What The Heck Happened?

It's a very good question, actually.  It all seems like a blur to me.  I think the last time I managed to get a post up, my daughter was either just about to leave for ten days or had just left for ten days.  I haven't had much sleep since then, regardless.... So, I just checked the blog and the last time I posted it was about the rat cage and the sofa, at the end of July.  I think the last time I said anything about my daughter's room it was sometime around the 20th of July.  Good grief, so much has changed.  I had ten days to get the room "done" and anyone who knows me would say that for me to think that I'd get it all done in that kind of time frame was crazy.  It would take me nine days and a couple of hours to come to that same realization.

I can't even remember everything that happened, but I think it started out that I was still working on the framing and then I finally broke down and asked to borrow a van so that I could purchase the MDF to skin the bed frame.  I wanted 3/8" MDF, or was it 1/4"?  I can't even remember.  The big box store doesn't carry MDF in anything less than 1/2" (which is overkill and weighs more than I do I think).  I called the lumber store across the street and they were OUT OF STOCK.  What are the chances that on the one day that I get a van, they're out of stock?  I was so mad/upset/frustrated/upset/upset/upset....I ended up buying a sheet of 3/8" plywood, G1S, for the top of the bed, though I was very unhappy about it because I really didn't want any grain showing on this project at all.  I then had a small mental Olympics in the sheet goods aisle and decided I'd use hardboard instead of plywood, if MDF was out of stock.  It was a stupid idea and I freely admit that now.  The hardboard is currently residing in my living room until I can find something to do with it.  Let's see, do I have any photos of where things stood at this point in the story?  No, so I'll just carry on.

I begged A_____ to help me manouver the 4x8 sheet of plywood through the table saw, which was an absolutely atrocious first attempt at using that tool.  Which reminds me,  poor A_____ also got stuck with the job of assembling said table saw, when, after coming home from the fateful shopping trip, I asked him to please open the table saw box for me and he informed me that it was in about one hundred pieces.  That was not a good day.  So, eventually the plywood top for the bed was put in place and I started to cut the hardboard, which was easier since it's not as heavy (it's only attribute in this story).  It was a stupid, stupid choice for what I was intending and after I tried a couple of pieces I think I went a bit over the edge and may have burst into tears and punched the offending bed, which only succeeded in making my knuckles swollen and tender for two days.  The next day I begged my mother to come help me return the three remaining sheets of hardboard and bring back more plywood.  The hardboard wouldn't fit in her SUV properly and would have arrived at the store, 15 minutes away, broken into pieces.  We did manage to get a sheet of plywood though, since the drive was shorter for that trip and the wood was sturdier.

At some point around here I had the brilliant idea that if I used some of the shelves that the old owner had left in the basement to build my bookcases under the bed, I wouldn't have to buy a third sheet of plywood and since the boards were actually bookcases that had been taken apart, some of them had the pre-drilled holes in them to use with shelf supports, thereby answering the question of how I was going to make the shelves for the bookcases.  Here is what it looked like at this point....

  There's plywood on the top, old shelves for the insides of the bookcases, hardboard on the bookcase backs, leftover plywood on the front and and that attempt at hardboard on the right hand side of the front that broke me.  At the very least it was starting to look like "something".  Not a very nice "something", but something.  I think this is when I bought an air compressor/brad nailer kit by accident.  By that I mean that I wasn't intending to buy one, it just happened to be a really good price when I walked by it at the store.  The instructions for the compressor and nailer were some of the worst I've read.  Under "Preparing the Tool for Use",  for example, I believe it said something like "Insert the nails into the gun."  Well, duh!  I've never used a compressor and therefore also never used any air tools.  I wanted a little more help getting used to a tool that might seriously injure me than that.  Huge thanks go out to N_____ and her husband F___.  Without them I'd never have figured out A) how to use my new tool and B) That my new tool was crap and there was a reason that it was such a good price.  Seriously though,  I'd have been completely lost without that tuition.

At this point I guess I bought a shed load of trim wood, after I'd made some quick diagrams of how I thought I wanted the finished trim to look.  I still had some plywood pieces for the cubby hole to cut and the trim to rip and I had no push stick to safely work on the circular saw.  The store I went to wanted almost $20 for a plastic push stick and I was so mad I think I ranted about it.  My nerves were more than a little frayed by this point.  I'd been living on caffiene and not eating much.  When I'm into a project I tend to forget the finer points of living, like sleeping, eating and showering.  I remember going through the day that I cut the trim only having had Coke Zero and I kept thinking to myself "In a bit I'll stop and get a late breakfast"  As the sun was going down that day I realized that perhaps it was a little late for breakfast?  Anyway, what I was trying to get at was that I made my own push stick and I happen to be really poud of it.  It sucked up an hour of my life on that "breakfast" day but it was SO worth it.  Here's what it looks like (I didn't measure it or anything but I did base the design on one I'd seen used on the internet).

  With my new amazing push stick I was able to rip some 1/2"x6"x8' finger jointed pine boards into two types of trim.  1/2"x2-ish" plain trim and 1/2"x3" trim with a bevel like so...

And, along with all the other variations of boards I got, I eventually had a bed that looked like this...

This photo was taken with about 48 hours remaining before my daughter's return home.  I set the bed up and slept on it myself to see if I'd fall out of it in the night.  Thankfully I didn't.   I could have left it at this and she would have understood that I didn't get it "done".  That wasn't good enough for me and so, the next day, until almost 1:00am, I filled major holes, primed knots and threw on a first coat of paint so that when she arrives and saw what I'd done she'd get more of the full effect.  I really shouldn't have done that, there are still nail holes to fill, sanding ot be done etc.  But her face when she saw her bed was my goal.   Right before I crashed, in the wee hours of the morning of her arrival back home, the bed looked like this...

As proof that one shouldn't really paint while tired, I was covered in the stuff, includin my hair...

However, when my daughter came home and I ushered her upstairs, this was the end the result of all my hard work...

Know what she said when I asked her if it was as good as she thought it would be?  "It's way better than I thought it would be.!"  No sweeter words were ever spoken.  For those who are thinking to themselves "She can't sleep on that, she'll roll off there and break her neck!"  Don't worry, I'd purchased a portable, fold down bed rail but waited to install it until after she'd seen the bed.  In fact, my daughter opened the box and put the bed rail together herself, she was so excited about it.  It's not as nice looking as the bed without the rail, but it's safer and it can be removed when no longer needed.

That was enough excitement for one day, however, I was not allowed to rest on my laurels as the next morning my daughter was asking "When are we going to sand?"  So, I told her that if she sanded one wall of the room, I'd do the rest and we'd both get to paint.

Bless her, she really wanted to paint!  I did help her sand the parts by the ceiling, but to her credit she did sand the majority of that big wall by herself.  When we'd painted two of the walls, I couldn't stop talking about how different and nice the paint looked and she repeated over and over "This isn't my room!  This is a hotel!"  It's no coincidence that the fan behind her head looks like a halo.  I could have kissed her!  In fact I believe I did.  After day one of painting, the big wall looked like this...

I don't even recognize it as the same place.  The raspberry sorbet colour was a bit of a shock at first, but not only does it look great with the white, it really is a pretty good match for the curtains without having it custom tinted.  Today we sanded and painted the remaining walls, but the room is still all torn up as I had to take the mattress off to get at the back wall.  Tomorrow I'll be paining trim, I hope, and then putting stuff back together.