Not Everything is a Pinterest Frickin' Project!

"Hey, wanna make a fun, easy project?"

I go on binges where I want to re-paint, spray paint, dig up, hack down... you get the picture.  I'm sure in the future my kids will use these spans of time as proof I should've been better/differently medicated, but for now, I call them Creative Uprisings.

So, when my friend Crystal texted me with pictures of American Girl doll furniture she'd found on Pinterest, I asked her how much glue would be involved (a must for any of my projects).  When she replied lots, I got in the car and met her at Home Depot.

Only... there's a reason I've never built anything with wood before. See, I've got the Dyscalculia, which is NOT that I'm a math vampire, although numbers do suck for me.  Dyscalculia is a fancy term for Math-dyslexic, so when I see numbers, they get wobbly, sometimes they switch spots, or disappear altogether, sometimes I write 91 when I mean 19 and I say 61.   There's more but that's all that matters for this particular moment in time.

Oh, it's a fun affliction with a capital F.

And, everything gets infinitely stupider when we add fluorescent lights into the equation.

Now, I want you to head to the furthest corner of the Home Depot and think about nothing but the fact that these dang fluorescent lights have destroyed my brain by the time I get there, and now there are itty bitty fractions (eighths? what the FRICK is an eighth?) and Crystal is standing there asking me how much wood do we need?  And I can't even see the numbers on the little price thing beyond the price and I say "The $2.50 one." and she says, "But it's not the right size." And I say, "I'm sure it's fine." and she says, "Well, what are your measurements?"

And I mumble something like "Eleventeen, Niner... fifteenths?" and blink my eyes like Madonna when she's nervous.  And everything is too bright and burn-y, and why are we here again? I don't remember needing to build a deck.  And Crystal is watching this patiently, apparently I either do this a lot OR she's used to me not making any sense and just waiting me out.  Frankly, either idea is possible. So she repeats, "Well, what ARE your measurements?"

Jaysus Aitch Christ, I'm rubbing my face now. Everything is blurry and I feel a white light on my face like a spotlight, only dizzier and swimmy-er, and Crystal says "Focus! Do you need 18 and three sixteenths?" and I don't really even know my name anymore.  And then I do the unthinkable.  Like a prisoner being tortured, I admitted the one thing I was working so hard not to say, I blurt out, "I dunno. I'm gonna eyeball it." and she nearly falls over laughing because apparently you shouldn't eyeball wood cutting or maybe my fly is down, or maybe I look crazy cuz I can't stop rubbing my face because I'm trying to get the blurr out of my eyes and it's not working.

I haven't had a full-blown math meltdown in probably 20 years. It, coincidentally, stopped with the end of my need to be in a math class.  This, in case you're checking facts was when I completed my OAC (AP) Finite math class, which I took out of spite to show Math that I could do it (which, btw, I couldn't, and needed the help of the cute nerd in that class, who happens to now be my cute husband).

But I digress.  Crystal, who, by the way, can recreate anything by looking at it hard enough, sat there with a pencil and paper and figured out what my measurements were gonna be, and how much wood I needed, while I rolled on the floor grunting like an ape and trying not to cry.

I wonder why none of the Orange Smocks came to help us out that day, in retrospect.  Although, maybe not.  A grown woman making animal sounds on the floor and rubbing her face might not be something Orange Smocks have been trained for.   Not. In. The. Handbook.

Anyway, Crystal got her wood, I, like Hodor, good for nothing but brute strength and the ability to say my name, carried it through the store and dutifully packed it in her car.  And once we were out in fresh air the setting sun, my brain stopped exploding quite as much and I was able to at least safely drive home, drink a gallon of wine and go to bed.

Meltdowns take a lot out of you; any toddler will tell you the same.

2 weeks later, Crystal finally screwed up the courage to ask me if I was ok enough to start the project.  Then she made sure to remind me to eat something before coming over.  Apparently I'm quite a disaster when I'm hangry, too.  Siiiigh.

Full tummy, glasses on, with caffeine in hand, I cautiously drove to Crystal's to begin the eyeballing process.

I think she thought I was kidding, but I got there and got out the bed that Crystal bought her daughter (oh how smug I was thinking MY bed was gonna cost $20 plus labour!) and began tracing it onto the wood.

Yes. I traced it.

Look at all those perfect right angles. 

Fuck you.
It's hard to measure stuff right. The ruler always moves and shit gets in the wrong spot and sometimes you start at the 1 and other times you start at the end, and then your numbers get all wrong.

