Local author and noted outdoorsman Patrick F. McManus (R.I.P.) wrote a humorous essay about the phenomenon he describes as a sequence.
...[O]n the farm, you simply don't go out and do a piece of work. No, the first thing you do is determine the lengthy sequence of activities necessary even to begin the job. Then you realize the sequence of preparatory activities is so long you will never get to the intended task. So you go fishing instead.
You can find the full story at the beginning of his collection entitled, The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw, or watch someone read it in the video below.
Alas, my story did not allow me to abandon the task and go fishing. For one thing, I don't have a license, so there are risks involved. For another, this was a job to help the Mother Thing, and that's a priority. And while it is not a perfect fit for McManus' classic sequence scenario, I think this falls under the adjacent phenomenon of simple tasks ballooning way out of proportion.
The other day, as she was ascending the stairs, the handrail support bracket snapped, and she almost fell. This is bad. There were handrails on each side of the stairs, but the second had been added hastily a few years ago, and the brackets used were, in hindsight, probably just the cheapest option at the hardware store at the time. Can you see the problem here?
That is one of the cheapest, thinnest, flimsiest castings I have ever seen for something intended as a safety measure. The void inside is massive, and the cross-section there is only marginally better than at the flanges where it was screwed into the wall. Those "ears" where the two screws hold the top of the bracket to the wall have one job: don't break under load.
They broke. And it's not like my mother is some kind of 300-pound blob. Your mom may be so fat that she requires her own zip code, but not mine. Time for a fix-it job, and my dad's dexterity is declining, so it falls to me. So begins the sequence.
My parents bought new brackets, and these look to be solid and sturdy. I don't know what pot metal may be hiding under the brass finish, but they have more heft and no visible casting shortcuts like the old ones. This is much better. They were even almost a perfect fit for the old hole pattern! No drilling. Easy-peasy 15-minute job.
It was not a 15-minute job.
It started out fine. I verified the old brackets were mounted in studs behind the drywall. I unscrewed the old bracket at one end of the rail, and the remnants of those two top ears from the top bracket. I had no issues taking the straps off the handrail to fit everything together again. It took longer than expected, because first I had to find an extension cord, and then my antiquated plug-into-the-wall electric drill stripped some screw heads because the torque control isn't great, but stuff was getting done. About 30 minutes of mild frustration later, everything was reassembled. In the immortal words of the sign accompanying George W. Bush's speech in May 2003, "Mission accomplished!"
I reached for the handrail on the other side of the stairwell as I stood up to admire my handiwork. I felt a slight wobble. It's not supposed to do that. On closer inspection, the bracket itself was not properly attached to the wall. One of the top screws had missed the stud, and years of use had miraculously not torn the thing off, but it had wallowed out—er, wallered out, as they say—the drywall on the one side, and damaged the surface on the other.
As a side note, you can avoid this issue entirely by building properly in the first place. Install blocking between the studs along the handrail run at the proper height so there is a solid anchor point anywhere you want it later on behind the drywall. Buy good hardware from the get-go. By all means, be frugal, but don't pinch pennies where it matters, OK?
Anyway, I pulled the whole thing off, double-checked with the stud finder, triple checked with some pilot holes for the screws to verify there was something solid back there, and shifted the old bracket over so it was mounted solidly again for once.
I was getting tired and hungry, and I may have stripped out some screw heads trying to get everything back together using my almost-as-old-as-me Sears corded drill with an old-school key chuck. But these brackets were at least more substantial. The spackle and paint job can wait for another day.
Maybe I'll just go fishing tomorrow.
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