Managing Thickness

I have learned throughout this process of remodeling the house that life is ALL about managing thickness. When you buy a new pair of socks, the thickness of them determines to some degree if they are comfortable and if your shoes fit. However, never has the thickness debate been more evident than when building something. I had some sense of this before I began so I didn't worry too much about it as we went. Adding to a room meant just kicking a wall out, adding some studs and drywall and painting over it. Not so. The concrete guy was 3/4" off on one side. This has caused me more grief and cost me about $6,600.

Doors swing to hit floors and other doors if thickness is not managed. Will there be tile or granite? Different thickness in the finished product means different materials used to arrive at the finished product. What's on the floor? Carpet? Tile? What's under the floor? Concrete? Wood? What will you put out there once it is done? Flagstone? All these questions help the designer determine thickness.

We had 'whoops' in our walls. That’s what our painter called them. Our drywallers, of all subs, have been the worst and cost us the most in repair/redone work. So much for saving a buck. Of all the subs, I think the drywallers were one of the most important and I didn’t realize that until now – amid paying to get their mistakes fixed. They did a poor job of managing thickness.

Through this process my hair is thinning. I guess I will have to manage the thickness of that , too. I remember an old Fernando sketch done by Billy Crystal where he had Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert on his show and they were discussing Muriel Hemmingway’s boob job. This is back in the day when breast augmentation was rare. Fernando asked G and R how much difference the surgery made to which Roger replied with a hand gesture demonstrating thumb and index finger about 1.5 inches apart. This is not where I got the original idea to employ hand gestures demonstrating various breast statuses but it should have been the genesis.

Another thickness which I have believed for 20 or more years comes from the Jethro Tull album “Thick as a Brick” which Richard informed me while we were young referred to unit size. There is a line in one of Tull’s songs that says, “…I’m tight against the seam,” which, of course, infers a state of arousal – the seam being the seam of ones pants. That song, of course, was from “Songs From the Wood.” I think the thickness in this instance is more centered on my thick skull for believing this. See for yourself. The song is called “Velvet Green” and is about grass and trees and cows. Silly me.