![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Accidents happen...
...but not usually to me.
My office/workspace is in the basement, in the area directly underneath the living room (picture here). Before this evening, like many basement rooms It had no access to outside light.
I decided earlier in the week that I was either, 1. going to move my office to the room under the dining room, which has a window; or, 2. open the wall between that room and the present space and create a window between them. Since there used to be a door right there anyway that I just drywalled over several years ago, it was far easier to create a window.
1. Cut a hole in the drywall
2. Make a box to fit inside the hole, and trim it out on the office side.
3. Slide the box into the hole, nail in place.
Easy. I started about 8:00, I finished at 10:00, with a twenty minute break in there.
Why the break? Funny you should ask.
One of my favorite tools is my power nailer (and older version of this). It uses a small propane cylinder as the power, and with a mechanical action not dissimilar to the cylinder in a car engine will shoot a 2" finish nail into an oak beam with a perfect 1/8" countersink. Michelle made me buy it a long while back when I had a lot of trim work to do in the house. I have never stopped finding uses for it.
The only time it can be a problem is when the nail - especially if it's a longer one - follows the grain of the wood or, worse, hits another nail and deflects, and most of the nail juts out of the wood. When it does, it's usually to the visible side, where removing it to re-nail will almost always damage the piece.
Sometimes it comes out the back where it doesn't matter.
Most times it comes out the front.
This time it came out the back, straight into the middle finger of my left hand.
I was trimming out the box, and holding the trim in place: no easy task when the trim and the nailing head are both slippery. As with most puncture wounds, stopping the bleeding was a small enough matter, but the sumbitch hurts bad enough to make me pretty sure the nail hit bone. My entire hand aches, though it's not as bad as it was an hour ago.
Once I got the bleeding stopped (and there was a surprising amount of that for a small hole in my finger), I threw on a band-aid and went back downstairs and finished the job.
And now my office has a window, through which I can see another window through which I can see the outside. Just a little bit of sunshine, but it makes the space less like a dungeon. At some point in the future after I find my glass cutter, I'll put a pane of glass in.
p.s. Before you ask, yes, I'm current on my tetanus shot. I had one about four years ago after an incident involving a cheap pair of tennis shoes and an 8d framing nail.
Late Edit. Sunday morning. Since the nail passed through the side and into the pad of my finger, I can still type - and I would presume though I haven't tried, play guitar - without issue. Tying my shoes was a struggle, since in that process the laces pass over the side of the finger. Come to that, there are a lot of things I do that pass over the side of the finger. Owie.
My office/workspace is in the basement, in the area directly underneath the living room (picture here). Before this evening, like many basement rooms It had no access to outside light.
I decided earlier in the week that I was either, 1. going to move my office to the room under the dining room, which has a window; or, 2. open the wall between that room and the present space and create a window between them. Since there used to be a door right there anyway that I just drywalled over several years ago, it was far easier to create a window.
1. Cut a hole in the drywall
2. Make a box to fit inside the hole, and trim it out on the office side.
3. Slide the box into the hole, nail in place.
Easy. I started about 8:00, I finished at 10:00, with a twenty minute break in there.
Why the break? Funny you should ask.
One of my favorite tools is my power nailer (and older version of this). It uses a small propane cylinder as the power, and with a mechanical action not dissimilar to the cylinder in a car engine will shoot a 2" finish nail into an oak beam with a perfect 1/8" countersink. Michelle made me buy it a long while back when I had a lot of trim work to do in the house. I have never stopped finding uses for it.
The only time it can be a problem is when the nail - especially if it's a longer one - follows the grain of the wood or, worse, hits another nail and deflects, and most of the nail juts out of the wood. When it does, it's usually to the visible side, where removing it to re-nail will almost always damage the piece.
Sometimes it comes out the back where it doesn't matter.
Most times it comes out the front.
This time it came out the back, straight into the middle finger of my left hand.
I was trimming out the box, and holding the trim in place: no easy task when the trim and the nailing head are both slippery. As with most puncture wounds, stopping the bleeding was a small enough matter, but the sumbitch hurts bad enough to make me pretty sure the nail hit bone. My entire hand aches, though it's not as bad as it was an hour ago.
Once I got the bleeding stopped (and there was a surprising amount of that for a small hole in my finger), I threw on a band-aid and went back downstairs and finished the job.
And now my office has a window, through which I can see another window through which I can see the outside. Just a little bit of sunshine, but it makes the space less like a dungeon. At some point in the future after I find my glass cutter, I'll put a pane of glass in.
p.s. Before you ask, yes, I'm current on my tetanus shot. I had one about four years ago after an incident involving a cheap pair of tennis shoes and an 8d framing nail.
Late Edit. Sunday morning. Since the nail passed through the side and into the pad of my finger, I can still type - and I would presume though I haven't tried, play guitar - without issue. Tying my shoes was a struggle, since in that process the laces pass over the side of the finger. Come to that, there are a lot of things I do that pass over the side of the finger. Owie.
no subject
bad enough...
I sympathize
I consoled myself that a broken thumb was pretty fortunate considering what *COULD* happen having an accident with a chipper/shredder :)