Monday, February 15, 2010

The Worst DIY Project In The House



What is it? I have several possible candidates in my cruddy head (including a few which offer plaster in sandwiches for several weeks), but the winner might well be stripping and re-varnishing one of those old staircase railings with about a thousand spindles and so on. When I went to get some of the tools and materials many years ago, the hardware guy told me that they call that particular project the marriage-breaker. Because people get into horrible fights over it and because it takes forever and because it's right in the middle of the house where it's hard to avoid.

In any case, I have stripped (in the last five years) approximately 45% of the spindles. Almost every time I skip down the stairs the stripped spindles stare at me, accusingly, among the ones which still have that molasses-like covering on. One day I'm going to replace the whole thing with a red ladder and a rope, the latter for sliding down in the mornings. But I doubt I'll ever finish the stripping project.