badgerbag: messy, surly, full of books: new room

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The room looks so good with the huge rug, and christmas lights, and the spare cat-pee futon with an end table! I can't believe we made this magic new place in one day! I'm trembling with exhaustion.

I tried to put all the feelings into it that y'all would want me to. Did you know that YOU were in the room? You totally were. Because I know how much you wanted to be there, helping.

My original plan was: build it cheap and half-assed. Because of thriftiness, not wanting to measure anything, & not being sure it will last or is legal to the building code. So, two by four frame pieces at about 5 or 6 feet, with plywood nailed to it. We figured nails first and then bolts later, so as not to have to mess with drilling. We measured anyway - roughly. The posts were 6 feet apart on the side and 18 feet apart in the front. I figured two 4 x 4s, one 8.5 feet high and one 9 feet high, would break it up to 6 foot lengths...

Then at the hardware store we saw Instant Fences. All different kinds... 6' by 8' panels in various styles, around 55-85 bucks each. The prettiest one was the only one in stock. So we got 4 panels of that and one shorter gate-sized panel. You do the math - obviously the 8 foot thingies were not quite right. But who cares? Instant Fence! And some large large nails and some bolts too. I forgot that it is hard to nail a nail through a ginormous post.

The garden dude helped us load up my truck. I am a wuss... Jo has much better upper body strength. My hands hurt lately and especially my right arm is sort of weak from ... I'm sad to say it's from Steph's massage, that time when against all logic I was like, "press harder in that one super painful spot, maybe I cna breathe through the pain!" but what it means is that spot still hurts and my arm is somehow damaged. I'm sure it will get better. Anyway, Jo did most of the heavy lifting.

Back at her place. We drove instantly away from the hard work to have lunch at the cafe. (Jo's car.) Ep drove past..we did a u-turn and all ganged up for a while. Back to Jo's again. Work! Work! Work! The panels fit rather well, by some miracle! We had a whole extra panel! I went to return it and get a smaller one and a crapload of different kinds of random angle brackets and mending plates since none of us could nail through a 2 x 4. We had forgotten, also, to buy the 4 x 4 post(s).

Then! It was built.

Moomin was astonished. He decorated it with flowers. Well, only three. Still, the thought... Even cynical Eliz. was impressed.

It needs more brackets and plates to secure it, and one more post. The small panel might go to patch the gap in the front or it could end up as a gate on rollers.

Jo was distracted from brooding anger nearly all day; she's exhausted from hard physical labor; she now has a sort of Room even if it is mostly outdoors, chilly, wet, open to the sky. Her exercise bike can go in there. It is a cozy fun place and will be good for parties! She had an Idea and it became true! I hope it keeps helping in whatever way possible...

I love having a Thing to do and just doing it - flexibly and with a positive attitude. Even better if there are a whole bunch of people. The Ballerina Pie Fight was nice that way. I think I would enjoy being crew on a play, like, building weird sets... that sort of thing.