The Mutual Joys of Work and Accomplishment

[Updates below.]

The house has been the target of a grand portion of my attention throughout the previous three weeks. Improving upon a nearly blank slate has turned out to be one of the more pleasant experiences of late. I'll do my best to post photos when things are presentable.

I have always taken small pleasures in certain tasks. When someone or some duty calls for a job that has an element of visual important, I often find myself putting more effort and becoming more emotionally attached to the details of that visual element than elsewhere.

For example, at work, I am the point of contact for a large safety video and paper and electronic publication library. I ship and mail these things to public school district officials all over Texas. This emphasis of mine on the visual manifests itself in two ways: I like to ensure the materials are packaged with as much symmetry as possible and if I'm using a cardboard box, I insist on levelling out and firmly gluing the packing tape to the taped seams. The former has a practical element - even weight distribution so it goes through the transportation process better - so the most "pure" example would be the latter.

It doesn't really matter what brand or what kind of packing tape to be used, because when you tape the seams by hand, you won't get a perfect seal. You'll get a useful and effective seal, let me not mislead you, but all you need to reveal the incompleteness of the seal is to run the flat edge of your thumb down the taped section's length. If you're using clear or transparent tape, the color of the container's surface will be more visible and less hazy from the adhesive. It's easier to do than explain.

There is some issue I have with taping boxes and not getting that "closer stick," so whenever I pack something up, I run a hard plastic edge over the taped section and stick it fully to the surface. I know it won't make that much of a difference to a properly packed and assembled box, but that isn't why I do it. I do it for the visual transformation of something gray and undone into something clear and complete.

I think this is why, even though I've been bitching about it since I started, I quietly enjoyed painting my bedrooms. It's the same process with different materials. It was during the application of the second coat that I recognized what was going on and why I was being so deliberate and relatively slow. I wanted those irregular sections to be uniform in color to the rest of the walls and ceilings. Even now, in sunlight I notice the Red Room's ceiling is not properly finished and has a large section that didn't get a proper second coat. This section cannot be seen in the overhead interior lighting, but I know it's there. It's my Rennovator's Sword of Damocles, the ever-present threat of seeing the less-than-ideal work up there and just stopping in my tracks to lay out a painter's dropcloth, load up a roller with paint, and get the extension handle to obliterate the offending section.

Perhaps I'm just weird. But getting the project to that final stage where imperfections are few and far between is so very satisfying.

Ditto for staining wood. I might have stained two or three wooden objects my entire life until the beginning of this week. But since my baseboards were trashed when we removed them to install the flooring and since the average gap between the floor and the wall was about an inch, I had to fabricate my own mouldings. I also had to stain the raw wood to match the dark walnut of the floor.

You can learn a surprising amount about yourself and your task when you do it on your own. In my case, by not buying pre-made baseboard moulding and staining a complex 3D surface, I discovered what makes hardwood furnishings so appealing: the stain. I'd say 70% of the final product's handsomeness is due to the way the stain adds texture and depth to the raw pine. Now, I'm not so ignorant to assume you can buy raw or even treated wood that needs little work to make it look great, but the changes brought about by the staining process were telling. That kind of learning experience made all the agonizing over cutting the corner angles right, applying wood putty to fill in the gaps, and cursing the cracked boards that broke after nailing them to the wall so completely worthwhile.

The Red Room is done, save for small touch-ups that can be finished later. It just needs furniture and decoration. The Green Room still has the carpet, splattered with green paint. Another project for another time.

For now, I have a great deal of unpacking to do. Instead of travelling to Canada for Christmas this year, the Canuckian side of my family is coming to Texas. I'm playing host for two cousins and I pick them up at 10pm tonight. Crazy time to arrive and that doesn't leave me much time to prepare the house.

I wish my readers, family, friends, enemies, and agnostics safe and pleasant Christmas and New Year's. Posting will be sporadic at best until January.

UPDATED 9/19/2005 9:57am
I've successfully sanded and stained a new computer desk and feel just as proud about the work as the above.

Posted by Drizzten at December 22, 2004 10:46 AM