Adventures in manliness

I needed shelves.

I recently got a pair of near field studio montiors for home recording use (which sound excellent, by the way). These monitors needed to go on my desktop, and since the desktop was already cluttered with a bunch of other stuff, I decided the best way to go was to get some desktop shelves to put them on. This had the double benefits of putting the monitors at a good height for, well, monitoring, as well as maximizing space in some sort of display of feng shui-ness.

So, over last week I head off to a number of different places, looking for shelves. Target, Staples, Office Max, IKEA, Hold Everything. No luck. No one has the shelf design I need. Finally, I decide if I can't find what I need, I'll make it. I will be a man and use tools and wood and make shelves. How hard can it be, I figure?

So on Saturday I head off to Home Depot. This week I've been to two of the most daunting stores ever: IKEA and Home Depot. Basically any store that's in a building the size of a warehouse is going to be daunting, merely by its size. But at least IKEA provided you with a map going in. At Home Depot no map, and as soon as you walk in the door it's just a giant wall of STUFF! Now, this might come as a shock to some of you, but being a man, I do actually have some of those deep seated guy tendencies. One of which is the thought that I should be able to find immediately what I need in a store that sells things like tools and wood. Since I'm a guy I should be almost telepathically linked to the aisle where I will find nails.

Not so.

Every time I go into a Home Depot it's like sensory overload, and I just stand there for a few minutes with a bewildered look on my face before I finally kick myself into action and wander around the store....with a bewildered look on my face. Trying to find whatever it is I need in there.

Saturday's list: nails, wood, Drano, Super Glue, and Swiffers. (Not all for my project; Sara asked me to pick her up some stuff.) It takes me approximately half a week to find all this stuff. Why would I ever think Super Glue would be in the paint section? Does that make sense to anyone?

Back when I lived with the folks in Weymouth, my dad had every tool known to man. In fact, had he still been up here, and not in SC, I reckon I would have asked him to make these shelves and slept late. However, the house is sold, and the tools are gone. So the challenge was to figure out how to get two pieces of wood that were 20" long, as well as four pieces that were 6" long to make my shelves. Luckily, Home Depot has a free cutting service. You grab the lumber you want and they cut it for you.

So, I grab a nice long slab, something that looks like enough so that I can get my 20" shelves and 6" legs. They cut it for me, and I leave with my stuff.

Back at the apartment, I set up everything on the kitchen table and notice the first problem: the "legs" weren't all the same height. Instead of measuring twice and cutting once, the Home Depot employee had measured once and cut rather haphazardly (a fact I noticed at the time, but didn't think much of until I got home and noticed the problem.) Three were close, but the fourth was off by enough that I figured I'd have to balance it with a maagzine or something. Oh well. I open my box of nails, get the hammer, and start to go to work.

This is not particularly easy when you're doing it on your kitchen table, with no clamps or naything. Again, I'm missing the luxury of having every tool known to man easily available. But there's another problem. I'm hammering away at this nail and the only thing that's happening is it's bending. I try another nail, same thing. So I'm thinking to myself that I bought nails that are too long. (I don't know for sure, but they were maybe 2" nails.) So I head back out to a local hardware store and buy some shorter nails: a box of 1 1/2" and a a box of 1 /14", since I'm not sure which I want to use for a 1" thick piece of wood. Back home, and it doesn't matter which I use as these also bend rather than penetrate. After a few minutes of pondering I figure out why. I had bought cedar (I think), which is apparently a wood harder than steel, and impervious to nails. Whoops. Well, I figure out a way around this. Later that evening, I'm meeting some friends at the Union Brewhouse in Weymouth. My friend Fil lives close by. He's a new(ish) homeowner, so I figure he must have power tools.) So, I pile up my wood into the car and stop by his place first to borrow some time on the power drill. If a hammer and nails isn't going to work, I'll use drill bits and wood screws.

Well, cedar is apparently impervious to powered tools as well. A handful of stripped screws and one broken drill bit later, we give up and go drink beer.

For my first course of Shelf Building 101, I get an F. My status as a man is now an endangered species, as I failed making something so simple as a shelf. Well, that wasn't going to stand. Sunday morning I wake up, ready to give it another go. I head back to Home Depot. A different one, since I don't want to have to deal with same people as I'm trying to keep my failure as secret as possible (from the strangers that are the employees of Home Depot, not you my friends of course.) It's a good thing there are two Home Depots near me, and oddly enough, very near each other. This time, I stay away from the cedar and buy a length of pine. Go to the "Cutting Center" where this guy does a better job of cutting the wood.

I bring my new wood pieces home and try again with the hammer and nails. Now, while you could bond cedar to Wolverine's bones and have it be stronger than adamantium, pine is a much softer wood. In fact, I don't even need the hammer. I'm feeling so manly at a sense of impending accomplishment that I could probably punch the nails in with my fist. In fact, that's what I do, and in about 10 minutes Voila! Shelves.

At this point I have regained my man-ness, and I celebrate the rest of the day by mixing two songs (with my new and awesome monitors); I kill some bad guys in Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell because guns and special forces video games are manly (at least as far as not being in the actual special forces is concerned); I eat some homemade chili (man-food) and drink beer; I watch a Myth Busters episode that involves (no lie) punching sharks. I then go to sleep in a testosterone fueled rage.

And that is the tale of how my manhood was nearly lost and ultimately redeemed over the weekend.