Good Idea: When you go to the hardware store to buy lots of big stuff like drywall and a bathtub, check in at the Customer Service desk to make sure the the store’s rental truck is available before you fill up your cart.

Bad Idea: Forget that the store closes early on Sunday nights and fill up two carts full of big supplies and then attempt to rent the truck ten minutes before closing.

Groan. Isn’t that always the way it goes? Fortunately, we were able to re-ring our purchases as a pick-up order and return the next day to bring everything home in the rental truck. (That hourly rental service is brilliant.)

But the fun doesn’t quite end there. Back at home, we pulled the new bathtub out of the box and plunked it down on the front lawn… and it wasn’t until I climbed into it that it occurred to us that we would have to exchange it. We got one with the finished edge on the right side of the tub, but we need one that’s finished on the left side.

Long story short, we now have all of our supplies including the proper tub at our house, but sheesh! They don’t show you all of this craziness on This Old House, you know?! Maybe I should launch a new reality home improvement show about what it’s really like to work on your house.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 17th, 2004 at 9:31 am and is filed under House Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.