Isaac is a nice young man.
He has a ponytail on his head.
Ten minutes after meeting me,
Isaac wished that he were dead.
Recently (aka when my mom was last in town), I decided to spruce up the guest bathroom upstairs. I was inspired mostly by this picture of a gorgeous bathroom makeover.
I decided I could frame out the stock mirror and stain the cabinets, and voila! Gorgeous new bathroom! Then my mom casually suggested I add some trim or moulding to the cabinets since they are completely flat as is. Well, I couldn't really do that without doing the same thing to the drawers as well. After a lot of measuring and trying to organize everything so I could reconstruct it, I headed to Home Depot to purchase the necessary supplies.
Naturally, though, I didn't take a "before" pic before removing all the cabinets and drawers. Apparently I don't have any pictures of the lovely oak finished fiberboard from when I painted the bathroom last year either. I don't know why I would have neglected to include them.
At Home Depot, I found the trim/moulding aisle on my own... down in the lumber section. This side of the store is foreign territory to me, and I am terrified by it. I did my best to play it cool and act like I knew what I was doing. After roaming up and down the aisle for about ten minutes staring at 20' pieces of seemingly identical choices, I finally found a sample board and narrowed down my choices. I hate to make decisions, but AT&T decided that it was time for me to cowboy up and decide for myself. The numerous attempts to send my mom the choices all failed, and I was on my own. Ultimately, I settled on this for the cabinets and drawers:
I was advised to go with pine over the fiberboard options because it will be going in a bathroom where there is a lot of moisture. Figuring this out before making my purchase and getting it home made me feel extremely in-the-know.
For the mirror, I decided to go with this:
The rosettes will go in the corners. They are really not that much bigger than the moulding, but I couldn't hold them next to each other because there were more sample pieces glued to the board where I was trying to compare. (Yes, I need a manicure. Apparently I garden now. A manicure will have to wait.)
In addition to not taking a "before" pic, I also didn't make an organized list of the cuts I needed. I had them organized by where they go in the bathroom, but not by how many of each length I needed. Quickly, I found a stool to sit on and some post its in my purse, and I came up with this:
I was a little nervous that I was leaving pieces out, so I counted up all the pieces I needed. Four for the mirror, and EIGHTY-TWO for the cabinets and drawers. Yikes.
Now all I had to do was get the pieces cut.
I thought that the store does this for you. This is where Isaac enters the picture. I wandered around, and he was the first soul I found wearing the famous orange apron. I warned him that I had quite a few pieces to cut, but he was pretty apathetic.
Okay, so the lumber section of the store is mostly foreign territory. I have accompanied others on occasion, though, and witnessed the cutting of wood using a large, loud, scary-looking piece of machinery. Isaac picked up a handsaw and starting cutting individual pieces with it. Oh dear. This poor dude is going to hate me. I texted my mom to let her know the situation while Isaac got to work on the sixteen 11" pieces I would need. My mom responded by telling me how impressed she was that I was getting them all cut at the store, rather than doing it myself at home. Uhhhhh. Am I supposed to do that? I thought they cut it for you?!?! She informed me that they will typically make a few minor cuts. Poor Isaac. At this point, I'd already been at the store for about ninety minutes. When we got to the next cut size, a set of ten pieces, Isaac started cutting them in groups of 4-6 pieces at a time. I have no clue how he managed this.
He continued without complaint (but also without speaking to me), completing the fourteen 5.25" and fourteen 15.5" pieces. Around this time, another guy was waiting with what seemed to be just one piece of wood to have cut. I motioned for him to go ahead of me. That was the last time I saw Isaac.
The dude straight up abandoned me in the foreign land of the lumber aisles! In his defense, I think that his shift was over. At least that is what I infer from his repeated checking of the time in between cuts.
This is when John came to my rescue to pick up the rest of the job. He made the first two cuts for me. When I then requested four of the next size, he asked how many more cuts I needed. Uh oh. He's going to make me do this on my own!! Yikes!! "Twelve?" I replied meekly.
"Oh, let's go over to the next aisle. It'll take us all day with the handsaw."
Ha. If only he knew.
After grabbing a few more items, I made it home for the real adventure to begin.
While I had my pieces cut to the appropriate lengths, I still needed to angle the ends to fit together in the corners of the cabinetry. I was excited to finally use the miter saw my dad got me when Wonderlynn first informed me that I wanted to suggested I add some dimension to the cabinets with trim.
Remember how ridiculous it seemed to John that someone would cut twelve pieces of trim with a handsaw when the big scary machine was available? I started to feel that way cutting my very first piece of trim. For the second piece, I decided to time myself to see how long this adventure would take. 83 seconds. From putting it in the miter box to cutting it and then picking it up. A few quick calculations led me to the discovery that the remaining 80 pieces (plus the other side of all 82) would take me approximately 221.3 minutes.
This discovery, combined with the realization that I don't exactly have a work table for projects such as this, explains why I spent all evening cutting pieces of trim in my living room. Where I can watch Alias on Netflix while I work. Somehow, I managed to cut one end of each of the 82 pieces of trim. Tomorrow, I'll aim for the other end. If feeling has returned to my fingers by then.
I'll keep you posted.
Love,
Murphy & Me
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