Elephant Buffet: Sometimes, It's The Little Bites

I have to be honest. There are SO many big projects going on around here - at the same time, mind you - that it feels good to check a few of the little boxes off the list. One thing that's been totally cramping my style is the unfinished transition from the ~~sunroom~~/family room/~~Florida room~~ to the laundry room/mudroom/entry. Note to self: pick a name for these rooms, would ya? This is one of those little jobs that took only a little bit of a time commitment but cleared a nice chunk of mental space for me. Does that make sense?

I was getting tired of tripping over that little edge of the flooring. It's hard to tell, but it was about 3/8ths of an inch higher on one side. Oh, and see that little hand there?

That was my little helper for the job.

'Helper'

I should mention that he was also the photographer for most of this project.

Yeah. Bear with me for this one.

I started by buying a 12-foot equalizer strip in titanium from Home Depot for about $30.00.

(image from Home Depot.ca)
(The 12-foot length doesn't come with it's own screws, so be prepared to shell out an additional $.93)

I needed to cut it to match the opening which was about 7.5 feet. John suggested I use his "fancy, fancy hacksaw." His words. Not mine.

I started cutting.

My positioning was all wrong and I kept scratching the strip - which was frustrating - so I asked the resident muscle man to step in and show me how it's done.

And show me he did. Work that fancy hacksaw.

Once it was cut down, I brought it over to the uneven flooring fiasco and double-checked that it fit. Normally, you would put this puppy in after you've put in your doorjambs and floor trim. I don't always necessarily do things in the order they were intended. I don't care. Neither does honey badger.

via

Since I *was* putting it in before the floor trim, I wanted to make sure that I left room on each side for the baseboards. I just used a spacer block the same thickness as my floor trim to keep things on the up and up.

I lined the strip up so that when I drove the screws in, I still left some expansion room for the floor. I started out just trying to push the screws in with my screwdriver as I turned them. Not ideal. The screw kept slipping on the vinyl tile underneath and would end up pinching my fingers. Hard.

I figured it would work better if I predrilled a little pilot hole in each opening to give the teeny, tiny screws a some gentle encouragement to stay in one place and stop freaking hurting me.

But I couldn't find my small drill bit.

Scratch that.

I couldn't be bothered to go look for my small drill bit and I MacGyver'ed this mutha by finding a flat-head nail to use for my pilot hole.