This time I'm certain. This is not parenting advice. It's just a recommendation for NOT undertaking a tiling project as a family. A warning, as it were, about the dangers that may lie ahead if you do!

It's also an entry in the "Aussie dad's tool shed" group,

that I had to drag out in the open, because it's pretty quiet in the shed, so far!!...

...Here I am, feeling like I'm retreating into the shed by myself again... not sure I'll stay long, tho'!

I know a lot of men are really "into" their sheds, and projects in the sheds that they do by themselves. Some tell me they find this energising and rejuvenating... their shed is like their 'cave', to withdraw from others, relax and centre themselves, before coming out to face the world again.

I am not one of those type of blokes, unfortunately! Projects left half-done somewhere in my home, or lying around my shed, are exactly that... left lying around! -- and unless they're so pressingly 'urgent' (on a scale dependent on how much my other half is determined they must be completed!) that they can no longer be ignored, they will be!!

People, on the other hand, get me going. Getting something done with a group of people is energising for me. Sure, I love the sense of achievement of getting the 'thing' done (whether it's a physical project, a work goal... or even better, a 'movement', a whole new direction for a group of people, that takes on a life of it's own!)... but it's the fact that we've done it together that 'does it' for me most of all!

... even tiling our rumpus room floor recently (one of those things that I would have put off indefinitely, or sold the house to avoid doing if I could have!). We had guests coming to stay over Christmas for a few weeks, we needed to use the space for some of them... and the combination of recent hail and heavy rain and dodgy drainage had soaked the old carpet through -- with 2 weeks to go before everybody arrived on the doorstep, it had to be done RIGHT NOW! "It's the busiest time of the year at school and at church, I'm flat out for these 2 weeks, and I'm exhausted already", I whinged -- in vain, of course! --  "I can dry out the carpets, we can get through Christmas, and then get it done later, by professionals who know what they're doing?", I tried. No such luck.

I hate tiling. No buts about it. I hadn't done a lot of it... but it didn't take a lot to know, it's not my thing! So, in the car and off to Bunnings we went (just to check it out, I thought to myself). Some quite attractive porcelain tiles were on special, so we came home $500 poorer, the proud (?) owners of 50 boxes of tiles, a couple of bags of tile glue and some other odds and ends. The next day, after work and dinner was out of the way, my dynamo missus and I began the job. Our midnight... or more often 1 or 2 a.m. finishing up times over the following 12 days definitely took their toll on my ability to get through the next day's work effectively.... and I swore a lot on the job (the tiling job, I mean... It's not too appropriate to be swearing too much as a primary school chaplain!). I'm not usually a swearer, but there's something about tiling that makes you want to swear. (Actually, grouting, and cleaning up afterwards, is probably the bit that reaches back to those relatively unused sections of your vocabulary the most!!).

I began to worry if one of my wife's colleagues at the Department of Child Safety was going to come knocking at our door, while we had 3 young girls conscripted as slave labour in our tiling workshop for a few hours per night, 'til well after their normal bed time. I did have the small satisfaction of hearing my lovely wife mutter, "We're never tiling again!" more than once (tho' I know she'll have forgotten this in a matter of weeks, it's just like child-birth! I sometimes wonder if she was actually there when our daughters were born! "It was easy" she'll tell some poor, unsuspecting pregnant friend, "all over in no time... I felt like going out dancing afterwards!" -- well, I was there, and it was hard work! I was completely stuffed, exhausted and drained for days afterwards!)

We just got it all completed with about 36 hours to go before our friends arrival -- just time to clean up, move all the furniture, make a Christmas tree, buy a couple of bits and pieces from IKEA and material to make new cushion covers from Spotlight. ("What? you've got to be kidding! ...aren't we going to sleep?? We can do without a new lamp, the storage has always looked like that... we have a perfectly usable Christmas tree -- why would you need to turn that support pole into a tree??... and the old cushion covers will work for now, won't they??" -- completely wasted breath, of course!).

But ...when we finally collapsed in exhaustion, either on our cool new tiled floor, or on the newly covered cushions, around the trendy Christmas tree built around the support pole in the middle of our 'new' rumpus room, ... in the minutes before our friends arrived... I looked around through bloodshot eyes at my greatest joy and achievement: my team, my family!... and thought "We did this!"

("But we're not doing it again!!")