Monday, April 4, 2011

Measure twice, cut once

I was reading with some amusement, April's blog post  about her husband's apparent inability to measure something accurately and therefore causing more work for her in their new nursery

It got me thinking about the couple of times MONT and I have had bitter debate (read tantrums on my part) when he failed to measure something accurately.

Case 1: Our bedroom window.


Number 10 was built back in the 1950s and still had the original windows when I bought it in the late 90's. The front bedroom window was in three parts, with a large pane of glass in the centre. I had bought pale grey awnings for outside and had custom made blockout holland blinds for inside. The actual windows on each end were hard to open so we decided to replace it. My stipulation was, make sure all the measurements are the same so I don't have to buy new blinds, which were NOT CHEAP!
I don't know what happened but, not only is the window a different size to the original but the three sections are also different, which meant I had to buy a new window awning and a new internal blind.


When the new window was delivered I rang MONT to tell him they'd delivered the wrong one as it was the wrong size. He mentioned that they thought the measurement's were a bit strange, but he said they were right and go ahead and make it.

GRRRR!

Case 2: MONT has a boat so we decided to build a carport/boatshed to house it.


He measured the boat to make sure it would fit. The carport was built. He put the boat in there and lo and behold, it was about a metre short! The trouble? He only measured the boat and NOT the outboard motor of the back.

He's been at me to extend the carport but I've dug my heels in. If you can't measure correctly in the first place, bad luck

But it's not just MONT or April's husband who have problems finding their way around a tape measure

I recently bought a chest of drawers on eBay and had asked the seller for the measurements as they weren't mentioned in the listing. It sounded good, but when I went to collect it, the measurements were way out!! It's so darn big it won't fit where I had planned to put it, so will have to be sold on...oh and this guy was a builder!

Take heart April, we've all been there.

6 comments:

  1. Oh Lesley, I am glad it isn't just my husband who can't measure. The stupid thing is that some how the frame is "level" when you put the level onto it - yet there is a good 20-30mm difference between the top and bottom.

    Ah well, it is all character building! I would have made the window people remake the window though if it was their stuff up, how annoying!

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  2. Oh April, I wish it had been the window makers mistake, but he made it exactly to Mont's specs.
    Very annoying indeed, especially seeing MONT loves having the windows open to let in fresh air, and the sections that do open are now considrably smaller than the original windows...Extremely annoying!

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  3. Oh I had bought a glass to put on top of our kitchen table and the store delivered the wrong size... seems everybody has problems measuring these days. And I don't include my hubby when I do renovations for the kitchen, it would save a lot of time and arguments ♥

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  4. Oh my goodness, that's funny (and no doubt really annoying) about the boat shed!! I had to laugh. I'd never heard the saying, measure once, cut twice until I met my tradie partner, but it is a very very good one :)

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  5. Oh dear....oh dear... Loved your post Lesley, couldn't believe you were speaking about Mont though! Had a good laugh until I realised how frustrated you would have been at the time.

    The marriage has survived however, due no doubt to your generous nature and importantly, your sense of humour!

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  6. That's almost as bad as buying a car that doesn't fit the entire family...but don't call me bitter...

    I guess mistakes like the ones you mentioned do happen. I'd leave the carport as it is, it will serve as a reminder to Mont to always measure twice! xx

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