Sunday, December 26, 2010

Missing Tools

This past week my daughter decided that the dining room needed to be repainted.  The room is large.  On a normal day the room holds a table, six chairs, two high chairs, two bar stools (there's the bar at the end of the kitchen counter), a china cabinet, a buffet, a bookshelf, and the wood stove.  There's plenty of room on the floor for a good game of legos or hot wheels.  Painting meant moving the china cabinet, which hasn't been completely moved away from the wall in four years.  The area behind the cabinet wasn't painted four years ago when bottom panels and chair rail was hung in the room. 

We moved the dining room table to one corner of the dining room.  We emptied the top of the cabinet putting everything on the dining room table.  Then we pulled the top off the bottom, and positioned it in the middle of the room.  We got to painting.  A piece of baseboard was missing so I found some extra in the barn and brought it into the garage and cut it to size on the table saw. 

We got it all put back together and decided that some of the wood around the door frame needed to be caulked.  Not a problem.  I told son-in-law that in the garage on the shelf next to the trash bags was a box with a dozen tubes of caulking.  He went out there to get the caulking and asked where the caulking gun was.  There's one right next to the box.  No, it wasn't there.  There's one under the bathroom sink.  No, it wasn't there.  There's one in the barn.  No it wasn't there.  How could three caulking guns go awol?  I searched the barn, the garage, and even the grandkids rooms.  No caulking guns. 

My friend called from Oklahoma today.  I said I had to go to Tractor Supply because I couldn't find the caulking guns.  The friend said you have one in the barn and one in the garage next to the box of caulking (this friend helped me rebuild the kitchen a couple of years ago and remembered where things were). 

I haven't asked my kids who all live local and seem to think that my house is their shopping center.  If they didn't take them then where are they?  It's a minor thing to lose but as usual, when I was at the store buying a new one I reminded myself that if TSHTF, I wouldn't be able to just run into town to buy one.

The other thing that crossed my mind is just how much minor stuff needs to be done around here.  It's easy enough to do and it doesn't really take much time.  We just never seem to get around to them.  Do I have all the right equipment for each job?  I have lots of caulk but no gun.  My nail supply of heavy duty nails is good but I was in short supply for the smaller finishing nails.  I need to do another garage inventory of small items.  I also need to lock even these little things up from family members.  That's a shame...

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