Over-complicate, Prune, Practice, Produce

All right. The low-down on the current project, which as of this writing is the installation of an evaporative cooler in the sliding glass door portion of my bedroom: This is not technically difficult and yet it's been about month since I bought the new swamper and it is not installed. Still. After a month. 

All projects involving me as a lead character involve a few dance steps, the first of which is

Over-complicate the living hell out of it.

Over-engineer. Put too many steps in. Get too elaborate. Think Taj Mahal when it's really just a four-by-eight chicken coop. This causes project paralysis because everything is Just Too Much. And it is Too Much. Because I'm trying to do way too much for a job that needs a couple of sticks and a sheet of plywood. I don't have the budget or the skill for the Taj but I can nail a couple of sheets of plywood together in more or less plumb and square and level fashion.

Prune the scope of the job back to sanity-inducing levels.

Plywood. Two-by-fours, nails, screws, rough construction, doesn't need to be pretty just functional. I did, however, add a step that doesn't always figure into the dance but wreaks its own level of destruction when it does:

New toy learning curve aka Practice Practice Practice.

I have a pocket-hole jig that I bought myself for Christmas and haven't had a chance to use. That added a couple of days onto the over-complicate phase. I finally got around to cutting all of the two-by-fours and stared at the jig for another week, then finally got around to using it.

Nothing worked. Wood splintered and shattered, the screws didn't fit and wouldn't sink properly and, even with my inability to cut straight lines taken into account, everything was a crocked-up crooked mess that looked just awful. Which is why there are no pictures and no video to show my friends: I burned all of that in a huge bonfire using the ruined two-by-fours it's damned embarrassing, folks. I'll have to see if I can overcome the sheer idiocy of the whole affair. Also, I have yet to determine if the video camera actually caught any of it beyond the cussing. On the other hand, I finally figured out what I was doing wrong and have been giggling about it for the last forty-eight hours.

Which brings us to:

Produce.

And...um. Well, we aren't quite there yet. I have to cut more two-by-fours because the last batch was ruined, at least for this application. I have two-by-fours available because of other projects that never quite got off the ground - a long rant for another day - but yayy! for surplus. Anyway, remember when I said I have issues cutting in a straight line? 

Meet Perry:

Perry is a reconditioned Metabo 12-inch blade compound miter saw, named after a pair of generous benefactors who made Perry's acquisition possible. I'm going to have to finish setting it up and making sure it's true but Oh My Goodness, the prospect of actual 90-degree cuts!

Anyhow, that's where I am in the general scheme of things: Almost three-quarters of the way through my new project involving learning new skill sets dance. Looking forward to getting this done because I already have another project waltz lined up.