Ok here’s the deal. My brothers roommates and myself have been talking about building this wall for 3 or 4 months.
Today my buddy calls and says that today is the day to purchase materials to build the wall.
So I go to leave the house and the misses calls on her way home from the doctor “ make some pudding, the boy is sick and I need to crush up his medicine to put in the pudding so he will take it”.
So, I make the pudding and head out.
My buddy had finally gotten a truck to haul all the stuff we would need to put up this wall.
I get to my brothers house and we go over the list of what we need.
The wall will be 8’ wide x 8’ long x 10’ high in the center with 2 angled sides to support, one wall will be 14’ or 15’. The other side will be 12’ or 13’, both 8’ wide, I cant remember, I will post the plans in a couple of days.
The truck we drove to the store had been borrowed from his work and is very nice.
It took us 45 minutes to pick all the lumber and load it onto a cart.
My brother, who is a draftsman, drew plans, made a materials list and priced it out.
The lady at the cashier rings it up to a total of $677.00. What, that’s twice what is budgeted for lumber. Maybe my brother just screwed up.
My buddy has a big decision to make here. Does he spend twice as much? Don’t forget we don’t have t-nuts or holds yet.
The cashier offers the idea of a credit card the store offers, which currently is having a special, 12 months same as cash.
I said “go for it”.
So he proceeds to call the roommates, to ask for donations to the building of the wall.
Both said they would chip in.
Now he is getting a construction loan to develop this project. We are going big time with this puppy.
The cashier swipes his card to get the info to get approval for his shiny new credit card.
His debit card does not work, at all, no matter how many times we try.
So, she then moves to the manual part of this game.
We have now been in the store for over an hour.
The manual technique replies with no answer, not approved, not denied. I start thinking that the wall is now doomed.
I offer up the idea of getting the money from the other two roommates and coming back tomorrow.
No, he will only put it on the card, he wants to spread out the money, if it is going to be that much.
So I started working on getting them to hold the stuff that took us so long to pick out, till we could come back and get it.
He started to find out how long it will take to get the card.
One hour and forty five minutes.
He finds out it will be seven to ten days before he will know when the card will be his.
They will not hold the materials for that long unless it is paid for, no matter what we try.
We talk to the cashier and she tells us that she will have somebody put it all away for us. Great!, I did not want to put that stuff back after it took so long to load.
We leave the store 2 hours and 15 minutes after arriving, no lumber.
We take the truck back to get his car and my brother calls asking how things were going. He is told about the price difference and the credit card issue. “I would love to see a receipt” he says.
We get to my brother’s house. Find out that they had charged 116 16’ 2×4’s, instead of 16. Well now, he doesn’t have to finance this undertaking, how stupid of all those involved to not notice this oversight. Even me.
Alright, I will post plans and keep you updated on this saga of bad luck and fun.
