After a year of lying in my upstairs hallway, that beautiful roll of vinyl flooring finally came downstairs to be measured and cut. I went all around the upstairs bathroom with a tape measure and drew a nice diagram with all the lengths labeled. Then I got my big long yellow ruler out of the garage and a green sharpie and transferred my measurements on to the back of the vinyl. I knew I didn't have to be perfectly accurate because I was supposed to cut it three inches wide all around and fit it exactly after it had a day to lie on the bathroom floor.
So I measured and drew and cut, then went upstairs with the piece of flooring. It looked great with the pale lavender walls. I fit it around the toilet pedestal and carefully unrolled it.
"It isn't long enough," my husband said.
"That's just because that corner is supposed to be three inches further in," I said, pointing to where the cabinet jutted out from the wall. But somehow I wasn't so sure anymore. We spread the vinyl out on the floor and to my horror it was an inch too short to reach the wall on both ends!
"How did this happen?" I said. I thought I'd cut it wider than my measurements! It was only a thirty dollar piece of sheet vinyl, but I had been saving it for over a year! All year I had stubbed my toe on it in the dark, rolled it out of the way to vacuum, yelled at the kids to stop using it for a balancing beam - I was attached to the thing! And now I had ruined it.
In a few minutes, Russel came back upstairs with the answer. "How long is your long yellow ruler?"
"Eighty inches."
Russel shook his head, "It's only seventy two."
"Owwh!" I'd slid it along once and counted it as eighty inches when it was only seventy-two. If I cut three inches wide on each side I'd still be two inches too short.
Oh well. Back to the home improvement store.
5 comments:
Oh, ouchies! My heart cringed as I read this, Rebecca, fearing what was coming... Doesn't it sometimes seem that the more careful we try to be about certain things the more likely it is that something is going to go wrong?? I remember once as a teenager going material shopping for back-to-school clothes with my mom. I found a pattern for a trendy double breasted jacket & skirt & then I found a bolt of wide ribbed corduroy that was very popular at the time, but also very expensive. My mom could tell I wanted it to make that outfit, so she told me to go ahead & get it. Finances were very tight at that time in my family with my dad out of work, so it was a huge sacrifice. So, when I laid out that material to cut it, I had all my "be very careful & don't waste" lights blinking in my head. Well, the front of the double-breasted jacket pattern piece was the largest piece, & as I was trying to find the best way to fit it in, I discovered that it worked best if I turned it upside down. It wasn't until after I cut out all the pieces & started to sew that I realized that because the corduroy is a one-sided fabric turning that piece over made it unusable! My mom graciously took me back to the store & bought me another piece of fabric for the jacket front. I felt pretty awful. Anyway - I hope you can find another piece of vinyl that you like as well as the one you had! (maybe even better, eh?) Sorry for yet another set-back in this whole bathroom project. Keep us posted on how it all turns out...
oh...im so sorry! how disappointing!
You must have told me that story before, mom, because even as I began to measure I was getting a sense of deja-vu and feeling that the end of it all would be a disaster.
AAAAGHH!! You poor thing!
Well, Rebecca, even if I didn't tell you that story before, you were probably watching me from the spirit world saying to yourself; "Oh no, stop mom, stop! Well, I wonder if I will ever make a mistake like that in my life???" ;-) And then it all came back to you... It was your turn
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