Home improvement
Monday, 09 February, 2009
So after the Big Day In to launch Connect 09, I drove to Bunnings to pick up a few things for the house. I was looking for:
- A hammer (so I could hammer hooks into the walls and hang pictures)
- A tack hammer (to replace the one I slightly damaged trying to hammer hooks into the walls to hang pictures)
- Some small utility hooks so I could hang our whiteboard/corkboard on the pantry door
- A whiteboard eraser
- Some turpentine to rid of the paint splotches in our kitchen
- Something to fix the knob on my bedside table drawer
- Some fold-up chairs for the balcony.
To me, Bunnings has always seemed like the male equivalent of Lincraft—lots and lots of very useful stuff scattered all over the place in a bewildering array of shelves upon shelves where finding stuff is next to impossible. Bec says she likes Bunnings because she gets inspired with ideas of all the different things she could do; for me, Bunnings is hugely scary, representing the gaping hole in my knowledge when it comes to “handyman”-type things.
I'm sure I was in there for the better part of an hour, walking around trying to find the things on my list. They didn't have whiteboard erasers (but they did have whiteboards) or fold-up chairs (might have to try IKEA for those), but I did manage to find just about everything else. (And I went to Officeworks and found myself a whiteboard marker and some pens.)
At home, in a very Bob-the-builder-ish fashion (“Can I fix it! Yes I can!”), I went about trying to improve our little household. I mean, everyone says one of the great things about owning your own place is that you can hammer things into the walls and no one else will care because they're your walls! (Yay for our walls!) The problem is, they don't really teach you about stuff like hammer and nails and hooks and home improvement at school, so I was pretty much making stuff up as I went along. I couldn't hang the whiteboard because I couldn't get the hooks into the pantry door. I guess they were the wrong sort of hooks for doors and I should have bought the other kind (it's always the other kind).
Then Ben said, “Why are you using turps to get rid of the paint?”
I said, “Isn't that what your dad is doing?”
“It's water-based paint!” he said. “You get it off by scratching it off.”
(*Karen mutters something under her breath about how-was-she-supposed-to-know-and-if-that-was-the-case-why-haven't-you-gotten-rid-of-the-paint-splotches-in-the-kitchen-yet???*)
Then there was the problem of the bedside table drawers. (This story requires illustrations.) Now, you'd think that since we have matching bedside tables, they would be exactly the same. I mean, look at these knobs and screws: identical, right?
Wrong! Look again—look at the bottoms of the knobs. One is a nice little square; the other is a slightly gouged hole.
Now look at the screws. One is slightly longer than the other. One is also slightly thicker than the other.
One is also a Phillips-head and one is a flat-head.
Here is where it gets weird. On Ben's bedside table, the knob and the screw work together nicely so that the knob sits snugly on the drawer the way that bedside table drawer knobs are supposed to.
This is because the Phillips-head screw seems to penetrate far enough through the hole to allow the knob to be twisted down on it properly.
However, when it comes to my bedside table drawer, the hole is slightly different. Here it is with the same Phillips-head screw inside it:
Note the difference in height. The truly weird thing is that the knob used to be fine, and then all of a sudden fell apart a couple of years ago.
Ben said, “Just buy a screw that's the same thickness as the Phillips-head but longer.” Easier said than done, my dear! At Bunnings, there was a wall full of screws—a wall! Using a screw gauge (yes, such things do exist), I worked out I needed a 6G and that it ought to be longer than 30mm. But the longest 6G screw I could find was 38mm which really wasn't long enough. Plus, I had to purchase them in packs of 10 or 20 (I forget which) for about $3.50.
Then I discovered the aisle with the knobs and handles. I found a couple of knobs that pretty matched ours and just bought two more. They came with matching rather long screws. Looky look!
And look how far through the new and improved screws penetrate!
Unfortunately they were too long; once I twisted on the knobs, there was still half a centimetre too mcuh screw:
The stupid thing is that if the hole wasn't so wide, it probably wouldn't be a problem:
As it is, I need to saw off part of the screw, but I don't know how to do that and I don't have the equipment to do that anyway. *Home improvement fail ...*
I was feeling pretty discouraged with my handyman efforts after that, but I did manage to hang a few pictures and, wonders of wonders, I managed to put up the decals I had bought from Flatbird surface art at the last Finders Keepers markets.
Of course, nothing is ever simple, and I quickly ran into problems. Firstly, the instructions say that you should press down on the backing paper with a firm and even pressure to get the decal to stick to the transfer paper, not the backing paper. Then you peel away the backing paper so that the decal is sitting there sticky side up. The problem is, the backing paper is rather sticky, so it does not come off the decal easily; I had to keep stopping and work at removing it gently. That wasn't hard the hardest bit though; secondly, you applied the decal to the wall where you wanted it, applied some firm but even pressure all over it, and then peeled away the transfer paper. Easier said than done! The transfer paper was quite sticky from the backing paper, and would not come away cleanly; it kept trying to take the decal with it. With large bits of decal, this wasn't a problem; however, of course I had chosen to buy the decals with the most fiddly bits!
In the end, I had to work at removing the transfer paper delicately from decal without worrying about where the decal was sticking (because it wasn't sticking too well on my walls anyway) and then, after I'd managed to remove the transfer paper entirely, I had to stick the decal down with my fingers, trying to position everything exactly right.
It took a lot of effort, and even after I was done, half of the black bird fell down and I had to stick it back up (and the little dots on the black bird had to be applied separately), but I think they look good:
(Ben expressed a dislike for the chandelier when I bought it, so this one may not stay.)
I leave you with some pics of the origami robot Nancy brought back from Japan for Ben:
Blinks:
A way of funding writing in the future: pitch and idea and get people to support it.
Place where you can hire play equipment for parties, etc.
How to recalibrate the home button on your iPhone.
Unsolicited manuscripts accepted by Pan Macmillan with certain conditions.
Thought Balloon is a group blog in which the writers tackle a new theme every week? month? with one-page scripts. This URL is for their Phonogram ones.
How to sew a zipper on a knitted garment.
Issues organised by tale.
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Other comments
I love the chandelier!
Do you know you can get pink or purple tool kits from Supercheap? (Not Bunnings) Then you would have your own tools and the menfolk wouldn’t want to borrow them.
Hey Brig!
No, I did not know that! I think I’ve seen something similar around the traps though.
I don’t think that would be a problem for me though; Ben is just as clueless as I am about home improvement stuff, and is similarly disinclined to handle hammers and the like.
A possible solution to your drawer problem: get a suitably-sized washer.
That will hold the head of the screw on the inside of the drawer in such a way that it’s anchored properly.
If it’s still too long, I think you can by spacer-type things, or even an overly large nut will do (as long as it’s smaller than the washer).
How frustrating!!
I love the birds and chandelier though… they look Awesome!!
Sammi
*hug*
*Wail* You mean I have to go back to Bunnings again???
We totally had the same idea about wall decals!! I really want some to cover the big blank walls in our new place… still yet to order.. Did you find any other places in aus that do decals?
Hey Sarah! IKEA do them and so do Vinyl Designs on MadeIt.