#fail

When it first happened, I thought "There is NO way I'm writing about this on my blog. In fact, no one needs to know at all." It took me a little while to get over my bruised pride and decide that I needed to keep good on the promise to myself to write about the good AND the bad of home renovation. And Sunday afternoon was the bad.

It started out great. I had been working on school work at home. I decided that I needed a break, so I headed over to the house where my Dad was working on the back deck. We are stripping the current deck and adding about 4 feet so that we can safely put a grill on it, as well as add some seating. Here is the picture before:

We are extending it out, switching the stairs to the front, and making them inset (built into the deck) so that they don't stick out and take up precious yard space. I admit it...an advantage of city living is not the huge yard space.

Anyway, we had to demo part of the existing deck. Which means rip everything out except for the framing and joists. The railing and posts were not in the best of shape, which I know you can't see in this picture. They built it really well--they screwed the railing in place and they screwed the screws quite deeply into the wood. And then our battery-powered drill died. So my Dad brought out the Sawzall (kind of like an electric saw), and I just started sawing the railing off in sections. It was going great. It really was. I was quite proud of myself for being a petite girl using a power tool and for not being afraid of it. And then God must have thought, "She needs to be humbled a little bit." And I surely was.

I was about to go home but I decided to get the stair railing off before I left. Easy. I have this.

Except I didn't. Some of you may see where this is going as soon as I start.

I had my hair in a bun. Key word here being had. I might lose some guys here but I have never quite mastered the seemingly simple art of the bun. My hair is long, so there is a lot, but it is also thin. I have a hard time getting it to stay in a bun that doesn't flop and eventually fall out. Today was one of those days. It kept flopping and falling out. It probably had something to do with the tiny hair thingy I grabbed on my way out of the door. So I took it down and put it half up, thinking "At least it will hold my front hair out of my face." If I could just go back and tell myself that no, this was not good enough. But I can't.

Like I said I was working on the stairs. I had gone down a couple of stairs so I could see the saw better and where I was cutting. This means that the saw was closer to my face than it had been previously. Really not that close to my face-actually it was closer to my long, long hair.

On the back of Sawzalls, and many other things, is an "air intake grill". Air intake. Any guesses as to what happened? Sucking air and long hair? Nothing pretty.

It sucked my hair. Into the motor. My head and the Sawzall became like two perfectly opposite north/south magnets. Within a second my head was jerked towards the Sawzall and within another second my dad had the Sawzall unplugged. I was screaming and crying quite dramatically. Imagine Katniss in Catching Fire during the Jabber Jay scene. I'm telling you, dramatic.

The pain in my neck was immediate and my scalp was tingling from being yanked. I mistook the tingling for blood, though I soon realized there was none.

Once I got past the pain in my neck and the reality that I wasn't bleeding, I continued to cry pretty dramatically. My hair had been eaten by a motor. That doesn't usually bode well for hair. Within the next few seconds my dad warned me he was cutting my hair out of the Sawzall. My thoughts went from one thing to the next. Would my hairdresser be willing to come in to fix this, not on just any Sunday, but the Sunday that also happens to be Mother's Day? Would I look decent with short hair? Oh God, it doesn't matter because I have engagement photos in less than 6 months and a wedding in a little over a year. My next thought was how much was I willing to spend on extensions? All of these things ran through my head in literally less than 15 seconds. Vain, I know.

My Dad convinced me to stand up and try to move my neck, though I was quite past worrying about my neck. While my dad was worrying about my health, I could still only think about my hair. I hadn't even touched it. I was scared to. I told him why I'm still crying and he actually started laughing. I was not amused.

Apparently that signaled to my Dad I was not seriously injured like my crying was leading him to believe. Instead, I was being vain. I slowly walked to the mirror. I still had hair. I still had a lot of hair, actually. I couldn't even find the missing hair. I walked back out onto the deck searching for my hair. This is what I found.

I personally think it looks like more than it is. I eventually found the two inches of hair left on my head from what he cut off. It is on the right side, towards the middle. Really, it happened in the best place possible. I tried to show it to someone today and it took quite a while to find it. I got pretty lucky in the grand scheme of things and with more than just my hair.

My neck hurt pretty bad at first. I couldn't really look to the left when it first happened. Now I can if I do so slowly. If I turn it quickly, it almost physically jerks back more than hurts. That afternoon I had a slight headache and felt pretty fatigued and out of it. Monday morning I felt a little out of it again, but not as bad and things have been improving ever since. I am taking ibuprofen and trying to practice moving it rather than keeping it still. It will just take a while! It could have been so much worse.

Anyway, that is my first home renovation fail. I'm sure there are more to come, but I hope (and I'm knocking on wood!) that was the worst. 

And here is the deck mid project. Hoping to have new flooring and the rails up by the end of the weekend! Those are the new posts and the supports are there to help keep them straight while the concrete dries.

This is a given and one of those things you know and are just like, "It will never happen to me, it'll be fine."  I'm telling you now, girls put your hair up in a bun when around any type of power tool! On the top of your head. As high as you can get it--Mulan style. 

Or learn the lesson the hard way :)

-Katie