A grandmother is a mother who has a second chance

Friday, August 29, 2008

Some assembly required


Over the past couple of days Ed and I have been building a new shed in our back yard. Now, this may not seem like much, but our family of sheds is growing like Brangelina's kids. We're up to 7!! That's right, 7 sheds. When I moved into this house, Ed had already lived here for almost a year and had one old, rickety shed for his garden tools, and one small one for odds and ends like bug spray, fertilizer, etc. Our first one together was a 6x14 wooden number that we needed because we had too much stuff between us for this one house.

The new shed came in two boxes with seven bags of screws-washer-nuts- little metal things. And three books of instructions - English, Spanish, and French. 30 pages each. There were a few "shits" and "dang its" and "craps" along the way. But we managed to finish the project without needing to get a divorce. And that says something.

Assembly projects are always a bit scary. When my kids were 2 and we were living in Denver, we decided to buy a swing set. Not wanting to pay for them to assemble it, we took the boxes home and began work. There were literally TWO gallon sized plastic bags filled with screws and things. Quite frightening. It took us several days to get the swing set done and at the end we still had at least 1/4 of a bag of screws, nuts and bolts left over. Everytimg my kids got on that swing set I prayed that we didn't miss that one screw that held it all together! My advice to young parents - pay to have it done for you. You'll live longer.

Another fun project was a metal shed we had in Tucson. First of all, working with metal in the Tucson summer is just plain dumb. And the metal is sharp so in addition to giving yourself second-degree burns, you can easily slice off a limb. Never again. Give me Rubbermaid or a handyman any day.

But, now I think we're done shedding.

8 comments:

Daisy said...

I hear ya! If not for the fact that we need a permit for EVERYTHING here we would likely have at least one more shed for all of ds' stuff!

Desert Diva said...

If I had a husband to argue with while assembling, I might opt to putting things together. However, I'm too much of a klutz to do it on my own. The last thing I put together was a gas grill - first backwards. If there's a fee for assembly, I would rather pay it. What can I say, I didn't get the "put together" gene!

Nikki said...

Well at least ED will have somewhere to sleep when you guys have a fight...don't tell him I suggested it, I don't want him mad at me. My husband can string together the most creative paragraph of cuss words when assembling anything and refuses to stop and take a breathe. hilarious. and of course left over parts are a regular occurance. :)N

Chatterness said...

Shed happy? I like the rubber maid one!

Luz said...

Now I know who to call whenever I get around to building a shed!

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jenni said...

You bought ANOTHER shed????!!! I think some purging of your belongings is in order.

BTW, the deleted comment above was me. I was logged in as Jeff, for some reason...

Unknown said...

I have a similar shed and it was hell to put together!