Plaster, Irony, and Other Truly Valuable Building Materials

A couple weeks ago, as my entry in the Houseblogs.net/True Value Hardware DIY Drama contest, I posted on the Sturm und Drang that is the ceiling plaster over my third floor stairway. Or rather, that isn't the ceiling plaster over my third floor stairway, since so much of it ended up on the stairway. Therein I confessed my fault, my fault, my most grievous fault of Procrastination in fixing said plaster--leavened with a lot of excuses as to why I fell into it.

A day or two after I made that post I thought, Hey, wait a minute. There was another reason why I didn't repair that plaster before it fell down; why, last March when I had my ladder and my Big Wally's PlasterMagic repair kit on hand, I didn't get right to it. It wasn't that I didn't want to, or was suffering from a compulsion to get all the wood trim stripped first. It was because, well, the Big Wally's website was (and is) running a contest for the best videos of PlasterMagic repairs. The prize was $250, and I was determined to enter.

But I can't repair plaster and run a video camera at the same time. Whom could I get for a cinematographer to document my Atlantean effort? There was a neighbor kid with a camera and ambitions in the filmmaking direction, but she never seemed to be around when wanted. And what if she were standing within range of the damage as I worked and something should, well, happen? Didn't want the kid to get hurt. Maybe I should think of somebody else . . .

Stalemate. I kept on desiring that $250 prize and not coming up with anyone I could ask to make the video; I kept on stripping woodwork and not repairing the plaster . . . until June, when I finally tackled the ceiling and it tackled me back.

When Houseblogs.net and True Value combined to open the field for entries in the DIY Drama Contest, I thought about entering. I mean, mah dramah, let mii sho u itt. And thought some more. And a little more. (Do we discern a pattern?) Then shortly before the deadline, I pinned myself down and got the post written and submitted.

Then, having read the other submissions (and there were some impressive ones), I promptly forgot all about it, since there was no way I was going to win any of the $300 gift card prizes.

So imagine my astonishment when I got an email last week from Aaron at Houseblogs.net saying I'd won the drawing for one of the prizes!* Unbelievable, but true: Today the gift cards arrived from the contest coordinators!

So, thank you, Houseblogs.net, and thank you, True Value. I will add the latter to my Useful Links list and I encourage one and all to click on it.

But the situation is so ironic magnets fly to it. For the sake of a $250 prize I put off repairing my plaster until it fell down, which led to a post that got me a $300 prize to help me put it back up.

Yeah, I still do have to put it back up. I wonder, can I get a nice bucket of pre-slaked lime putty at my local True Value? Or maybe they can order it? It's not the easiest thing to come by . . .

Never mind. There are lots of other things this house needs that they can fix me up with very well. Without the procrastination!
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*Actually, it was a bit more complicated than that. The actual notices got hung up in my spam filter and it was through his comment on my Plaster Disaster post that he actually got the word to me.

Sore Winner

Last Saturday, a circular arrived from the local family-owned appliance store. It announced their "One & Only WINTER Clearance Event!" with "Our BIGGEST Savings of the Year!" Not only that, but I could also enter their Scratch 'n Match contest to see if I had won one of three prizes, the top one being a $10,000 kitchen makeover!!

Well, I don't need that. My kitchen is one of the most pulled-together rooms of my very un-pulled-together house. But I scratched the silver stuff off the number dot anyway.

Did not say "Sorry, You Have Not Won." There was a number there, all right.

But the winning numbers weren't on the circular. Oh. Guess you have to ask about it at the store.

And I needed to stop by there anyway. Because last week when I was about to launch into my big Christmas cookie baking campaign, my oven went haywire. I'd set it for 350, it'd stay there long enough to do one batch, but then the temperature would start to climb. 400, 500, 600 and on and on! Burnt cookies! Smoke alarms going off on every floor! General annoyance and frustration!

If one of their guys couldn't fix my oven, maybe this One & Only WINTER Clearance Event! could give me a line on a replacement stove. And I guessed I'd best do it quickly, since according to the circular, "WINTER" ends on January 1st.

So I walked into the appliance dealer's this afternoon, again thinking how it'd be "just my luck" to win the kitchen makeover, when the room that really needs it is the bathroom.

But I was really there to look at stoves. And I did.

The only one that really fits my specifications is about $150 more than I'd like to spend right now. And the model with the feature that could really get me excited about spending the money (convention oven conversion at the flip of a switch--whoo-whoo!) runs an additional $100 more.

And neither of these appeared to be part of the One & Only WINTER Clearance Event!

Hmm. I think I'll bring the info on my existing cranky stove in and see if they can simply fix the overheating problem. Their repairmen should be familiar with the beast, since my previous owners bought it there and this shop has been out to fix things on it before.

I was headed out the door when I remembered to ask the salesman, "Oh, yeah. How does this contest work?" He took me back to the service desk, where they had the winning numbers posted.

And what the hell, if all my numbers didn't match for one of the prizes. A "3 Day/2 Night Vacation Getaway."

Oh. That's nice. I actually won something. Oh!

"Something" being hotel accommodations for two at any one of quite a wide range of destinations, as close as just up the road, so to speak, or as far away as Honolulu, Hawaii.

I was aware of not being as excited as I might be. Maybe I wanted to stay cool so I could understand all the fine print on the redemption certificate. Maybe I wanted to keep my expectations down as to the quality of the hotels in question.

Maybe I was feeling inadequate for not being married and having an automatic other half of the "for two" to take up the other side of the deal.

Yes, well. I do like travel. And I do have girlfriends who'd enjoy going off on a larking kind of trip like this. And a good handful of the listed destinations were within driving distance.

So this evening I got ahold of my friend Frieda*, and we're going to visit Colonial Williamsburg sometime next spring, about the time we both celebrate our birthdays.

But as I was driving away from the appliance dealers, I found myself thinking, "Well, dammit. If I had the luck to win one of the prizes, why couldn't it have been the $10,000 kitchen makeover? I could have done a lot of good in the way of new appliances and a decent floor and countertops and some new lighting with that kind of dough, even if the cabinets and my adorable faux finish paint job are just fine. Why couldn't my luck just pushed me a little way further over? Answer me that, hmm?"

But instead, I had to win a lousy free hotel accommodation certificate. Sheesh.

The other prize was one of three iPhones.

Well, I console myself, I don't want to switch over to AT&T anyway.

Yeah, but I could have sold the thing on eBay and made some cash!

Shut up, kid, and be grateful! You and Frieda* are going to go to Williamsburg in the spring and you're going to look at antique buildings and pretty gardens and you're going to enjoy it all very, very much!

So there. And stop being a sore winner!
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*Made-up name