The Can Of Doing

Remember the ferocious greenery that was destroying the fence in Scruffy's back yard? Well, we yanked that sucker out a couple of weeks ago in preparation for the big ordeal this past weekend. It was time to tear down and rebuild about half of Scruffy's back fence.

Scruffy bought a nailgun for the occasion. In honor of the Home Depot ads, he called it his "Can of Doing."

Before

During

After

Demolition was AWESOME. Do you know how often I get to grab a hammer two-fisted and swing it as hard as I can? Not often enough. Pure joy!

Eventually we got to the first big mistake. We eye-balled the cross beams. "Those look like 6 foot sections, and that one looks like 8 feet." We bought the lumber. Then we measured. Then we went back to the store.

"You again?", said the checkout lady. "Yeah," I replied. "Turns out the guy who said 'Measure twice and cut once' was probably on to something."

She rang up the total. "I'll see you guys again in an hour or so," she happily said. "Oh no, we're good this time."

We drove back to Scruffy's house with lots of 10-foot long 2x4 beams sticking out of the back window of my Vibe. While putting up the cross beams, we ran out of wood screws.

"You again?," said the Home Depot lady. She didn't sound very surprised. "Yes, us again."

There was still a little demolition left at this point, so I grabbed a hammer. I swung hard and a shattered piece of 2x4 bounced off my ankle.

I laid on my back in Scruffy's yard to see if my ankle would swell, and reflected on what a beautiful day it was. I might even have fallen asleep, except that the ringing in my ears was too loud.

Eventually, I recovered enough for us to almost finish. Then we ran out of fence pickets.

"Hi!", the Home Depot lady said as we came back. "Shut up," I wearily responded.

4 trips to the hardware store mid-project, 4 hours longer than we expected the project to take, and 1 moderately traumatic injury later, Scruffy and I decided that we had run into "The Can of Doing us in."

That nailgun is pretty sweet, though.