The Big Door Theory Part 2

Posted on | April 22, 2012 | No Comments

And then came the installation of the door handles. I, cocksure since I had fairly easily installed two other handles, allotted 15 minutes to each of the other two to be installed. An hour later I was still on the first.

Bloody complicated little contraptions, door handles. But the thing that got me wasn’t the complexity of it (as long as all those bits work, I don’t really care how), but two simple screws which were to hold the front and back handles together, connecting them through the round hole in the door. I screwed the screws in, and they weren’t for going in all the way. So I worked up a sweat and forcefully screwed a little more.

Forcing is never good in DIY, is it? If you’re forcing, you’re liable to break it, or the chances are it wasn’t meant to go in there in the first place. I was getting nowhere fast with these two screws. They resisted.

After several more attempts I uttered a loud groan of defeat, flung the screwdriver on the floor, and threw myself onto my bed.

Hubby to the rescue… or so I thought. Turns out I forced so much that the screws took the insides out of the little things they were being screwed into. There was nothing for it but to pull the whole handle contraption, switch to the other door handle that was still sitting unsullied in its packet, and start from scratch.

Except for me, time had run out. This was Saturday night, you see. My Girls’ Night In was fast approaching. And so the damn Door Handle Project still sits in pieces.

There is a reason it wasn’t finished today, and that reason was Sweetpea’s 11th birthday party. For the last two years I’ve told her she’s too old for having a gaggle of girls round for a party, and to be happy with a cinema outing and ice cream. This year I gave in. The fact that she proposed a Lady Gaga themed party had a lot to do with it (how could I resist?)

Lady Gaga, definitely NOT Sweetpea

She went all out, because she is my little actress-in-the-making and because, like her mum, she loves a good party.

There was an electric blue wig, shimmery short dress she’s had since she was 6 (so thus now very short) and a pair of my platform sandals. There was the requisite gaggle of girls, Bad Romance et al blaring at high volume, and lots of giggling and screaming. But it was blissfully hands-off for me, since (a) Sweetpea had managed and prepared the whole thing and (b) we secluded them in the guest house (ha!).

And so I got to chill and read the New York Times fairly uninterrupted. Yeh, I know. There was a door handle I could have turned my attention to. But I’m sorry, I couldn’t face it.

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