The Build

I spent the better part of today helping my buddy build a shed. When I say better part, I mean the hottest part of today. Oh and it wasn’t just a shed, it is/was shedzilla! This thing is like two sheds long and two sheds high. It is kind of like ¾ of a single car garage. He doesn’t have a garage, so this will really help with his storage issues.

It is kind of a neat system we were working with, the shed assembles with brackets and you only have to make straight cuts. If you can follow directions, you can build this shed. Therein lays our problem. We can kind of follow most of the plans, but either we missed a couple of steps or the designers of the brackets missed a couple of steps. Freakin’ designers!

We made do with the knowledge and street smarts we have accumulated over a lifetime of ignoring plans to get us past the gaps. It is pretty easy if you just remember that whoever designed this tried to make sense. I’m not saying they were always successful, but they did try. In the end, life makes sense to someone.

Lucky for us, we both like to buy tools that we have almost no use for. We found a use for some of them today. Not always the use they were intended for, but when you are a tool collecting dust on a shelf, any use is welcomed. It turns out that just because it is called a hammer/drill, they don’t mean you can use it as a drill and a hammer. Good to know for the future. Also, if you hit something with a hammer, it is possible to hit it too hard. Good to know. Some ladders will stay where you put them and other ladders will throw you like an angry bull. Good to know. Women like to document a build with pictures when it would be far more helpful to hold the stud while we screw it. That sounded really dirty. Heh…heh…heh…

Whenever you take on a task, it will always take twice as long as you figure it might. That is just the way life works. Part of that is lack of experience and part is that when you are retired you have gotten used to doing work at a slower pace than friends that are work afflicted. That is also the way that life works.

I have to say that I had a good time today and there is a very good chance that I will be back at it tomorrow.

I remember when I was a kid; we would play work-up baseball, road hockey and “touch” football. There were no coaches or team jerseys; just a bunch of kids who got together and the two best players would pick teams. It was always fun and I enjoyed those unsanctioned games more than anything else when I was little. Maybe because I was part of the gang, I was smaller, so no one expected a lot from me. When I did something, anything, I received praise. Well not praise so much as the kids on the other team wishing they had picked me. What a great feeling!

Back then, we would play until the street lights came on or until there was blood coming out of someone. More often than not, it was the blood that ended the game. That is how the build ended today, with a misdirected shove, a “SHIT” and a scrambling for some kind of bandage. There was the discussion about whether the slash needed stitches and the decision was not to get them. The only good thing about the way today ended is that it was my buddy who cut his hand, not me.

NOTE: If two men are discussing whether a cut needs stitches, it probably does!