The Kitchen: Part III

As previously explained, we awoke Friday morning a bit befuddled by the size issue of the cabinet over the refrigerator and we were debating how to proceed.  To make matters worse all the demolition was done so I could not take my feeling of frustration out on a piece of drywall.  Continuing to compound the problem was the fact that screw drivers, pliers, tape, and other random smallish tools seemed to disappear with alarming regularity.  

We did some minor jobs, messed around with a bit more of the electricity, and were feeling a general sense of morose when Uncle Don showed up.  Thankfully he brought much needed energy to the project.  Uncle Don also completely ditched the plans my father and I drew up to splice current off old wires to make for simpler work.  He explained why that would have been a bad idea but in all honesty most of the meaning of his words were lost in my morning haze.  

The good news was that with Uncle Don and myself pushing the crew forward electrically, my father and Uncle Bill were free to hang some cabinets.  This process took us through most of the daylight hours as both the electricity and early cabinets proved more demanding jobs than originally thought.

Eventually our rag tag group was joined by my cousin Billy.  Billy brought us coffee.  He was a hero.  My Dad recruited Billy for cabinet work while Uncle Don and I toiled in the basement with the circuit breaker box.  At one point Billy attempted to solve our height issue by staggering the cabinets in such a way to look intentional.  I thought it might work but the wife was not having any of it.

At approximately 8:00 PM on Friday the electrical work was finished, we thanked Uncle Don and sent him on his way back to North Jersey.  At this point the wife had a research breakthrough and believed she had located the cabinet we needed at a Lowes approximately 45 minutes away.  This caused some concern because we needed to get to Lowes and purchase the cabinet by 9:00 PM when they closed.

I grabbed the truck key from my father but the wife convinced me that was overkill because the cabinet in question was so small it would fit easily in the trunk of my Versa.  Billy and I arrived at Lowes at 8:55 and caught some nasty looks for the exhausted Black Friday workers.  We high tailed it to the appropriate section only to discover that the cabinet was the wrong color.  Lowes makes a 12 inch cabinet in Red Oak not Honey Oak and we needed Honey.

As Bill and I were mere feet from the door and the clock struck 9:00 PM we got a call from my father in which he requested a half sheet of plywood.  The helpful girl at the check out counter responded that they did not sell half sheets but they could cut them for us.  After 5 minutes and one completely non-verbal encounter with the man who cuts plywood at Lowes at three minutes pasted closing we were wheeling 2 half sheets of plywood towards my Versa.

A Versa is a great car and it does some things really well.  Hauling plywood, however, is not one of them.  We unsuccessfully attempted to put it in the trunk.  We tried squeezing it in the back doors in vane.  We even thought we could tie it too the roof but Lowes had locked their twine behind the gates in the garden section and I was in no mood to scale the fence.

At this point a blind rage overcame me.  I lifted the (half) sheet of plywood over my head and slammed it into a curb in an effort to crack it in half (again).  When that did not work I leaned it against the curb and tried to kick through the wood (this would have worked if the curb was a bit taller).  Finally I decided I would have to jump on the wood like a trampoline until it would crack beneath my impressive (yes that's the adjective I'm going with) weight.  Fortunately or not plywood is made of fairly strong stuff and I was defeated.

While I was busy engaging lumber in mortal combat Billy had called the wife who was already on her way to pick the wood up. By the time I finished weeping in the cold on the plywood she was in the parking lot and loading the truck.