Any Port in a Storm…

First I have to apologize for ragging on all those hoarders out there who never throw anything away.  Even though I complain constantly about all the stuff we have collected over the years (we’ve lived in our house since 1982) there became a serious issue that only an old hoarded craft booth could fix.

First the backstory…

I did craft fairs, mostly in the northeast for 10 years.  I started in 1979, with a booth engineered by my engineer husband, which was amazingly sturdy yet flexible, but you needed two people and some pretty hefty power tools to erect it. It involved a lot of lumber and Masonite panels.  Pretty soon it became apparent that I would be doing mostly indoor shows, and that I would need even more flexibility and the ability to erect it completely by myself.  At the time,  in the early 1980’s, there were a couple of companies that sold booth construction parts to artists.  One of them was Tri-Conn.  It was short for tri-connector, which was this amazing round ball that came apart in two, and could junction three aluminum poles coming in length, width and depth.  I invested heavily in this set up, and was able to make just about any configuration I was given on a floor plan, plus build a writing desk, dressing room, hold waterfall racks, be able to mount lighting, all in about an hour.  I even flew with the whole set up once.  All the lightweight aluminum poles fit in a couple of ski bags, and all the corner tri-connectors fit in a large tool box.

Sadly I clearly remember a Baltimore Winter Market in the mid 1980’s where I dismantled the booth, got my pass to get my car,  and in the interim, someone came through and stole my large tool box thinking they were getting a bonanza of expensive tools.  They were surprised I’m sure, to find no tools, but $500 worth of Tri-connectors.  I never got them back.  Fortunately the company was still in business and I had to buy all new connectors.  The cost of doing business…

Anyway, that was a very long time ago.  And I’m sure you are guessing where this is leading…  The booth, the ski bags, a small tool box, and a tote bag of connectors all reside tucked away in the back of my attic.  They haven’t been used in 25 years.

Meanwhile…

We had a very unfortunate accident a couple of weeks ago.  I won’t go into the details of the accident, because it isn’t really important to the story, but the upshot was, my gorgeous custom shower enclosure was now minus a door.  Shower wall glass is actually designed like windshield glass, in case you didn’t know, and when it breaks, it explodes into a million tiny pieces, which are pretty sharp I can assure you.  You can just picture the mess.  No, you probably can’t.

The unit, photographed here without the door obviously, filled the  4′ x 3′ space.  The glass was a smokey grey and it looked lovely in the bathroom, which is a dark purple with light grey tile.  But it was installed in 1989.  Four years after the booth photo above was taken.  The year before my son was born.  He is 26.

So after a frantic inquiry, I was told that a new door couldn’t be made, technology has changed and the whole unit would need to be replaced.  But first, because some of the tiles were also broken, they would have to be repaired.  Can I tell you how grateful I was that we had saved extra tile from the original tile job?  In order to replace the broken tiles, the entire unit needed to be removed.  Once the tile was fixed, someone would come in and remeasure and then the new enclosure would be ordered.  Which means, I’d be without a shower for three to four weeks.

Sigh…

So the tile man came on Thursday and did a super job removing the old enclosure, installing a marble saddle, and replacing the broken tile.  He cleaned up the grout, and all was well.  Friday the guy who measures for the glass enclosure came.  And now we have no shower.

It came to me that I had in my attic the solution to our temporary problem.  I had a bunch of aluminum poles, some tri-connectors and even shower curtain hooks all sitting up there minding their own business. My husband and I dragged them down, and we erected a framework to hold a couple of shower curtains so we can use the shower for the next month.  I would have gone for the challenge of really building a custom size but my husband looked at me like I had three heads.  He grabbed a bunch of five foot poles and made do.  It was fun for about 30 seconds to be reminded of what I did for 10 years, and then I got really really grateful that I earn my living a much different way now…

Stay tuned….