How trigonometry made me giggle
My enginerd husband has now finished buiding (from scratch) and assembling some sturdy shelves for our storage room. The frames are made of 2x4s (FYI: they are actually 1.5″x3.5″) and the 2′x4′ shelves are cut, sanded, and painted plywood. It’s all screwed together and even tucked behind the exposed rafters to prevent tipping. He’s so handy! (Sometimes I even the domestic chore score by heating up dinner in the microwave.)
One of the frames warped a little, which prevented the plywood shelves from properly sliding into place. I didn’t know anything about this issue until he asked for my help. When I entered the storage room, he handed me the rubber mallet and crawled into the frame. First I thought he had been huffing something out in the garage, since hammering anything is always his Duty As A Man, but then he told me what was going on.
He was going to use his Man Strength to straighten out the frame from the inside while I hammered a cross-beam into place that would keep it straight. Oh, hey! I suddenly noticed that there was a cross-beam on the bottom of the frame.
So he did his job, and I enjoyed wielding the mallet for a few satisfyingly effective whacks. As he crawled out of the frame, I marveled at his ingenuity because I probably would have tried to shove the shelves in and broken something and then gone out to purchase a prefabricated shelf. The corners were quite fancy, and by that I mean not cut at right angles.
Ben smiled, quite pleased with himself, and said, “I used trigonometry!”
What a nerd, right? And so adorable. I think I’ll keep him (especially now that there’s more space in the storage room).
(The awesome stains on the cement floor are courtesy of the previous homeowners. Ben scrubbed the area clean before setting up the shelves, but we didn’t think it was worth the extra hassle or expense to try to remove the stains or cover them up with paint.)
