Monday, October 3, 2011

the drill.

I know, I know, I should have posted pics of Chloe’s room long ago. But we still have a blank wall that we need to do something with, so I’ve been putting off taking pictures until it's finished. I have a few ideas of what I want to do, so hopefully we’ll “git er done” real soon!

There was one small task that I thought I could easily manage on my own this weekend while Tony was drinking his troubles away in Las Vegas. Last week he hung some purple curtains in Chloe’s room, and I didn’t like the placement of the curtain rod. It was too low, too close to the top of the window, and the curtains were all bunched up on the carpet. So, being the positive thinker that I am, I thought it would be super easy to use his DeWalt drill to unscrew the brackets, move them up two inches, mount them to the wall, and be done with it. Ha, was I wrong!

Here’s a list of troubles I ran into along the way:

  • Thanks to Tony’s super-neat organizational skills in the garage (garage post coming soon!!), I was able to find the drill right away. I picked it up, looked at it, and thought “Hmm, that’s odd, it’s not even plugged in to the charger.” Thinking maybe it was already charged, I tried turning it on. Nothing happened. Then I looked over to the left and noticed the base of the drill was on the charging dock. Ahh, that makes sense. I connected the base to the drill and headed towards Chloe’s room. (For those of you with even less knowledge of power tools then me, here’s what I was workin’ with.)
  •  I started with the curtain rod bracket on the left first, and was able to remove it even though my arms were starting to shake from holding the drill above my head. Yes, I’m a weakling. According to Google, this drill has a “Lightweight design (4.7 lbs.) to minimize user fatigue”. Liars! This user was very fatigued after the first 10 seconds. How sad.
  • So after removing the first bracket (success!), I measured two inches up and made a little mark with the screw. Then I tried drilling the screw it back into the wall. This is where things went awry. The screw wasn’t going into the wall at all, so I tried a higher setting on the drill. The screw still went nowhere, but smoke started coming out from somewhere and I could smell burning. I tried this about two more times, ignoring the smell of burning metal. Fail.
At this point my arms were so tired and shaky I could barely line the drill bit up with the screw anymore. So I let out a loud “AUGGH!” and stormed out of the room, leaving it in its current state:


There you go, a sneak peak of her room!

Luckily, Tony will be home from Sin City tonight and all will be well. It’s nice living with someone who doesn’t suffer from power-tool incompetence like I do.

3 comments:

  1. OK, two recommendations: (1) get a ladder or a chair to stand on and (2) try using a hammer and nail to make a small starter hole before going at it with the screw and drill. Other than that I've got nothing. Good for you for trying though! I would have just waited for Stewie to get home. ;-)

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  2. I was standing on a chair but the top of the window was still so much higher than me! I had to bend my elbows at a really awkward angle to reach and it was just not happening. I did try the hammer trick which seemed to work at first, but then nothing... :(

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  3. haha we have this same drill and i have also struggled with it but can use it like a pro now! lol rachael!!

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