I've mentioned before that I'm far from the handiest person on the planet. But since we've moved into our house (roughly 6 years ago), I've done a few impressive things. Well, impressive to me that I even attempted them. And yes, large power tools were involved on both occasions, so please hide the women and children...
The first was actually before we fully moved in. I've got bad allergies, particularly to dust mites. So moving into a new house with lots of old, dusty carpeting is definitely not a good thing. But when we peeked under the bedroom carpet, we saw hardwood floors! So my first task was ripping up the old carpet, pulling up all nails and dragging that sucker to the curb for garbage bulk pick-up. That was actually fairly easy, except for the lug
ging to the curb. (Carpets are heavy and super big so unless you have 3 people helping, it's more of a pain then it appears.) The next step, however, was a quick clean of the floor to get the initial dust up. And then came the scary fun part. I actually went to our local Home Depot and rented a big ol' drum sander. I've never used one o' these before, but it looked kinda like a vaccuum, so how hard could it be, right? Heh. Let's just say these things have a mind of their own and move a LOT faster then you think they will. They also kick up a tremendous amount of dust that you've just sanded off the floor. So be sure to really prepare the room and cover anything like outlets, molding, open doorways, etc., before you start. In the end it actually wasn't too bad and the floor came out rather nice, especially for my virgin attempt at restoring hardwood floors.
The second time, however, was far more difficult and a zillion times more manly. See, we have a huge side yard on the house here. And smack dab in the middle of it was this big brick well. After a few non-quick calls to the town and other agencies, we successfully determined it was merely a decorative well and never was functioning one. Besides the fact that the wooden roof was old and had a few dozen rusty nails sticking out of it, I just wanted the thing gone since it was in the worst possible spot. How can you play football or baseball on your lawn, when there's a huge brick obstacle in your path. So after finally convincing my wife to get rid of it, she said we could... if I took care of it. So first my buddy Pat came over with a few sledgehammers and we walked the heck out of it. If memory serves me correctly, we managed to knock off the bulk of the thing, including the roof and the 3 or 4 foot hight brick wall. Definitely wasn't easy, but if you've never smashed anything with a sledge hammer, you haven't lived. It just feels sooo good.
The hard part, however, came when we wanted to get rid of the well's "foundation." More bricks and lots of cement. When the sledgehammers didn't work, it was back to Home Depot. This time, to rent... a jackhammer! Woo. If I thought the drum sander had a mind of its own, I sooo didn't know what I was getting into. Again, it felt great to turn this thing on and feel every part of my body jiggle at 6 billion miles per hour as I tried breaking up the rest of that well. But after about 10 minutes and barely making a dent, the fun quickly turned to desperation. I think it ended up taking us a good 4 or 5 hours that day to finally break up everything and finish clearing off the well. It was a LOT of back and forth between us using sledgehammers, the jackhammer, different bits, crowbars, lots of rocking back and forth, etc., but we eventually got it all up. And yes, my arms were insanely sore for a good 2 or 3 days after. Like I said, I'm far from handy.
I like tools, though, and should take a course one of these days. Which is why I was semi-psyched to see that Home Depot is offering an Intro to Power Tools course on October 22 at local Home Depots across the country. Except... it's for women. Maybe I'll put a wig and my mom's best dress on and sneak into one...
Anyways, you can register for the course and score yourself a coupon when you attend:
Attend a free Do-It-Herself Workshop and get a
$25 off $200 coupon for The Home Depot
Register for a free in-store "Intro to Power Tools" workshop on October 22 and receive a coupon when you attend.
Use the above link for more details and to register.
Valid through: October 22, 2007 11:59pm ET
Coupon offer ends November 5, 2007.
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4 Responses to “Can I build it? Yes I maybe, er, can...”
You've won another award, D! Congrats!
Yay another award! Now I've got another little backlog. I better do a recap post in the next day or two. Thanks, Tish!
Jack hammers are tons of fun! They work quite well... The drum sander, that is a different story!
Garry: Like I mentioned, the Jack hammer was an insane amount of fun... for about 10 or 15 minutes. Then it turned to work. Then pain. Then torture... The drum sander actually wasn't so bad; I think the dust bothered my allergies more than anything...