I finally wrecked a molding profile after 12 years of never doing it

Last Wednesday I was trimming out a bedroom in a 1920s house over in Medford. Old plaster walls, nothing square, the usual headache. I had this beautiful poplar baseboard with a detail cut on top that took me an hour to set up on the router table. Got in a rush because the homeowner was poking around asking when I'd be done, and I grabbed the wrong coping saw blade out of my pouch. Cut right through the top detail on a 6 foot piece. That's about 40 bucks of material and 2 hours of setup time gone in one second. I stood there staring at it for a solid minute before I even moved. Told the guy I'd need another day and he gave me a look like I was trying to scam him. Have any of you had a moment like that where you just knew you should have walked away and taken a break but didn't?

3 comments

3 Comments

holly7093d ago

That same thing happened to me with a piece of crown molding out in Brookline last spring... I was trimming a Victorian with these huge decorative dentil blocks and I was already three hours behind because the miter saw kept drifting out of square. My wife had been calling asking when dinner was, and I was trying to rush through the last wall. Snapped the coping saw blade on the third pass and the whole back cut just blew out. I just sat down on the subfloor and didn't move for like five minutes. The homeowner walked in with coffee and I told him I needed to start that whole section over and he just nodded and walked back out. Sometimes you just gotta take the L and come back fresh the next day.

flores.emma3d ago

Man, that story hits hard. I've learned the hard way that trying to force a cut when you're already frustrated just makes things worse. Walking away for a few hours or sleeping on it is almost always the smarter move than pushing through.

jake7472d ago

Dude I feel that in my bones. Twenty bucks says that homeowner has never swung a hammer in his life, let alone tried to match old plaster details. The worst part is when you know you're pushing it and your brain is screaming at you to stop but you just keep going anyway. I've left more expensive mistakes sitting on the floor than I care to count. At least you didn't try to glue it back together and pretend it didn't happen, which is what I usually do for the first five minutes before reality sets in.