I don’t know how it inevitably happens, but projects with me just seem to swell completely out of proportion from my original estimates. Sometimes it’s simply that my estimates are wrong. No, that’s most of the time. I tend to underestimate the time required because I tend to overestimate my skills. Today, though, my estimation of the time required to make K’s Mother’s Day present was just about dead on. True, it took me longer in the end, but that’s because I decided to pull out the router and round over every edge. Why? Because I have a router and quite honestly don’t have that many opportunities to use it.
I also decided as I was working to countersink all the screws and go back with wood filler and hide them all. That added a bit of additional time. But the raw building itself took just about as long as I anticipated.
What got me off track was not the time it took to make the bench but rather the time it took to gather the needed materials. The wood was the real trick.
I went to Lowe’s expecting to be back fairly quickly. All I needed was a bit of additional chain for the swing, a few hooks to connect the swing to the chain, and some 2x4s for the framing of the swing. The chain took quite some time — probably more than twenty minutes — because I pressed the “Press here for assistance” button and no one came for what seemed like an eternity.
Finally, I was ready to pick up the lumber and haul it back to the in-store sawing station to have them cut the 96″ studs down to 48″ pieces that would fit in K’s Rogue. The first trick was to find a lumber cart. I finally gave up looking for one, went to the cashier, paid for the hardware, took it out to the car, and returned with a lumber cart from the parking lot. I loaded my six 2x4s and headed to the cut station. Where I found a sign that read, “Saw not functioning.”
I felt like I was in the film Nie Lubię Poniedzialku except that I was in Greenville not Warsaw and it was Saturday not Sunday.
I just left the cart there with the lumber on it. It was a somewhat crummy thing to do — I could have at least taken the lumber back.
After dropping off the hardware at the house (because it was on the way), I headed to Home Depot. The saw there was completely functional. The studs I picked out, though, were not 96″ but only 93″. So when I told the shop assistant to cut them at 48″, adding “I just need them in half-size pieces,” he did just that: he put one end of the board on 48″ and cut. And the resulting pieces were of a significantly different length. That’s when I measured and saw they weren’t 96″. I could have checked. I didn’t. I just sighed.
While all of this was going on, the Boy alternated between helping me and helping the Girl, who was painting the dog house and the bench.
In the evening, we watched Nie Lubię Poniedzialku. We’ve been trying to expose the kids to some of the classics, and we decided it was time for Poniedzialku. I love that film. It’s probably my second-favorite Polish film, right behind Miś. The story, such as it is, is charming: we all laugh at the horrid Monday everyone is having even though none of their trials rise above irritation. There’s no shadow of any real tragedy — just the annoyance of plans going awry.
What I really love about the film, though, is the views of the Warsaw of the early 1970s. Just a quarter of a century after the Second World War, much of the city is still under construction, and what has been completed has the look of 60s communist architecture that was still prevalent in Warsaw when I arrived in 1996.
Papa decided he’d watch the film with us. “There are no subtitles,” we warned him, but he wasn’t fazed. We explained critical dialogue, but most of it really didn’t require a whole lot of explaining.
The Boy disagreed. “I don’t get any of the funny parts, even when you explain them,” he fussed.
Perhaps he’ll find the next one we’ve planned a little more enjoyable: the classic Sami Swoi. We found it on Netflix DVDs, which means it will have subtitles. “Kargul, podejdź no do płota!”