OK, so it turns out the professionals were right and I was wrong. Very, very wrong. If you will recall, I was all set to cut a hole in my storm door glass to install a cat flap. The professionals told me it couldn’t be done and that the glass would shatter. Well, it shattered all right. As soon as I put the smallest of nicks in the glass with my diamond encrusted cutting wheel, there was a loud snap and then the glass proceeded to slowly fall into a billion pieces and there was nothing I could do but watch. And then sweep it all up.
Foolishly, I wasn’t defeated at that point. Defeat came much later. You see, I formulated a brilliant plan to purchase a sheet of plexiglass and replace the shattered safety glass with said plexiglass, complete with hole and all because I knew for a fact that plexiglass can be cut without shattering.
So I purchased some plexiglass, broke out the seldom used scroll saw, marked all the appropriate lines after measuring twice because I only want to cut once, and then I started cutting. I quickly realized that cutting plexiglass with a scroll saw isn’t the fastest of processes when I couldn’t help but notice I was only moving along at about one inch per minute. After 103 minutes of cutting, as darkness began to fall and for some unknown reason june bugs began pelting me in the face, I was nearing exhaustion and defeat, but I pressed on. An hour after that I had managed to mount half of the frame onto the plexiglass. Another hour and I was done with the frame, then I began to cut the hole for the catflap, still being attacked by kamikaze june bugs that seemed hell bent on putting my eye out. Eventually, I found out the catflap would not work on the thin plexiglass even though it says right on the box it is made to mount in glass, so I had to grind down parts of it with my dremel, almost slicing a hole clean through my stomach in the process. The night ended with me laying on the concrete of my garage in a fetal position screaming “Please make it stop” over and over, with june bugs crashing at full speed into my head. I awoke the next morning and stumbled into the garage to see a mostly complete, if not perfectly fine looking, plexiglass panel complete with catflap. After about 45 minutes of trying to wedge it into the storm door because I had actually cut the plexiglass a little too big, I finally managed to get everything in place and I proudly led both cats to the flap to show them my handy work and to let them take the inaugural pass through the flap. They looked up at me, meowed and waited for me to open the door.
Take it from me people, if a professional tells you something, heed his or her every word, especially when it comes to stuff you shouldn’t be doing on your own because you thought you knew what you were doing but in reality didn’t have a clue and was just making wild guesses all along the way.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Recent Tracks