I checked. I. Am. Still. So. Cool.
I've been stressing about this whole trying-to-make-home-look-like-home thing lately, and the decision to hang bookshelves on the wall in my office/guestroom rather than buying a wall unit sounded pretty clever to me. Make it more real rather than just more laminate placed on the floor.
So we bought chunks of pine. I peered as we passed the laminated swaths of pressed wood, with their smoothed edges and thought to myself "wouldn't that be so much easier" and decided to grit my teeth and go for special over adequate. Laminate does a great job of not looking too horrible, but I'm trying to steer away from that sort of standard. Now that I can. That I have that luxury of time and strength and wealth and state of mind.
(well, the state of mind is a learning process)
We tooled around a bit in the powertoys section (get it? ;) and a very nice but dubious man helped clarify dremel versus rotor in my head and I ended up grabbing dremel-plus-rotor-attachment and a fistful of bits.
Our dubious friend pointed out several times that we must be able to go to a woodshop and pay someone else to do the work...
Swallowing the details in between, one swipe with the firmly screwed-together contraption on the pratice chunk of wood
and
it felt really good. Both the bit involving Dave's "hey, you did that really well!" exclamations, and just the feel of the chunk of whirring metal in my hands.
Forty five minutes and six rounded shelves later, I was suddenly looking forward to the sanding and staining and hanging process.
Forty five minutes later I was beyond thrilled -- I had learned something new and been good at it.
Of course ten minutes into it I already wanted to move on up to a jigsaw and start building our own end-tables
but y'know
that sort of over-enthusiasm is one of the greatest feelings in the universe.
I did something last night. I did it well, and I brushed the sawdust from my clothes as a slightly different person.
A useful person. Who can make something. Not just push pencils around and pay other people to use their hands.
We're still aeons away from old-fashioned dressers with curlicues, but for some reason today
I'm feeling inordinately proud.
Not only am I a kickass office bitch --
but I'm a chick who can use POWERTOOLS.
That, and we gots us a new toy.