White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Happy father's day, eh? Well, not so bad actually. Got a little work done on the stairs by adding the cuffs at the bottom of the posts for the hand rail. Added a trap door for the laundry chute. Heh, that last one was kind of funny. The previous owners of the house decided that it would be really neat to blow a hole in the floor of the closet and tack some card-board into the closet below it to make some sort of 'half-assed' attempt at a laundry chute. It has nails and jagged edges that would shred anything you put down it in short order. We never used it and considered it a hazard to the kids, the dogs, and ourselves if we were not fully awake. In any event, I put a little hinged door over it to alleviate Joyce's concerns. It was a real bugger to get in, the little brass screws that came with the hinges were about as resilient as frozen butter. Snapped off one head almost immediately. And that was with a plain old screwdriver. I'm not THAT strong so I tossed the screws into the 'screw oblivion' pile in the tool closet and dug around for some more meatier screws. After finding a set of completely different looking screws, I completed the job and puffed my chest. Mr fix-it dad, that's me! I spend a good deal of time trying to get one piece of chair rail to stay in place at the bottom of the staircase. This one 2 foot piece has been my bane. Either the wall is curved outward or the wood is, or both. Either way, the single stud that I nailed it to is the only place that there is full contact. The thing would spin like a propeller on a b-52. So I got out the trust tube of professional fast-curing wood glue and goobered up the wall with it. Wedging a shower curtain rod between the stair post and the wall, I got it to stay in place. In the process of doing this, I pretty much made the stair case into an obstacle course. Oh well, its only for 24 hours. I say that now because I must have tripped over the darned thing 24 times. Once that was set up, I played with the children for a while and let them be their completely adorable selves till nap time. Then I convinced Joyce that it was really nice outside and she should spend some 'me-time' out on the deck. While she did that, I proceeded to weed the garden. About 30 minutes into that, she commented that I should probably put on some sun-block or put my shirt back on. My pasty whiteness was blinding her. No way, I'm super dad today, I don't need no stinking sun-block. Thirty minutes later, I was glowing red. Dork.