We just decided enough was enough, and it had to go. It took about three minutes to remove the dusty old carpet and chuck it on the driveway, right beside nine large, heavy bags of reno trash. “That’s another job well done,” I thought to myself as I walked back to the stairway to start measuring up flooring and nosing. What an optimist I was.

I quickly remembered all the tack strips, staples and nails I would now have to painstakingly remove before even considering how to go about installing the new flooring. A pair of side-cutting pliers was my tool of choice, but not before experimenting with a mix of other tools. At one point I started hammering in as many of the nails and staples as I could, but that only slowed progress as they often didn’t sit flush with the stair, making them harder to pull out.

I wrestled with each and every one of those nails and staples. I could feel blisters starting to appear on my thumb and forefinger from all the twisting and pulling. If I was smart, I would have put a couple of preventative Band-Aids on my hand to stop the blisters from growing, but those are the sorts of thoughts I have only after the dust settles and it’s far too late. I often get so focused on a task I ignore most common sense.

Relatively heavy

After about two hours of continuous work the task was nearing completion. The plastic grocery bag I was putting all the nails and staples into was getting surprisingly heavy, relatively speaking. It was somewhat satisfying knowing there was indeed a pound or two of these tiny fasteners that were forced to submit to my impressive strength, dexterity and tenacity.

In hindsight, I’m sure my partner looked on in amazement at how slow I was at removing the tiniest of fasteners from the stairs, even if there were a lot of them. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure she wasn’t too worried about all the awful blisters I was becoming more and more vocally concerned with, either. Considering a day later my hands and fingers showed absolutely no signs of struggle, maybe she was right and I should have stopped whining.

I eventually won the battle. And I’ll eventually win the war, too. My friend has been gone for a few weeks, but I toil on. Although I spend a fair bit of time editing the magazine and building projects in the shop, I also work away cutting and installing baseboard, painting all sorts of surfaces and searching for the correct hardware, moving closer and closer to completing this basement reno.

I’m guessing nails and staples hold a good portion of this country together. And judging by how well they tried to stay in the stairs I worked on there’s no chance Canada is going to fall apart any time soon.

Small shop photos

I always ask readers to send me images of their small shops, and from time to time someone obliges.

I got an email the other day from a reader named Ralph who included some shots of his shop. It was a nice-sized, well-equipped garage. I liked his approach to a router table, and thought I should share it with you. It’s nothing revolutionary, just a good approach that can help when working in a small space.

Ralph built a mitre saw station, complete with lots of storage underneath for routers, drills, sanders and other tools. His mitre saw sits on top of the stand, and there’s a raised surface on either side of the saw to help support material to either side of the saw. When he wants to switch to his router table, Ralph removes the saw and installs his router table surface on top of the station.

Another one of the interesting things about Ralph’s shop is that he does his ironing right beside his table saw. Joking aside, I’ve never thought of bringing an ironing board into my shop, though I could see how it would be advantageous as an adjustable height work surface. Obviously, you can’t set anything heavy on top of an ironing board, but for very light work it could work nicely.