The Hole-in-the-Wall Gang
Great moments in building history: A dumb mistake
My daughter Carol and her husband, Dave, were very proud of their new home. But it wasn’t air conditioned, and they didn’t want to suffer through the hot, humid summer days and the following allergy season. Consequently, they purchased an air conditioner that required a through-the-wall mounting—not the customary window installation. Dave was an electrical engineer, but I had considerably more carpentry experience, so Carol called and asked if I would help Dave install the air conditioner. “Of course,” I replied, and we made arrangements to install it the following weekend.
This is a sore spot with my wife because she claims whenever my daughters call to have something fixed or built, or they need a helping hand for something, I drop everything and run right over. My wife says whenever she needs something done, my standard reply is, “I’ll check it out.” Six months later she says I am still “checking it out.” When I finally finish “checking it out,” I can’t get started until I purchase some new special tool to use.
Carol and Dave had determined where they wanted the air conditioner mounted in their bedroom wall. Dave and I measured the location from the nearest bedroom window and went outside, climbed up the ladders and transferred the measurement to the outside wall using the window as a reference point.
I cut the hole with a sabersaw after determining stud locations. I made the hole smaller than required so that the air conditioner could be positioned from the inside for the best results. I removed insulation that was in the way, then I angled the sabersaw through the inside wall and made a short sawcut so that we could make any adjustments using the reference point inside and outside.
I told Dave to go inside, then I pushed the sawblade through. I shouted, “Do you see it?” No reply, so I shouted louder, “Dave, do you see it yet?” No answer. “Dave, are you O.K.?”
Suddenly, I heard a low, agonizing gasp through the hole in the wall. “Oh my God! No!”
Dave poked his head out the window and exclaimed, “We’re in the wrong room! We’re in the bathroom, not the bedroom!” We measured from the wrong window outside!
Dave looked at me, and I looked at him. How could we be so dumb? We couldn’t help it—we both started laughing.
I suggested we patch up the hole before Carol saw it. But she heard us laughing and came out to see what was going on. She heard the story and our feeble excuses, took one look, exclaimed, “Fix it!” and then stormed away.
Of course Carol had to tell her mother, who then showed up, took one look at me and said, “It isn’t easy to be that dumb, is it?” Then she went inside to sympathize with our daughter.
Dave and I couldn’t talk Carol into putting an air conditioner in the bathroom and another one in the bedroom, so we eventually did a pretty fair job of putting everything back in place with the help of caulking compound and wood putty. You wouldn’t notice it if you drove by the house at 40 miles per hour. We then went on to install the air conditioner in the proper place.
My daughter would not let us patch the sawcut in the bathroom. She hung a picture over it and said she was keeping the hole as a reminder. Whenever Dave and I sounded off and tried to impress someone, Carol would interject, “Should I show them the hole in the bathroom wall?”
Finally, one day when Carol went shopping, I sneaked over and patched the wall in the bathroom so that the hole didn’t show.
—Alfred Barrett, Norfolk, Mass.
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