We all know that Courtney Gubler is near perfect. He’s a supportive husband, he’s a fun dad, he’s handy and is definitely the better half of this marriage. But Court Gubler has a flaw. One we’ve known about for a while, but has presented itself in all its quirky fullness during the Merc renovation.
Sometimes he gets obsessed and has to over-do things. For example, he’s not allowed to put outlet covers on because he almost always tightens the screw too tight and cracks the cover. He’s also been known to drive a screw too deep and break off the head, and ruin paint jobs because there was a drip that he just couldn’t leave alone. The weird thing is that he’s not always like this, in fact its pretty rare, but when you see it coming you know something is going to go wrong. We even have a name for it. Its an inherited trait from his dad whose name is Clare, so its very lovingly called Clare-ing it.
Clare-ing verb
Definition: To obsessively over-do something to the point of damage
“You’re Clare-ing the light switch plates. If you tighten the screw again you’ll crack them.”
“Why are there 15 nail holes in this 2 foot piece of baseboard?”
“I Clared it.”
The project of the day was the windows. They are original and I’ll be the first to admit, in pretty rough shape.
There were sections of moulding missing, years and years of paint, termite and water damage, ya know the good stuff. After talking with our contractor we decided against opening the pandora’s box of removing them and replacing the wood. He said it could easily cost $6000+ PER WINDOW to have them repaired and replicated. Um hi. Not only is that wayyyy out of our budget, but its a character killer. So we decided to repair them ourselves as best we could and just embrace it.
Above our 2 main windows there are 4 smaller ones that still have the original glass from 1928. It’s wavy and imperfect and aside from the sign on the front, my favorite part about this phase of the renovation.
We got to work removing the old paint, 6 layers to be exact. (I love picturing the Merc with all of these different color variations.)
Once they were scraped clean, it was time to get to work with the repairs. Like I mentioned earlier there were lots of places that the moulding was missing, and at the bottom of my beloved windows there were a few small pieces. Nothing that you’d even notice unless you were looking for it.
Court really really REALLY wanted to make sure that these pieces were fixed right and could stand up against a nuclear war (even if the Merc crumbled around them, these 1/2″ pieces would stand strong).
Every time he shot a staple into them I held my breath. He was getting obsessed, I could see it in his eyes.
And then it happened.
Mind you these boards are not important in any way shape or form, but after coating them in silicone (to make sure they were water tight) and shooting 6 staples into a 2.5 foot section the 7th staple hit the corner of the glass and cracked it.
I consider myself a very calm person in a crisis involving stuff. I never get upset when something breaks or gets damaged, like NEVER.
But I just couldn’t hand this. I was mad. I just kept repeating WHY!?!
The crack isn’t huge (about 2 inches) and will move in the direction of the frame so eventually when it cracks the whole way through it will just leave the corner detached. I’m not sure how to fix it so I went to Home Depot and bought glass glue and put that on both sides of it. Hopefully it will keep it from getting worse? If you’ve got any suggestions or dealt with this I’d love to hear the fix!
And as for my marriage, I’ve moved past it until Court starts Clare-ing something else, then I pull it out of my back pocket and use it like smelling salts to try and pull him out of his trance.
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via Mandi at Court’s Fatal Flaw & the Destruction of Our Irreplaceable Windows
