I assess the scope of the project and determine it should take no longer than a week. I tell him, “We’ve got leftover paint from the cabinets and a couple of brushes, so we should be all set.”
Oh, if it were only that easy.
What I always forget is that Fletch doesn’t share my compulsion for half-assery when it comes to home improvement projects. He’s never once hemmed curtains with a steak knife, nor used a wad of gum to make a framed picture hang straight.
Before he can even begin to envision slapping a few coats on the dresser, he has to ready his workshop. Clearly the basement is too dusty for paint to properly adhere, which necessitates the purchase of an enormous, expensive shop vac.
After his work space is sterile enough to perform your garden-variety tracheotomy, he realizes he doesn’t have enough places to set things down. I suggest perhaps he use the now-immaculate floor. He laughs, but I’m not sure why that’s funny.
Instead, he invests in a hammer drill to hang studs on the cement basement walls. Then he mounts Peg-Boards on the studs and loads them up with tools artfully displayed by make, size, and shape. Dissatisfied with his handiwork, he takes all the tools down to paint the Peg-Boards. My suggestion of, “Why not hit the dresser while you’ve got the brushes out?” falls on deaf ears.
Workshop complete, Fletch disassembles the dresser and begins to sand. He doesn’t care for the job the finish sander is doing, so he declares the need for a random orbit sander.
“How much does that cost?” I ask, growing more and more annoyed.
“You can’t put a price on a job well done,” he replies. [Um… when it’s a fifty-dollar dresser you can.]
But the random orbit sander works well. In fact, it works so well that Fletch accidentally smoothes out some parts meant to stay pointy, which requires the purchase of a table saw.
“You need a saw? To paint?” I demand.
“All part of the process,” he assures me, while lovingly assembling a machine costing roughly the same amount as my first year of college tuition.
“Wait a minute,” I say, recalling the dismemberment stories he’d shared about his father, uncles, and maternal and paternal grandfathers. “Don’t you come from a long line of nine-fingered Fletchers?”
“Everyone gets ten—that way you have some extras.”
To date, he’s forked out hundreds of dollars on this project and that’s without factoring in the cost of three weeks’ labor. For a dresser that’s still in a dozen pieces and has yet to see a single drop of primer.
Next time? I’m just going to paint over the spiders myself.
As weeks pass, the dresser becomes my Godot. Every time I think there’s progress, something else happens—e.g., the primer isn’t setting properly—and he has to take one step back.
Mind you, I have plenty to occupy myself, especially now that I’ve found the official online version of the police blotter, but I am not a patient woman and the process is slowly driving me to distraction.
Six weeks into the project—SIX WEEKS—Fletch bounds up the stairs to my office. “Small problem.”
“No shit.” He’s been “small problem”-ing me for weeks now, from rebuilding missing drawers, to reimagining an entirely new base. This dresser has taken me through all the stages of grief, although getting past the anger and bargaining point was touch and go there for a while, and I’m finally at the point of acceptance. I didn’t need the damn thing in the first place and the only reason I wanted it was so we could use up the extra Tiffany-box-blue paint. But it’s fine. I don’t care. I’m okay with living in world without an Easter egg–colored dresser.
“There’s a missing hinge and because it’s so old, Home Depot doesn’t carry anything that size, nor does Lowe’s or the woodworking shop. It’s on the outside, so it really needs to coordinate with the other hinges.”
I simply shrug and say, “Who is John Galt?”
“Of course, I could order one on the Internet. It won’t be an exact match, but it’d be close. They’re kind of pricey, though.”
“How pricey?” If it’s less than the scrillion dollars we’ve already put towards this, I’m willing to negotiate.
“Fourteen dollars.”
Fourteen dollars. The man who happily invested in six different types of handheld drills really believes I care about fourteen dollars at this point?
“What’s fourteen dollars compared to what you’ve already spent?” With every purchase, he’s justified the expense saying that he’d use all the tools over and over again. Yeah, pal, I’ve got a closetful of bridesmaid dresses telling me the same story.
I continue. “My concern is not the price. My concern is that in receiving the hinge and finishing the project, you’ll have accidentally opened the portal to Hell. This dresser was never meant to be finished and if somehow you manage to do it anyway, you’re going to unleash some Pandora’s box–level of plagues on this world. Buy the hinge and finish the project or leave it off and save the world. Either way, I’m not picky.”
A week later I’m in my office reveling in a particularly dishy story. There’s some batty old socialite on the lakefront who hates when people walk on her part of the beach, so she’s always turning her enormous dogs on trespassers. While everyone else is up in arms about the situation, I’m trying to figure out how to make friends with her.
Fletch wears an odd expression as he walks into my office carrying a couple of packages. “You’ll be pleased to hear that you were right.”
“How so?”
He shakes one of the big mailer envelopes at me. “I got the hinge today so I should have your dresser done in a few minutes.”
“YAY! That’s fantastic!” The piece has been hanging out in the guest room for a couple of weeks, finished save for the missing door. To Fletch’s credit, he did such a professional job with the reconstruction and the paint that it
