According to my self-imposed publishing schedule for Selfies, this was due last night. So I’m late. But I’m still getting it in, and that’s important – “Better Late Than Never” is a truism that should be tattooed on my forehead along with “Perfect is the enemy of progress.”
I’ve been resuscitating a bathroom vanity and time got away from me. It started a few weeks ago with shoring up a drawer whose face pulled off and then this weekend I built a new big bottom drawer to replace the one that was disintegrating. While the drawer build went really well in and of itself, it uncovered other faults, which necessitated other fixes… Last night as the clock ticked past ten, Akilah finally said, “You need to throw in the towel for the night.”
“But…. But… but… it’s not finished yet!”
But I was done. I twisted my back wrong a few hours before, and contorting myself on the ground trying to install new drawer sliders into an installed vanity wasn’t doing my posture any favors… Yeah, good advice, Akilah… But I was late finishing a project that was supposed to be done on Saturday. It’s about 85% there. And it saves replacing the vanity for a few more years.
I’ve come to woodworking late. Regrettably, I didn’t take a wood shop class in school, but I always wanted to. My family isn’t exactly do-it-yourself oriented. Don’t get me wrong, some of my brothers and sisters (and their significant others) have taken up the mantle and have made impressive accomplishments. But my tool inheritance from my dad was a corded drill that looked like he inherited it and a pair of rusty vice grips. I remember him aghast that my brother Jay was going to change his own oil on his own car. The nerve!
But I always wanted to get into wood working – mostly out of a sense that, sure, that product is nice, but… I’d prefer it to be just a little different. My coffee table I bought from a big box store years ago – I love it. It’s got a top that lifts up and works great as either a laptop workspace or a makeshift dinner table… but what if it had wheels? So, I had to re-engineer the legs but in the process, I not only gave it wheels but allowed for more storage.
Understand, I’m not a great woodworker. I count myself as competent. I don’t say that to demean myself, just recognizing my limitations – I’m terrible at finishing projects (as in applying a finish), I’ve never made something out of “good” wood (too expensive!), and I’ve gotten bitten when I’ve only measured once instead of twice before cutting. But it’s a process. I’m getting better.
And I find I look at the world around me differently. “What kind of joinery is this?” “How did they accomplish that cut?” “How would I do this differently?” I think that’s a benefit of coming to something later in life – you approach things with a little more patience, a little more consideration, a little more carefully.
I try to go out of my way to learn new things as often as possible, and wood working falls into that category. Sometimes it’s a new piece of software – recently I’ve been trying to pick up Adobe Premiere. And sometimes I’ll learn something… and then promptly forget it – like how to use my ham radio. I’m the type of person who needs to use something regularly to really get it. In the little river valley that Guerneville sits in, the reach of my handheld ham radio is pretty limited. Without regular practice, my skills go dormant. But, on the plus side, I’m fairly confident I could re-learn pretty quickly.
There’s only so many skills my brain can hold onto at a given time. Thinking about that vanity, was it worth it to spend so much time on it? I mean, the drawer I built is overkill for the vanity… but I don’t get to practice my drawer building techniques too often (if you’re wondering, I used the ¼ ¼ ¼ method, though scaled up to 3/8, 3/8, 3/8; that’s me setting up the dado stack on my table saw in preperation). And once I discovered other issues that had to be corrected, my brain went into creative problem-solving mode – given that the vanity is installed in a bathroom and can’t be removed, how do you shore up the carcass and replace the rotten parts without undoing any plumbing? There were pocket holes. There was routing. I had to get pretty creative to get everything to fit and be stronger than when I got to it.
So, it’s anyone’s guess about whether the cost of materials and my time was quantifiably worth it in the end to shore up an aged vanity. But that’s really besides the point. I built a drawer I’m proud of, conquered my fear of installing drawer slides (well, maybe just subjugated it for some time), and improvised a solution that’s leaving the vanity much stronger than I came to it.
Or, well, it will be. I still have to put the face on that drawer, and clean things up. It’s not done yet. But it will be tomorrow! Better late than never!
