in to that place is some serious time warp. 20 minutes in there ended up being an hour in real life...

Back at home I got everything laid out and geared up for the occasion. Then, for the sake of all the old people that like to walk down the path I tried my best to lay low because I'm pretty sure if they had seen me they would have been very, very frightened. I mean, with grunge clothes on, a mask on my face and a skilsaw in my hand I might have just as well been a deranged murderer for all they knew. Or a bandit construction worker. ('Cause we all know how many of those there are around these parts of town.)

Aaanyway, after a few hours of doing all the screwing by hand and finally (finally!) finishing, I came away knowing that.......... I like building things! (And I like working with power tools too) FOR THE MOST PART. Let's just say that I learned one thing: Carpentry is sort of annoying in that it's like dominoes or math problems. If you mess something up at the beginning, it normally shows up to haunt you at the end.

Rookie mistakes aside, I'm still pretty confident nobody will really notice those few boards that stick out a little further than they should or the occasional gap unless they look closely. And as soon as we get some green going, it'll be like it never even happened.