Building Stuff (week 356)

For a while now, Daddy and I have wanted to get ourselves a set of Cornhole Boards.  Cornhole is a very sophisticated game that involves throwing bean bags at a board that is slightly tilted upward to see who can get the most bags in the hole. As Wikipedia would have it:

"Cornhole, also known as bean bag toss, corn toss, baggo or bags, is a lawn gamein which players take turns throwing bags of corn at a raised platform with a hole in the far end. A bag in the hole scores 3 points, while one on the platform scores 1 point. Play continues until a team or player reaches the score of 21."

Since coming back from his retreat at El Camino Pines two weeks ago, Daddy has been talking about working on a building project together.  He says that because we don't have time for Boy Scouts or Cub Scouts right now (and don't get to build Pinewood Derby cars), that we should work together on a building project.  So we chose Cornhole Boards!

The problem with building projects is that they take forever, particularly if you are not a very good carpenter or building (like my Dad).  Since neither Daddy nor I are very patient people to begin with, it is almost excruciatingly slow.  I thought that we could just go to the store and buy everything we needed to build the boards in a day.  I was wrong.  We are now on our second weekend of the project and there is no real hope that we will finish before at least three weeks have passed.   But we are getting in some serious quality time.  

The first step was to get our hands on a professional Cornhole Board, which we got from our friend Pat.  Next, we spent about an hour drawing all of the pieces--12 in all--on a piece of old looking paper.  We decided that we would build two sets of boards--one set for us and one set for Jackson and Doug--so we multiplied every piece needed by 4.  I learned how to measure, read the inches and feet, and to write-out fractions like 2 1/2 inches.  Then, we pinned the plans on the bulletin board and did nothing else!

The next weekend, we went to Ghanal's Lumber to start finding our supplies.  It ended up costing $77 just for the wood!  Once we picked out the different pieces we would need, it took another hour just to cut all of the pieces (about 38 in all)!  Since Daddy got a gift card from Dubby for Lowe's, we then spent another hour picking our paint, tape, hardware, handles, and everything else that we would need...another $60!  Before we have even bought the beanbags or the decals (for the Galaxy), we are already into this project for about $137 and a lot of time.

To be continued...