No Turning Back

When I was growing up, our church choir often sang an anthem with the refrain, "No turning back." That's how I felt Wednesday afternoon when I decided to take the plunge and "rip out" the window seat to redo the frame. Once I unscrewed the frame, I realized there was now "no turning back." It would be near impossible to put it back together exactly the way it had been, so I had no choice but to forge ahead. And forge I did.

Of course, nothing ever goes smoothly, and this was no exception. Oh, the frame unscrewed nicely, but it turned out to be a lot harder than I expected to reassemble it in the form I needed. For example, I quickly discovered that the screws I had used previously were now too short because the 2x4 pieces were horizontal, not vertical. That meant instead of screwing through about just under 4 inches of wood, I now had to screw through just under 8 inches! My longest screw was 3 1/2 inches. To complicate matters, my drill bit wasn't even long enough to make the pilot hole! I tried to drill from one side, then the other, hoping the two channels would meet in the middle. But alas, I was off just enough to screw it up. (No pun intended!)

So off to Home Depot I went. They had no screws long enough, so I had to buy lag bolts. They also had no regular drill bits long enough, and there was no one in the tool department to ask, so I took a chance on a long drill bit that's supposed to be for brick and concrete.

When I got home, it took me about four times as long to make one connection as it should have taken. I had to drill with three bits--a small one to avoid splitting the wood, a larger one to make the hole deeper and a bit wider, then the huge concrete bit to drill out the bottom. Screwing in the lag bolts also took longer. I had to do that by hand with a driver. (I think my husband had a driver tip to fit on the power drill, but I couldn't figure out where it was.) Suffice it to say that my arm muscles got quite a workout!

After sweating furiously for about two hours, I finally had to call a halt to my work for the day. I had finished about 2/3 of the redone frame. But it was enough to slide it back against the wall so I could replace the seat on top make it look like it hadn't been touched. (I really didn't want my husband to know I was doing this til it was done because I knew he would chastise me for going to the extra work, esp. after he had helped me screw the seat into the frame in the first place.)

I'll finish the job tomorrow morning--hopefully more quickly than I started it. Then I can proceed to the top installation. But I'm already happy with the way it appears. The lower height looks much better, and I think it will be perfect once the thick cushion is installed on top.