Boxes can’t get up and walk away. Can they?

Yesterday I lugged two heavy boxes of Japanese books into the kitchen to weigh down the vinyl flooring. The pretty yet impractical blue-accented white vinyl flooring hasn’t been behaving. It’s lifting up around the edges. So I finally experimented with gluing down one corner.

It’s unusual for me to tackle a home improvement project. I’m more likely to plant flowers or vacuum the rugs. But I had high hopes. I read the instructions on the glue, cleaned the wood underlying the vinyl, and spread the sticky stuff with a brush. Then I checked the glue 30, 45 and 60 minutes afterwards to see if it had reached the right degree of tackiness.

Finally, the glue was ripe. So I grabbed some nearby weights–two boxes of books about Japan. Iggy has been boxing up my collection as a prelude to donating them to a university. If they could help the vinyl adhere, the books would have finally served a practical purpose. I felt good about making creative use of the materials at hand. Surely the flooring couldn’t throw off these heavy containers.

A couple hours later I was surprised to see flooring lifting up. Apparently the boxes had walked away.

Well, they didn’t really walk away. Iggy thought I moved the boxes to criticize him for not getting them out of the house. So he moved them off the flooring and out of the kitchen. I moved them back, but it may be too late to save my glue job.

But at least I have the satisfaction of having tried to make myself handy at home.