“You should sand and repaint the deck, honey,” Dr. S. tells me one day last week. “It really shouldn’t take more than a day to do.”

Before I continue, dear readers, let me rattle off a list of things I think I’m pretty good at:

Arguing before a judge or jury
Debating
Pushing through large amounts of paperwork
Sleight of Hand
Hypnosis
Theatrical Pickpocketing

Now let me give you a list of things I know for a definite fact I have no business attempting:

Any sort of home improvement project whatsoever

Still it wasn’t a bad idea, and seemed entirely doable. I’ve painted before and sanded wood, so it’s not like I planned to take out a load bearing wall* or do anything drastic. So I enlisted the help of my friend Essex** and we talked to our contractor buddy JP.

“You want to go to the Home Depot Tool Rental department,” JP tells us. “Ask for the floor sander that they’d use for a deck. Get an extra belt. Sand with the grain of the wood. You’ve got this, it’s not rocket science.”

“What about the railings?” I ask.

“You could get a small Ryobi sander or just take sandpaper and whole lot of elbow grease to it.”

This job is going to be more expensive than I originally planned, I think. Still if it makes the wife happy, then so be it.

Essex and I head to Home Depot. The floor sander is not what we expected. It’s a vibrating metal beast held down by a large weight. One attaches a backing pad to the bottom of the sander along with some adhesive backed sandpaper. The weight holds everything in place while the sander vibrates, eliminating imperfections in the wood. Or in our case taking off paint.

We buy two backing pads, several grades of sandpaper in different varieties, and not taking any chances I plunk down the extra $10 for “damage insurance.” After getting the monster loaded in the back of my Rav4 we got sandpaper for the deck’s railings and non-floor surfaces, safety glasses, brushes, rollers and paint.

I understand inflation’s hitting everywhere hard but son of a bitch this turned out to be more expensive than I ever thought it would be. I don’t want to go into details on how much the whole shebang cost but let’s say I uttered a few curses when I learned the cost of the deck paint alone.

On returning to my residence, Essex attaches the backing pad and sandpaper to the floor sander, loads on the weight, and presses the starter switch. After ten seconds the backing pad and sandpaper are completely off the floor sander.

Not to be deterred, Essex reattached the whole gimmick and started again. We quickly learned the floor sander’s kryptonite was my deck. As Essex sanded along the woodgrain, something in the deck would inevitably cause the sandpaper to either lose its adhesive backing and fall off or just completely shred in two.

Perhaps it was the thick cloud of grey dust that eventually covered everything. We took so much paint off that my children’s basketball goal was eventually covered with gobs of paint remnants.

While Essex manned the floor sander I took to the railings. If there’s one thing I’m quite good at doing it’s applying as much elbow grease as I can muster to a project and I liberally applied it on the railings of the deck. Slowly we started to see life—actual wood without paint—underneath all the hazy grey dust that surrounded everything.

After about two hours Dr. S. came out to inspect our work. She approved, but suggested we not go entirely down to the wood. Rather, we just needed to sand down the wood to the point where it wouldn’t chip and peel again.

“You heard the boss,” I tell Essex, and we get back to work.

In between changing pieces of shredded sandpaper Essex gives me a frustrated look.

“If we just called Dave I bet he could tell us what we’re doing wrong.”

“We’ll do no such thing,” I told Essex with a smile, “and that way we’ve done nothing wrong at all.”

Essex smiled. “Ignorance is bliss, huh?”

“How the fuck do you think I stay happy?” I returned.

We both resumed work and kept at it until the last of the sandpaper gave up the ghost on the floor sander. The two of us then kept at the railings and other non-floor areas until around dinner, when I excused myself and sent Essex home with plans to get back at it in the morning.

Did we finish the job? No. Did we manage to put a good dent in it? Yes. And we didn’t take out a load bearing wall to boot.

The next morning I get a text message from Essex. He’s not coming. Working the floor sander caused his back to get, in his words, “very irritated with [him].”

It wasn’t long before I shared in the misery. Since I attacked the project with gusto, my body decided to give me a receipt. My back, shoulders, arms, hell any muscles I used the previous day were telling me quite clearly “fuck you we’re not letting you do anything today.”

Dr. S. seemed to take my case of the aches as a sign of grumpiness on my part.

“You want middle eastern food from that place we get?” she asked me.
“That’s fine.”
“You don’t seem very enthused.”
“I’m not enthused about anything. My body hurts.”

This only got me sympathetic looks until about 4 pm Sunday, when Dr. S. decided my misery was no longer her concern and told me to get through it because I had to work the next day.

Back to the floor sander. I had rented it for one day, so it needed to be returned before I got charged an arm and a leg in late fees. So with Dr. S. watching the kids I took it back and made sure the guys manning the tool rental department unloaded the sander.

Seeking a bit of vindication, I asked the tool rental guys if we’d done anything wrong since the backing pads and sandpaper kept falling off or shredding while the sander was in use. Home Depot workers pride themselves on being able to help idiots like me understand what to do in situations like these, so the associate grabbed a backing pad and some sandpaper off the wall to see if he could get the whole contraption to work as directed.

Dear readers, I shit you not the moment Home Depot’s tool rental guy attempted to put on a fresh backing pad on the floor sander it, and the sandpaper, both fell off on the first attempt.

Scratching his head, I got apologies from the guy who basically told me he had no idea what happened and he’d talk to the smarter, more experienced associates about it.

Maybe I’ll get an answer when I go back for the floor sander again.

One can hope.

It’s almost been a week since I started this project. I’ve had about 20-30 minute spurts to work on it each day and it’s been a nice change of pace from what I usually do on a given day.

But I’ll be damned if I ever attempt this again on my own. Next time we’re getting professionals to do this shit. The cost will be worth it to save my back and arms from trying to rebel against the rest of my body.

No matter how this turns out, I’ll relish in the fact that I took on a project I had no clue how to pursue with good intentions, I put in the effort to see it through, and I never took out a load bearing wall in the process.

And it’ll be a good example for my kids, who get to see their father attempt a task for which he is ostensibly ill equipped, and see it through to completion.

One of these days.

Hope you enjoyed this story of adventure and conquest, and remember: no matter how bad your weekend’s been, at least you didn’t take out a load bearing wall!

*A buddy of mine while trying to renovate his shop took out a load bearing wall during the demolition process and had to scramble to fix the problem within a day. In addition to being funny and something I would probably have done this became a bit of a mantra for Essex and I during the project—no matter what we did we weren’t taking out a load bearing wall.
**All names have been changed to protect my friends, who probably don’t want to be publicly associated with me or the stories I tell here.