Last year, just after Christmas, Todd Hamilton was good enough to come out and help us with a few home renovation projects that were slightly beyond my capabilities. One of these was to hang the new medicine cabinets in the bathroom, a project involving breaking an enormous mirror that was epoxied to the wall, drywall work, painting, and a lot of swearing. This wasn't too much of a problem.
He also brought a Sawzall. This was good, because when we had the contractor in to finish our basement, we agreed that he should build an enormous rectangular enclosure for the sump pump. Later, we realized that this not only looked stupid, but it made it really hard to take an unobstructed shot at the pool table from that corner.
On further reflection, we realized that a smaller L-shaped box would do the job. So Todd cut the box down to size, installed replacement drywall and plywood, and left it to us to paint and varnish.
Did I mention that it's been a busy year?
On Sunday, I went to the basement and started painting the surfaces that needed to be painted; Gretchen started varnishing the nice piece of oak plywood that would form the lower surface of the L and would serve as a useful end table. Of course, it didn't take long to figure out that I'd grabbed the wrong bucket of leftover paint. I think this was the primer.
Last night, I repainted with the right bucket of paint. Gretchen needs to add one more coat of varnish to the end table piece. And when that's done, we should be able to clean up, uncover the pool table, and play a game of pool for the first time in a year.
Maybe we should hang the dartboard too, while we're at it...