Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Measure twice, cut once

Such a simple idea, but I'll never learn.  After spending the better part of the day butchering turkeys for the spoiled rotten dog who doesn't even live here anymore, and dealing - finally - with this...


which has been piling up for a month (which I know because there were two months utilities bills in there), I finally sat down at 7:30 pm to finalize my plan for the headboard.  I've been agonizing over the details of the design - and how that will impact the execution - for days now, but I finally at least decided that regardless of how I intend to treat the face, I want the general structure to be the same as the one shown in this absolutely fantastic series of videos on youtube...







Before I had my eureka moment where I decided to pull the bed away from the wall so that I could center it and do flanking window treatments, I had intended to simply upholster a piece of plywood and attach it to the wall.  But now that the bed will be several inches away from the wall, that obviously won't work - it will have to have legs and be bolted to the bed frame.  The video series (there are eight episodes in all) cover everything you need to know except how to upholster around the legs if you're not intending to do the shirred border they use which, coincidentally, is exactly the same width as the 2x4 leg.   I had also originally intended to do simple diamond tufting, but scrapped that idea a couple of weeks ago when it became obvious that the room is already quite feminine enough.  Instead, I decided to do channel tufting because it would echo a pretty common art deco design...


So, great - that would give me a way to force a 3-1/2" edge in there, but, I really, really, reeeeeeeeally don't want to do channels every 3-1/2" all the way across the headboard.  It would be too busy, and it would be a PITA!  So I played around and played around with variations of 3-1/2" channels and 7" channels and combinations of the two and finally just decided I'm overthinking it.  I (think) I will (probably) just do 7" channels and when I get to the part where I have to upholster around the legs I'll wing it!  

Having this "decided," I headed out to the garage to start cutting the lumber.  I already had the headboard itself cut out, so I figured it would take me fifteen minutes to cut the 2x4's to the correct lengths and then I could get the sucker glued and screwed together and go to town.

And then I cut my longest 2x4 WRONG.  And did not have enough lumber to make it up.  And Home Depot was closed by this point, of course.  So here I sit, having once again screwed myself because I'm always so damned scatterbrained.  This isn't the first time I've cut WRONG.  I do it with lumber, I do it with fabric, I do it with anything you can think of that can be cut.  And every time it happens, it's because I'm not fully "present in the moment."  I'm always thinking about what I can do after I finish the current task, and sometimes what comes after that, and after that, and after that.  It's a sickness, I tell you, and I wish they'd make a pill for it!  

Manana!