My husband assigned me the task of measuring a piece of wall covering for inside a kitchen closet. He gave me the dimensions and provided the most up to date measuring devices we have here at Federal
Hill Farm: a yardstick from a hardware store that went out of business in 1979, a retractable tape measure and a pencil.
The picture shows me hunkered down on the floor performing my assignment. I learned two things from this experience:
Number 1: at my age, getting down on the floor is easier than getting up. As I measured and drew the lines using my trusty yardstick, my knees locked. In order to get up, I had to roll to my side and pull myself up using a nearby chair as ballast.
Number 2: I need to get to the gym if my ass is REALLY as big as it appears in the photo.
The construction crew uses a more modern technique to measure and draw a level line. They use a
laser beam. This technique offers the advantage of allowing you to stand upright.
It was not a laser but a tape measure in the skilled hands of our countertop expert John from Countertop Solutions who detected a design mis-calculation. A 3/4 inch difference between two surfaces made it impossible for the stone countertop to lay even. Thirty years ago a layer of plywood evened the two surfaces but for some engineering reason I truly do not understand (I was a liberal arts major), this same solution would not work given the new countertop material. As John intoned, “There is no give in stone.”
Ron, John and Austin from Clean Cut Construction whipped out their tape measures and old-fashioned levels to devise a solution. They decided to cut down the higher side of the surface, carefully working around electrical outlets, the central vac apparatus and a phone jack. Disaster averted.
Lesson learned from this episode? When it comes to kitchen remodeling, success can be measured in inches.
