Weekend Project Inevitability

There is no Soccer Saturday update this week because we had a slightly unusual weekend. Michael had an early game in which the team was so outplayed and outcoached that we just wanted to get on to Kelly's game to see some good soccer again. By the time we got home, though, there was a message from the coach letting us know that there would be no game because the other team could only field four players and had to forfeit (absenteeism is a sign of the times around here). We all surprised ourselves at how disappointed we were to miss an opportunity to see Kelly's team play. Yes, we are still talking about more than an hour of youth soccer, but the games are reasonably well played, and the setting on the pristine St. Mary's field is beautiful.

What to do with all that time? I had no choice: long-deferred projects around the house lurched to the front of my brain and would not leave me alone. One of the longest-standing jobs that has remained incomplete is to install new baseboards in the living room. We put in a door between the dining area and our breakfast room before we moved in, and at the time I asked the contractor to build a small step between the rooms. There is a small angled wall there, and I asked him to work off of the angle. He didn't, and put in a resolutely rectangular step instead. I have refused to carpet the step he built, clinging to my vision of what the step should be.

I have the tools to build what I want, but no access to them because of the mountain of boxes in the garage. At about the same pace that mighty glaciers carved El Capitan at Yosemite Park, we have worked through our boxes. After a few moments of contemplation, I managed to clear a few more Saturday morning, which finally gave me decent access to my workbench -- and the miter saw. I assembled the saw, made a couple of test cuts, and reveled in the capabilities of a brand new saw blade.

After an afternoon of prying and pounding, I had removed the old step. I spent the rest of the afternoon dredging up principles of geometry that I thought I had forgotten to figure out the lengths of 2x4s I needed to build the step. Mr. Stocking would be proud. A few applications of the Pythagorean theorem later, I had myself the plans for the step I had always wanted. It took until Sunday night to finally finish construction and re-lay the carpet in the living room, but it is all done now to my satisfaction, with just the carpeting of the step itself remaining.




Once the carpet is totally done, the baseboards can go in. We had the foresight to ask for an extra bit of the carpet that was installed in the house before we moved in, with this project in mind. Now, where did we put it?