Some comic relief - Proposing (reporting?) The Grizzly Games
There's an under-appreciated comic element to wood working - so, with that in
mind here's an outline for the first episode of a new <EM>Home Improvement</EM> style sitcom:
<EM>The Grizzly Games</EM>- staring Jackie Chan as the home improver, Katherine Heigl
as the wife (wish fullfillment? What's that?) and, of course, Owen Wilson as
her useless know-it-all brother.
In the weekly plot he tries to do stuff - and, on the rare occassions it works out she says
it's not what she had in mind and makes him start over.
More typically the plot goes like this...(admittedly not woodworking, but real enough anyway)
Bear (Kate's nickname for Chan) commits to building a new bathroom in the basement. As part of that they agree
on 12" x 12" floor tiles and a threshold-less, door-less shower. Since he doesn't want to pay
for a custom pan he assumes he can use a low profile linear floor drain along one side and decides to make
his own sloped floor.
In the just-before-tiling argument she insists that only a centered, traditional, floor drain
will do and the brother helpfully claims he's done several like that with big tiles.
So some jack hammering, concrete, and a visit from the plumbing contractor later..the subfloor
extends 4" inside the shower enclosure area (to support the glass walls), there's a central
drain, and the 42" x 58" rubber seal is cemented in place on the concrete and neatly tucked under the
"ditra-heat": membrane covering the rest of floor.
Then the plumbers phone: would Monday be ok to set up the toilet and other stuff requiring tha
that floor tile be in? "Sure" he says, thinking that's a week away - just as an oversized 13 year
old chasing a full sized Alaskan Malamute collide with him, causing (among other things) him to hit
a piece of jatoba kitchen island edging hard enough to dislocate his pinkie toe.
As it turns out... you can't make a piece of 12 x 12 tile slope in two directions at once on a small floor
so Bear cuts it into 5" and 7" strips to make a nice interlocked pattern that more or less slopes toward
the center - except, of course, that Kate hates it, the brother maintains he meant 12" x 12" mats made
from 1" x 1" tiles, and the episode ends (as many in the series should) with Chan thoughtfully dulling
a large, but rusty, knive.
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Originally Posted by Justin Pfenning
