This Girl’s House

Steve and I have lived together for 3 years now, and it looks like it will be forever.  Our roles have largely gone down the line of traditional male and female roles when it comes to distribution of work in the house.  While it’s an extreme change for me, I can live with it.  I’m not exactly an expert when it comes to cooking and cleaning, and I’m not afraid to get some help in here when I need it, so that’s OK.  But then there’s the subject of our home projects.  There are the projects that we work on together, then Stevie projects and Teresa projects. 

Now the Stevie projects go ok.  I let him do his thing.  The Together projects are slightly rambuctious.  Stevie likes to do things very exactly, and if he’s off by an 1/8″ he gets upset with himself and he wants us to do everything over.  On the other hand, I look at the project and say, will being 1/8″ off affect performance, or is this some asthetic issue.  If it’s an asthetic issue, then I say do I have time to do it over, or do I need to use this time for something else. 

So it is, with my current project (which I plan to provide more details on later).  I’m building a pantry in a large closet next to kitchen that we’ve used as a dumping ground for coats we rarely wore.  I’m cutting out the wood panels and I did a dry fit, but I didn’t quite plan how I would fit the cabinets into the closets after I screwed and glued the boxes together.  Anyway, Steve didn’t like the way the cabinets were put together.  On one side, the back side mind you, I was off by an 1/8 inch.  I told him it was a pantry and the shelves would always contain cans and boxes of cereal.  no one would notice that problem, and if they did, I wouldn’t care.  My major concern …..  Is the cabinet strong enough to hold all these cans, and what do I need to do to secure the cabinets to the walls.  I told him that Stevie that he needed to let me make my  own mistakes.  He hemmed and hawed for a day or so and then he helped me put a long length of heavy wood on my saw horses, so I could cut them out with my circular saw.  Did I tell you that he bought me that circular saw and he also taught me how to use it?  Isn’t he a lovely partner?