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| Wednesday, November 08, 2006 |
| Domestic Chaos |
Seeing as we were unable to pave, we decided to get a start on the building of the riser for the back row of seating in our mini-cinema.
It took Mr Ata all day yesterday to decide on the structure and plan the platform. Ata thought this much deliberation a bit unnecessary given that he'd been looking at web pages on the construction of platforms on and off for over a week. But anyway. Late in the day, we spoke to assistants at Mitre 10 and Bunnings about our plans, and at night called AF (who is a handyman extraodinaire) to discuss timber thicknesses and reinforcing.
Today we went to Mitre 10. According to their website, we could bring in our plans and they would cut our timber to the required lengths so that we could then just assemble it at home. Easy, isn't it? And they have a free loan trailer service, so we could even get it all home with no trouble.
Apparently, what the website actually MEANT to say was, we will roughly cut it to about the right size so you can get it home and cut it to exactly the right size before assembling. If it's not too much trouble for us. And we needed a LOT of cuts.
So, after umm-ing and ahh-ing and some discussion with Craig the Power Tools Guy, we bought a sliding compound mitre saw. A quick phone call to an equipment hire place had revealed that hiring a similar item of equipment was going to be $70 a day, and the saws available for hire could not cut the width of timber we need to cut anyway. So I figure, well, we only need to use this one on four seperate occasions to make the purchase worthwhile. I gave in. Bye-bye, $280.
We also need two large sheets of MDF to make the top of the platform. Easy, we thought. That's only four cuts to trim the available sheets of MDF down to size, and they can do that for us. Not so. The machine at Mitre 10 is so inaccurate that a cut across 50cm winds up being out by 5mm - so cutting a 2m long piece is likely to be very very wonky. I could have a little rant, here, about the pointlessness of advertising a service you're unable to provide, but I'll let you all fill that in on your own. Suffice to say that I suspect it is really a sophisticated sales ploy. We spoke to Craig the Power Tools Guy again and bought another power saw - a freehand one to do the big cuts with. I was somewhat pleased to see that, when we explained why we were looking at another saw, Craig made the exact same face that I did when it was explained to me that they couldn't cut the MDF for us.
Then there was the timber, which cost roughly what we expected it to. Add in the screws, bolts, hinges, washers, paint and paint roller, and the whole project has cost us close on three times what we budgeted. Ata also needed some more drip irrigation pieces (sprinklers will be banned completely here from January), and a few other bits and pieces. I don't want to think about how much we spent at Mitre 10 today.
Anyway. The recent purchase means that Ata has to come face to face with one of her secret fears - power saws. While Ata is more than happy to operate pretty much any other power tool or item of machinery, power saws are a whole other kettle of fish. Power saws and sledgehammers would have to be the two items Ata has serious issues with - she can't see either one being used without envisioning bleeding stumps and smashed skulls. She was terribly proud of herself for swinging the sledgehammer up and over several times during the backyard demolition, although she mostly stuck to swinging it underhand (to smash the planter box) or using the crow bar (to break the concrete). Now she must face the Power Saw - a piece of equipment she has stayed well away from since high school woodworking classes. Truth be told, she was not entirely happy about using it then, either, but now she is even more fearful. The fact that Craig the Power Tools Guy still had all his limbs and digits helped somewhat. And the tools are well equipped with safety guards and cutout switches. Craig is blithely cheerful that we can simply clamp the mitre saw to the kitchen table to cut up our timber, but Ata is not so blase.
Well. A fear faced is a fear conquered, true? Ata shall take a cabinetry class next year, perhaps, to see that we get a little more use out of these purpose-bought power tools. |
posted by Ata @ 5:46 pm  |
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| 3 Comments: |
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Coooooooooooool!
Can I come and help? Can I can I can I?
*makes power tool noises*
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I bet indy wouldnt stop cutting until everything was reduced to matchstick size.
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Hmm. And we need things bigger than matchstick sized.
Otherwise, you'd be more than welcome, Indy! I'm sure engineering input wouldn't go astray... oh, hang on, we don't want it to fly off, though...
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Coooooooooooool!
Can I come and help? Can I can I can I?
*makes power tool noises*