We’re up early as usual to go to yoga and the gym like we do on Saturday mornings. I decide to try the WSC located to the north of Dupont Circle. Dawn tells me it’s north of the Italian restaurant with the woman’s picture. So after dropping Dawn off for yoga, I go up Connecticut, past Anna Maria’s. And on the block just before the Washington Hilton, I see my gym.
Parking is marginally better than trying to park down below the circle. I find a spot on T Street across from the Hilton, pretty much directly across the street from the spot where Hinckley shot Reagan. From there it’s a quick half-block walk. And turns out I like this particular WSC a lot, like far far more than the one at Capitol Hill that I tried. They have this cool Nautilus Nitro Pec Fly machine that I thoroughly enjoy, although I’m still sore from it days later.
From there we go to Home Depot and buy railings for our stairway. The stair parts are sold in the same aisle as moldings, like chair or quarter round, and there they have a station with a backsaw where you cut the pieces to length. But the stair railing is something like 3 inches thick, so it’s going to take a while to cut. An employee wandering by offers to use the radial arm saw in the next aisle, and we eagerly accept. But we end up waiting for twenty minutes or so for another employee to finish cuts for other people, and then we finally give up and go back and use the hand saw.
I find some 2″ casters that I like for the Delta TS200 bench saw at home. It’s on a stand that seems like it’s always in the way of using the workbench, so I figure some casters will be a good idea. The casters have 5/16″ – 18 threaded stems, so I find washers and nuts in the hardware aisle. It’s only when we get home do I realize that I’ve left the casters themselves in the hardware aisle, so I’ve got some extra washers and nuts now.
It really bugs me that I’ve forgotten something like that, so I keep telling Dawn that I’m heading back to Home Depot first chance I get. She convinces me finally to order some locking casters online.
We have a really exhausting ballet rehearsal, but it’s good because Rosie’s pretty much got the whole piece choreographed for us now.
When we get home I nail up the other wall of the wainscot. It goes pretty well until I get to the last four pieces. I get too wrapped up in trying to fan them out a little, so that the last one that I’ve ripped narrower to fit at the end will fit nicely. So where before I’ve been nailing up one piece at a time, so that I know where the backing piece is, where to drive the nails, by these last few I’ve lost where that backing piece is and I end up driving the nails in too low. Dawn points this out to me, and I feel awful about it. Then I try nailing the last few up a little higher and I think I nailed too high this time. Aargh. So what I need to do is go back and get a string and stretch it from the end, where I can see where the backing piece is, down to where I also know that I got the nails right, in earlier pieces. But when I go to do that I’ve already unplugged the stapler/nail gun. So I just leave it for next weekend.
