These Nails Have Totally Screwed Me
We are drowning in pieces of trim – it’s everywhere. Some people have dust bunnies lurking in unexpected places throughout their home…we have trim. Trim is our dust bunnies. It’s under the bed, behind the doors, in the attic, the basement, the foyer, the garage, the hall, the kitchen, the bedroom…EVERYWHERE! It’s enough to inspire Alfred Hitchcock, if he were still alive, to make a sequel of the movie The Birds and call it The Trim.
If you’re not familiar with the movie The Birds, I have done you the service of including a 1 minute and 40 second overview of it. Every time you see a bird, just imagine it is a nail-laden piece of trim and then you will understand what I mean. However, our trim does not attack us, and for that I am grateful.
Just a heads up – the whistling is totally going to be stuck in your head all day.
Anyways, whoever built our house was serious about trim, surrounding every ceiling, floor, hall, window, door, cabinet and closet with it. And I’m not just talking about a dinky strip of painted wood. Each section of trim has several components. For example, the trim around the floors consists of three separate pieces: The baseboard, the shoe-molding and the piece-that-sits-on-top-of-the-baseboard-making-it-look-fancy. And each and every piece is loaded with big, excessively-sized nails. Nails that need to be removed before the trim can be sanded, painted/stained and rehung.
A few weeks ago, I thought I had extracted the last nail from the last piece of trim. I gleefully swept up the nails from that days work – wait, that’s not right – I pranced about the garage (a.k.a Nail Removal Center) with a broom humming the tune “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” while I herded the loose nails into a pile. I photoed the pile…
…planning a post about my triumphant victory over evil when Joey suddenly appeared in the doorway, the outline of his figure broken up by long, protruding boards.
“Oh God it can’t be true. No, no, I won’t believe it,” I thought. But there was no denying it…he had found more trim!!! (Shriek, gasp!) And all that trim was adorned with flesh-tearing spikes waiting patiently to bite at my skin.
So I’m back at it. Spending time with my trusty nail puller. Working and whistling the song from The Birds video.
I guess there’s a silver lining to all of this. If birds do attack in the near future, I can use the copious amounts of nails and trim we have to cover our windows and doors to keep them out. But if you’ve seen the movie, you know how well that works.
P.S. Please don’t misunderstand, although I’m sick of pulling nails, I really am grateful for our old, original trim.
Every old house I’ve ever worked on is full of nails. Those old timers were serious about nailing trim! They must have had forearms of steel to pound 5 million long finish nails!
Wow — my sympathies. I’ve never been through that experience. It did remind me though of the joy I had last year with STAPLES after tearing up the carpeting in the living room and dining room to prep for laminate. There were no less than 200 staples per square inch. It was insane!
That’s a crazy pile!! Good luck on the rest!
Hi Todd! Thanks for the comment. I’m hopeful I’ll develop my own set of buff arms removing all 5 million of them!
NV – 200 staples per square inch! I can’t even imagine. I think I’d take my tons of nails over that!
Susie – thank you. I’ll let you know how it all turns out at the next Iron Cupcake challenge!