But wait, there's more

OK, I may have been a tad over-confident with this one. Number 1 sprog's bedroom doorframe was well out of whack. Still, flush with success from the master bedroom door, I set to.

After about an hour I was nearly there, thanks to the power plane I bought before door number 1. It has this wimpy little bag on the side that's meant to catch the shavings. Yeah, right. I bet the designer is still chuckling over that one. However, the aperture is almost the same as the vacuum cleaner hose. So, plane handle in one hand, vacuum cleaner hose in the other, mask over my face, I was in boy toy heaven. Clever me.

Here's a handy little tip to the guys reading this. Vacuum cleaners can only handle so many wood shavings. And when it gets full, the engine gets hot. Fortunately, it has a safety cutout. Of course, I only realised this after ten minutes of rocking with my head in my hands, moaning "I've broken Her vacuum cleaner. That means I have to Go Shopping" over and over again.

Freshly emptied, I made the final shavings. It must have been a combination of the vacuum cleaner engine and the plane blade whizzing through the wood that caused the smoke alarm above me to scream. Startled I reached up to open the alarm and remove the battery with one hand, whilst holding the plane in the other and the vacumm hose in the... wait one.

The whole alarm came loose out of the ceiling just as the hose slid out of the plane. It was at that moment I realised I was holding the vacuum hose, not the plane. Now, about 20 years ago a friend lent me his electric plane. That's how I lost the tip of my finger. Hey, what do you know. Darwin was right. Instead of trying to catch it I let it bounce half way down the stairs. I've bent the bottom metal plate into something like the right shape, and as soon as I can sneak home some super glue (banned after the Itchy Nose Incident) it'll nearly be good as new.

The most frustrating thing, though, was carving the hole in the door for the door handle apparatus thingy. A little too much enthusiasm with the electric drill with the side magazine (Oh, come on. We all imagine it's a sub-machine gun) means there's a slight crack by the door handle, and do you know how difficult it is to carve a three inch deep hole exactly the right dimensions to hold the locking mechanism?

I'm sure I heard Her mutter something about a carpenter afterwards. It was something like "You're getting to be a proper carpenter". There was definitely the word 'getting' in there somewhere, I'm sure.