I first heard this phrase of wisdom from Norm Abram on This Old House in the early 80's when my husband and I bought our first house and I became engrossed in the series.  I literally never missed an episode for years - it was the thing I cared about most.  OK, in TV time, it was the thing I cared about most....

I learned so many basic skills from watching the guys on the program that I felt I could do anything.  A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing but when a friend of my husband's came to our home one day and we were showcasing the things we had corrected in the 1940ish structure, he was shocked when I said we needed to scribe the woodwork to fit the plaster-contoured wall into the basement.  "How do YOU know about scribing?" he asked.  "I watch This Old House," was my answer.  (What a chauvinist!)  It was the first DIY show, it is still the best, for true construction knowledge (in my opinion) and I will love it until the day I die.  I do watch other DIY shows and was caught up in one tonight about renovation mistakes.  So much was true - some mistakes we have made, some we have avoided.  I loved the one about accurate measuring.  Measure twice, cut once.

My best example of this error was when we had an addition put on our house about 6 years ago - very competent company and subs.   We were relocating/reusing windows that were being displaced; I had supplied the dimensions for the windows and the framers had taken my word as gospel.  The windows did not fit into the framed openings.

When the error of my measurements collided with rough openings needed, the supervisor and I came up with a simple plan to rearrange where the windows would go.  I think only one or two openings out of five needed minor modifications, and to my delight, a spare window found the perfect home in what would have been a blank second floor wall.  The contractor just looked at me, put an arm around my shoulder, and the framers said at least I was always one step ahead of them.  Sometimes you cannot plan these things and out of lemons you make lemonade. 

Renovations can be treacherous.  We still laugh about the addition and having those guys in our house for months, almost like family.  My youngest recollects the day she slightly awakened to find a man pushing open the attic access in her room while she still slept (they started VERY early and it was summer break).  Me, I remember the day I was washing dishes in the kitchen and singing, as I so often do for fun in my home (I can't carry a tune) until my older daughter reminded me that there were men just 15 feet away while I belted out, "I need some hot stuff, baby, this evening!"  They told me I was their favorite customer ever, but I did put on coffee every morning and had a cooler stocked with soft drinks, carbonated and not, and beer for the end of the day.  Those guys did a great job!

There was some material left at the end of the job - small pieces that we asked them to leave for fire starters in our natural wood-burning fireplace.  There were also a few large pieces of the tongue and groove they used for the ceiling - we finished parts of the interior of a basement room with that and created a frame for our youngest's work of art.  I doubt there would have been any leftovers at all but I was privy to the conversations.  They knew what they were doing - they measured twice and cut once.  Who wants to go back to the lumber yard for just one board?

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