The carpeting is in and the hardwood flooring is mostly finished, but not quite because the contractor ran short of quarter-round - which is not his fault at all, he only installed the stuff I’d already bought. But now I have to go buy MORE quarter-round and do the last bit myself, which will be my fourth trip in total to buy quarter-round for this stinking flooring project that was supposed to take up a few weekends and the odd weeknight hour or two during November 2005. At least we’ve learned something, kids, and that is that if ever I say anything with regard to home improvements that in any way resembles, ‘Gee, I think I could buy some stuff at Lowe’s and do that myself’, you should immediately kick my ass, okay? Kick it twice for good measure.

Any time I attempt home repairs or improvements, it goes like this, whether the item in question is paint, lumber, wallpaper, tile, carpet, flooring, paneling, trim, etc. For this example, I’ll use “trim”. I decide (foolishly) that it can’t be that difficult so I measure and determine how much trim I need. At Lowe’s, I select a trim and find their stock is one piece short of my needed amount. I probably only need 3" of an 8' piece, but regardless there is too little for my project. The store has no idea when, if ever, they will obtain more of that particular trim - not that the employees don’t attempt to discover this information for me, but their phone calls, computer checks and conversations with management do not shed any light upon the matter.

I sigh and decide to select another trim. I go through my top 4 - 5 choices with the same result, the only difference being how much stock is lacking to complete the job. I grudgingly buy choice #6, which is far more expensive and which I don’t like nearly as much as my first choice, but I want quite badly to finish the project so I buy it. Once I get it home, I’ll discover (not before using/installing some of it) that one piece is either mislabeled or from a ‘run’ so different that it does not match at all. I sigh and return the rogue piece to the store the next evening, only to learn that there is no more of choice #6 in stock, readily available in the metro area or forthcoming in the foreseeable future. So I will have to return the rest of unused choice #6, but in the meantime I have to buy enough of some all-new trim to complete the job.

Once home with yet another set of trim, I decline invitations from friends and forego fun stuff to spend the weekend tearing out the previous partial job and installing this new trim. I get the job 90% complete and discover that I do not have enough trim to finish. This ALWAYS happens to me and I don’t know why. Have you heard the old adage, “measure twice, cut once”? Well, my father is of the school which teaches “measure four or five times, triple-check your arithmetic, then make a faint mark in pencil, check it again once or twice for good measure, and then cut” so it’s not like I don’t make an effort and since I add and subtract for a living, I’m pretty confident of my skill in that area. I also figure that I’ll screw up a time or two (hey, I know me), so I overestimate. It looks like I need 28' of trim, I’ll decide that I’m going to buy 30', but when I discover that it comes in 8' lengths, I’ll buy 4 of them - so I ought to have plenty, only I don’t. I never do. I ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS get caught short and have to re-do a project.

Once when this happened when attempting to wallpaper my laundry room, we started to run out after we’d done only one wall. I couldn’t see how I could possibly be that far off so my mom (who’s been doing wallpaper for decades) re-measured the room, checked my measurements and figures over and over against the pattern drop and roll size. We were never able to figure out where I went wrong. We should have had more than enough paper, even counting a mistake or two and the pattern repeat. Yet it was undeniable that we had barely enough for 1⅓ walls. It was pointless to keep sitting there staring at my figures when we were clearly out of paper with most of the room to go, so we went back to the wallpaper store, where of course they had no more of the paper I was using, even though they had like 4 bins full two days before, no kidding. I had to buy ugly wallpaper that I don’t like, as I didn’t have time for the store to special-order anything because the whole point was to get the laundry room rewallpapered that weekend, after Sears had hauled off my old washer and dryer, but before they delivered the new ones on Monday. So if you’re ever over at my house and think, “Eeeuw, what ugly laundry-room wallpaper!”, it’s okay because I think so, too.

With the flooring project, we knew that however it had happened, we'd underestimated and needed to buy more before the contractor arrived. I thought we'd need 2 - 3 boxes but no, upon measuring we were TWELVE boxes short. TWELVE. We went to the flooring store and bought that, got back home and I started to unroll the 'quiet-walk' - with laminate flooring you put down this stuff kinda like carpet padding but much thinner, and with a plastic moisture barrier. We had one big roll, a smaller roll and some scraps left from doing the flooring in the other rooms. I got it down and was 10' short of being able to finish. Alan went back to the flooring store hoping to buy a remnant but resigned to buying an entire roll if necessary, only to find that the kind of quiet-walk we had was not manufactured any more, the new stuff is about 1/8" thinner, wouldn't be compatible and so he had to get enough of the new stuff for me to re-do the entire freaking room.

I don’t know why I haven’t learned my lesson before now, but better late than never. I see that any attempt at DIY results in me spending a ridiculous amount of time on what was supposed to be an afternoon’s work, spending far more money on replacement materials, extra materials and trips between my house and Lowe’s than a professional would have cost and spending extra money on booze because I am so stressed and upset over the whole mess. If I ever get this house sold, I swear I’m calling a contractor if I so much as need to hang a picture in the new one. Posters, I might see myself fit to put up a poster with mounting tape, but an actual painting? With wire? I’m calling in a professional.