Hold on, this will only take me 10 minutes

So, there's this "joke" in our house that I can do anything in 10 minutes. This, of course, is completely rooted in reality... the reality that nothing ever gets done in any amount of time remotely close to 10 minutes. It started out innocently enough - I said it would take me 10 minutes to finish something (upon which I would then help Lauren with something she was hoping I would be ready to do soon); and sure enough, 10 minutes later... I was about a fifth of the way done. For a while, this became a point to be proven - I was dead set on saying exactly how long it would take me to do something and then completing it in that amount of time or less. For a while, I somehow, someway kept thinking everything would take 10 minutes. 10 minutes to fix the sink. 10 minutes to change the oil in my car. 10 minutes to solve world hunger. After a while, I learned that I needed to give myself more leeway - which of course only succeeded in me being less wrong. Instead of being off by only 5 hours and 50 minutes, I was only off by three hours when I would say I could do something in three hours. So, after a while, I just gave up - my standard answers are now "I have no clue how long this will take" - or, if I feel like trying to grab some levity in the face of a seemingly insurmountable project, I just say it will take 10 minutes.

So that brings us to this weekend. I'm pretty sure that I can finish everything I want to get done this weekend, but I'm also pretty sure that I am great at being wrong. But there's not too much to do - I just need to 1) put the face and doors on the cabinet in the kitchen this weekend that I've been working on for two weeks (more on this in a minute), 2) clean about 700 lbs. of sawdust out of our garage (and off of the everything that it is currently covering), 3) attempt to halve all the crap that currently lives in our garage, 4) cut our "extra" counter-top in half, and 5) create a shelf in our garage out of this counter-top. I'm sure I can get this all done in about 10 minutes.

So, this cabinet face (see point #1 above)... that's been a nightmare. I spent several days crafting a 80" by 24" custom face out of a single piece of wood, that had three cabinet doors for it, and a hole for a microwave. Not so easy - especially when you don't have the right tools. So, it felt even better when it wasn't fitting right, and subsequently split when trying to force it on and having an especially rough time with a stripped screw. But, I knew in the end I only had myself to blame - I attempted to buy cheaper wood to save some money, and it bit me in the butt. So, I then got to do it all over again - and this time, I bought better wood, and made it out of several pieces. And I'll be honest - it looks much better than the first one (and it fits better too). So, once it's on, I'll be happy. Until then, I'll continue to be stressed. At the very least, I got to have the fun of covering a two car garage in sawdust between making both faces.

And here is the aforementioned garage:

Once upon a time, two cars lived in this garage. Right now, none do. Because in the process of getting all my tools out to make the cabinet faces (you can see the new one lying clamped on the floor), I also managed to topple all my "don't touch that pile of stuff, you might get yourself killed" stacks of coolers, wood, tools, paint cans, oil pans, yard equipment, and lots-and-lots-of-trash. So now that stuff is everywhere - and that's what I'm going to get rid off. It turns out, I'm never going to use the last 3 square feet of drywall I saved, or the 4,000 leftover pieces of wood that I cut off when making our desk, tailgate toss, DVD cabinet, and other projects. So, they shall go. And in one spot, I'm even gonna make some more storage. Here shall be the home of half our soon-not-to-be-in-our-kitchen-counter:

I'm really hopeful here - I think it's a great idea to make a shelf there to double the storage of this space. We'll see how it goes. I've got the whole three-day weekend to make it happen. But I'm sure it will only take about 10 minutes.