Just shut it. Math makes me hostile.

So I traced the bed onto the wood while Crystal and her pretty ruler and measure-y thing drew out all her cuts.  And then she said, "Well how big is the bottom of the bed?" and I said, "Uh, it's that big?" (gesticulating wildly at the wood in no particular area)

Then she says, "Right, but the trundle goes underneath it, have you drawn the trundle yet? Cuz it's gonna have to be precise." and I said, "Listen, Sister. I've got this. You do it your way, and I'll do it mine. And your shit can be perfect and mine can be a lesson to all engineers."

Because sometimes you gotta embrace the truth.  It'll set you free, they say.

The next, next day, her dad came over to show us how to use the jigsaw and the table saw.  Her father, by the way, is just like Crystal, meaning he nearly peed his pants laughing at me when I told him I'd traced the bed to get mine.  Then he stuck around to see how the Bad News Bears were planning on making American Girl Doll shit.

The noise is making me want to 
Hulk Smash and Cry. 

First off, when the table saw started the high-pitched squeal, I started to cry. Apparently I don't like screamy noises.  I plugged both my ears and tried to figure out how I was gonna cut the wood with my hands in my ears, while it rested on my gut and my knee.  Then I realized I needed earplugs, only apparently I couldn't leave (I don't know why it didn't occur to me to drive and buy some earplugs, but I blame the noise that was piercing my brain for screwing that up) so I went inside and wrapped a hoodie around my head and over my ears.  Only that didn't really cut enough of the noise out, and plus it kept slipping down and I also decided to use the jigsaw because it's quieter.

Jaysus.  Then Crystal went inside and got me a HUGE winter toque to put over the hoodie that was tied around my head like a turban and the ear flaps helped a bit, but then they had these dangly bits that kept falling in front of the jigsaw blade.

I think, also, we should've recorded this whole thing for a Health and Safety video, since I was kneeling on the board I was cutting with a jigsaw, which was over the lip of the deck they have.  And wearing a turban, sunglasses and a mohawk-earflap-winter toque in July.  Nope, August.

Did I tell you the part where we jammed the nail gun and only got it to work one time, and that was the one time it was loaded with the too-big nails, which went through the wood sample and straight into Crystal's counter top? What about the time I cut my wood and then realized you can't just lay one piece on the other piece and jigsaw that shit to be the same size without a vice grip.

Fixing my shit for me, like wee elves.
I think I owe them each some felt shoes, now, right?

Roughly 8 hours later of pure cutting, re-cutting, shaping, sandpapering, gluing and nail gunning later, I wanted to run over the bastard thing with my car, except I was pretty sure there were 1000 nails in the stupid thing and I'd get a flat tire.

However, like all things, paint and silicone fix a lot of problems.  Just look at Anna Nicole. Or Cher.  Once I spray painted it, sanded it, touched it up and added the wee embellishments, the bed stopped looking like wooden dog shit, and started to really look right. Ok. So Crystal's carpenter father helped out a bit, but mostly I did the work, which was a big deal to me because I wanted to check "using a jigsaw poorly" off my bucket list.

Then Kiddo #1 and I went down to the sewing room and picked out some fabrics for the bedding. I sewed up some seams, she filled it with both polyfil (stuffing) and when that ran out, she filled it with scraps from my never-emptied sewing garbage bin.  I may have told her that scraps of cloth were used to fill old mattresses in the "olden" days, too, so it was practically educational.  And possibly a lie, but whatever. We were having a mother-daughter moment and I was almost done making the fucking bed. I'd tell any amount of lies to make that project end.

"This is as straight as Elton John."

So, here's the end. It's cute. It really is. I'm not gonna pretend I did it-- Crystal and her father kindly stopped laughing long enough to measure and re-cut the pieces for the trundle part.  And they didn't make fun of me, at least to my face. Much.

All I think about at night, though, is what if Kiddo #2 wants a damn trundle bed for his various stuffies now? Because this $20 bed cost about $550 in labour and sweat and tears.


Materials:

1 American Girl Trundle Bed
3 pencils (one to use, two to lose)
1 piece of board that is heavy. And rectangular.
a jigsaw
earplugs, or something to wear on your head
glue
nail gun/nails
paint
fabric scraps

Process:

1) trace the American Girl trundle bed (poorly) onto the board.
2) try to cut it out with a jigsaw and realize you didn't draw straight lines
3) curse and cry a little because the table saw (that your friend needs) is too loud
4) scream FUCK IT and call American Girl
5) Buy the bed and never speak of this again