I can’t sing or dance and I’m nothing much to look at, but damned if I’m not great at submitting myself to endless torture trying to fix something that isn’t working. It’s a skill, or maybe a value, that I picked up from my parents. My dad will make 12 profanity-laced trips to Lowe’s in the course of a single weekend, determined to fix a garbage disposal that’s never quite worked (because he installed it), and when that one last part or tool is just as unhelpful as the 11 preceding it, he tosses a bucket under the pipes and assures my long-suffering mother he’ll do more research and figure it out soon.
He’s more comfortable with cars than construction and has, in almost 50 years of driving (including amateur racing), saved my parents tens of thousands of dollars doing his own repairs and maintenance. As frustrating as his DIY ethos often was to me when I was younger — and sometimes is even now — I admire the sort of stubbornness that occasionally, when you least expect it, gives way to triumph or remarkable inspiration. My dad’s ingenuity, and his willingness to suffer, has kept him in business for much longer than most of his competitors, even when recessions and other crises decimated his industry. It’s also sustained an almost 45-year marriage that had the odds stacked heavily against it.
The problem I faced late this afternoon was myopically small compared to all of that: the planks I’d added to the floor of the keeper’s cottage made it too thick to fit into its pre-cut supports. Before getting too frustrated I tried using a small pry bar to gently remove the bottom squares (seen in a photo or two below), the better for resizing on a flat surface. That was a no-go; the material was too thin and delicate. Next I turned to the planks, which were glued too securely to budge. That’s when my sighing and grumbling gave way to cursing and surveying other options.
The nuclear one would’ve been to buy a replacement cottage kit for a new floor, or to have the hardware store cut an MDF board to size, but I liked the work I’d already done. What I decided to try instead was widening the channels so my existing floor could fit. It was an easy process on one side and an enormously agitating, time-consuming chore on the other. But eventually it worked.
First of all, yes, that’s a bottle of Bosco in the background, procured for a future diorama about my grandparents’ house.*
Since I’d already run out of time for Judith Light (who probably grew up with Bosco), I spent the waning moments before Crankenstein’s arrival wallpapering the cottage. It was the rare miniature task I thought would be easy, owing to a lengthy former career working with paper, and I wasn’t disappointed.**
I’ll leave you with the finished product and a better view of the floor. I wanted some scratches and scuffs for realism, but there’s a workaround if you’re aiming for perfection: Minwax has a line of touch-up markers for its most popular stains, including the one I used.
Within the next few days I’ll install the windows, door and trim, and tidy up the bottom of the loft’s wallpaper. Then I’ll glue the house together and take care of the roof. It should be done by next weekend, at which time I’ll open the lighthouse box — unless something goes wrong with our garbage disposal.
* Bosco is a Jewish staple, partly because it’s kosher. My grandparents didn’t keep kosher but Papa’s parents did.
** The plastic gift card was for smoothing out the paper once it was glued in place. Grandmother Stover’s Glue went on like butter, to paraphrase Linda Richman, and I was impressed with it.