Venturing into the rabbit hole

Normally when I go to home depot I’m with Paul. Usually he comes with me to the paint department (because I rarely travel outside of that realm) and we spend like an hour there picking colors and then we leave. He often will pick something up elsewhere and sometimes I’ll need a large sheet of MDF board cut to size and so he’ll go with me and do all the talking. Now I’m a strong confident woman but for some reason when I get into Home Depot and am faced with all the rows and rows of things I don’t fully understand I just sort of freeze. I revert to some 50’s housewife that needs my husband to speak for me. I don’t love this, but thus far it is what it is.

Last night I was at Home Depot. I was meant to meet Paul there after work but his movie plans got bumped up and so I headed there alone after dinner. This trip I wasn’t just buying paint – I also needed to buy two tools. Gulp, I was feeling nervous. I know, I know, but still, nervous. I decided that faking it until I made it was the way to be. Boldly I strolled into the store, straight to the section labeled “tools” – it seemed like a good place to start. I looked around for an employee to help me make my decisions. We were looking to pick up a sander (for furniture projects) and a staple gun (for chairs and material projects). These are tools we’ve wanted to own for a while but have usually borrowed from people – it hit us the other day, why don’t we just buy them? It’s not like we’re stopping the up cycling free furniture train anytime soon – might as well own the tools to do it. You can see some of our past adventures in furniture redo's here and here!

I found the sander pretty quickly – and I would hope so! Paul had located which one he wanted me to buy, had sent me the link, and all I had to do was find this item at Home Depot. Pretty straight forward. While looking for a staple gun I ended up in the nail gun section marveling at how expensive they were (not yet realizing I wasn’t in the staple gun section) and marveling at how hard it was to find an employee! Finally after waiting 10 minutes (now it was 8:30, the store closed at 9 and I knew I still needed paint mixed!) I called Home Depot on my cell and asked them to transfer me to the tools department, I then asked the guy on the phone to come help me – and help me he did! He helped me narrow down what we wanted and pick a tool best suited for our needs.

Oh I felt proud! I made it through the tool section! With only minimal help and quickly. Then it was off to the Paint section – my safety zone. There was Johnny – one of my favorite two Home Depot paint guru’s. As per usual he was super super helpful. I ended up with the paint I needed (I’m doing something similar to this which I talked about here) but it took the full half hour they were still open – thankfully they stayed open, I was the last to leave at 9:10, mixing paint isn't fast!

My inspiration

My take on it and color choices

My sketches for the buffet & secretary

We'll see how it goes!! Having the paint makes it so much more real!

When I got home I felt so victorious. I showed Paul my spoils – look! A sander! A staple gun! Staples! Paint! Great, he says. Where are the sander pads? Ahh fail – I bought the tool but not the thing it needs. Dang it! To be fair neither Paul nor the employee mentioned that it needed anything, I definitely assumed it came with at least a first pair of pads, but still…lesson learnt, always ask “what else might I need”

And to follow up, I used the staple gun AS SOON AS I GOT HOME and oh man, it’s awesome. I’m not very strong so it’s a learning curve for me to use – Paul nailed it right away, but it’s awesome and my chair project was complete in record time. I have so many things to staple now #cantstop #wontstopstapelling