The list of Honey Do’s had been growing, and growing, then it started shrinking slowly, then it got a little bit bigger, but I am pleased to report that it is now COMPLETE.

When you have a house, there’s always stuff that needs to be done.  And lately, I’ve had my hands full with a bunch of small projects, and a couple of nightmarish large ones.  The small ones, like touching up the paint on the trim in the half-bathroom or installing the new Blu-ray player, are usually only minor headaches.  But I was really about to lose it as I tried to change a shower head and fix up our battered mailbox.

We bought a new shower head, and I can’t deny that we needed it; the old one was shot, and would shoot water in just about every direction except at the person trying to take a shower.  So we got  anew one, and it came with these three simple directions (no booklet or anything!):

1. Remove old shower head
2. Attach new shower head connector
3. Connect hose

Wow – this will be easy, I thought to myself.  But you know what happens when you say or even think such words, right?

I couldn’t get past step one.  Whoever attached the last shower head really wanted to be sure that no one – EVER – would be able to get it off.  Now I know I’m not the strongest man in the world, but I can usually pry off a tight lid or open something that requires a good grip, but I was getting nowhere fast on this.  I read up on the subject online, and I came across three suggestions – use WD-40 to remove rust, CLR to remove calcium deposits, or try a blowtorch to make the metal expand and then unscrew it.  Both chemicals didn’t do much except make a mess, and since I don’t own a blowtorch, I improvised with a BBQ lighter.  Yes, go ahead and laugh, imagining me holding up a stupid lighter to my shower.  It’s OK, I’m sure I looked fairly ridiculous.  Well, the lighter did succeed in making the metal plenty hot, but whatever expansion it caused didn’t help anything move.  At all.

So how was I able to finally get the damn thing off?  In a bizarre twist of fate, the tub in the other bathroom got super clogged and required me to call a plumber.  (To avoid a repeat incident, from now on Sherlock will get his baths outside with the hose, whether he likes it or not.)  (He won’t.)  While the plumber was over, I was able to convince him to do me a solid and give the stuck shower head a try.  He struggled, oomphed, and lost his grip a few times, but eventually, he was able to get the damn thing loose.  He admitted it was one of the tougher one he’d faced in his career, though he could have just been saying that to not further bruise my ego.

Then there’s the mailbox.  This has been something that’s irked me since we moved in.  Bottom line – it was hideous.  Both the post and the plastic mailbox had been painted several times, and everything was peeling to different degrees.  Now I know what you’re saying right now.  You’re saying: “Who on Earth would paint a plastic mailbox?”  The people who used to live in our house, that’s who.

So this project began with two parts: removing the old mailbox, and taking off all 46 layers of paint on the post.  (I’m exaggerating only slightly – as the layers came off I discovered that the wooden post had been painted green, a different shade of green, and then white.)  And guess what’s growing right behind the mailbox!  A big rose bush.  And I’m here to tell you that Poison got it wrong – every rose comes with many, many thorns.  If you name a place on my body, I probably got it stuck with a thorn.  Still, I have to say that with a handful of (probably toxic) chemicals, the layers of paint and stain did come off fairly easily, if not completely.

The mailbox on the other hand, was a different story.

The screws that attached the box to the post were apparently put in around the turn of the 15th century, and they would not budge.  I used manual screwdrivers, I used drills, and all I got was frustrated.  When Aaron suggested I drill into the screw to hollow it out, I thought that sounded like a fine idea.  When the drill bit broke off and went sailing at my face, I felt a little differently.  (Thankfully it did not take out an eyeball.)  After using every tool in my box (all five of them) and a gallon of WD-40, I was actually able to get one screw loose enough that I could remove it.  There were three left, but my faith in the universe had been restored.

It didn’t last.  The other screws refused to cooperate, and I started getting angry.  Fuled by pure rage, I was able to lift off part of the mailbox from the post.  After much violent shaking, prying, and a little bit of crying, I had removed the whole technicolor mailbox from it’s post.

From there, the patching of the holes in the wood, sanding it down, and re-staining it all wasn’t too horrible.  Attaching the new mailbox was a bit of a pain, but shockingly not horrible.  Adding the new numbers to the box was another fun chore, as no matter what I did, I just couldn’t get the 9 to look right.  Whatever – after a few tries, I officially called it: The job was done.

And, thankfully, so am I.  Yes, that’s right – there are no further projects that need to be undertaken.  Not now, and, I assume, not ever.  Everything is finished, complete, and perfect.  (Or as close to it as it’s gonna get on my watch.)  What a relief!

Honey Do’s = Honey Done’s!

(Any suggestions of further tasks to go on my list will be met with me sticking my fingers in my ears and singing la-la-la as loud as I can.  It’s a surprisingly effective technique.)