Wednesday, December 31, 2008

The Mother of Innvention



They say that the mother of invention is need, but I think it is frustration. I have been asking my husband to put up the bar in my son’s closet for more than two months (his room did not have a closet and we had to swap them around in order to qualify his room as a bedroom ). I’ve waited and waited and I finally said yesterday, “Forget it!” I grabbed the hammer, found the pieces we took out of the old closet, and here it is:



Of course as with any project, things don’t always go my way. DH actually calls me the 5 minute woman: I think everything is going to take 5 minutes. And so it was – I couldn’t find the right shelf and had to cut a new one. Mind you, I’m not real comfortable with power tools without DH giving me suggestions / guidance. But a hand saw caught my eye and voila, a shelf.

My other frustration invention this year is the stone base for our wood stove. Since the day we moved in 12 years ago, the slate bottom has been chipping off and breaking. Certainly I could not show it like that. The outside lip had nothing on it and showed just a brick. It was not attractive. I asked and asked for help but getting none, I decided I was going to take a stab at it. After a trip to Home Depot, I found a premixed grout and cement, I began to fix it. I thought the slate that I saved was going to recover the base and that I was only going to put the squares over the brick edges, but again not only do I have 5 minute issues, I tend to miss the trees in the forest, and thus it was with this project too. I really did not have all the slate. Some of the pieces had broken too small to use and so I improvised. Now some might see this as a deficit, others might see that they have a one of a kind, handmade, personally designed stove base.


Lesson to begin 2009:


Don't get Frustrated, Get Innovative!

No comments: