Screwed

In March I bought a house. Having a house is terrifying and exciting all at the same time. Although my house was technically move-in-ready, I knew there would be a lot of work involved in transforming it into my home. Turns out it isn't as easy as they make it look on HGTV. But hey, you'll never know if you don't try

One of the first big projects was by bedroom. For some reason the previous owner thought it was a great idea to mount a TV on the wall of the master bedroom. That sounds great, if I was living in a hospital room with a 10 inch TV screen. Seeing as how I'm not, this thing had to go.

Note: The hole in the wall was not there when I started, keep reading to find out how that got there.

I thought this whole thing would be pretty simple, but after I realized the 3 inch screws were stripped, life got more interesting. My first brilliant idea was to ask the experts, so it was off to Lowe's where they sold me this magic drill bit that was supposed to remove screws with a stripped head. That didn't do a darn thing. Strike 1 and a waste of $7.

A friend suggested I screw a drill bit about the same size as the screw straight into the head until the whole screw broke and fell out of the hole. The only thing that broke was my drill bit. Strike 2 and I still need to buy a new bit.

After that my crushed pride got the best of me. Desperation set in and suddenly a saw was in my hand and I was hacking a hole into the wall. If I couldn't get the screws out, I was going to cut out the whole darn thing. Turns out, they drilled that sucker straight into the studs and there was not cutting it out, but I did have a nice hole in my wall to show for my 3rd strike.

The next few nights were rough. Every night as I laid in bed, staring at the wall mount and I knew it was laughing at me, mocking me for my failure. But I would not let this thing beat me. I just laid there in disdain as I plotted my next move.

If I couldn't cut the mount out of the wall, I was willing to settle for cutting the screws in half to restore at least some of my dignity. A friend at work offered me his rotary tool. These screws were going to die a painful death and I was going to love every moment of it. I started in as soon as I got home. The sparks were literally flying. After breaking four blades and my room smelled like the 4th of July came a few months early, I was too scared to keep going. I decided to take a few minutes to open a window and of course tweet about strike #4, what every young American does when they are feeling vulnerable, profound, or confused out of their mind. This was turing into 5 year-old t-ball, just keep swinging until you finally hit something. The good news is that some people get my tweets texted straight to their phone, so it was only a matter of seconds before I had a text from a concerned friend. He told me to stop right away before I killed myself or burned my house down. I was instructed to put the power tools down, watch something on Netflix, and call it a night.

Enter my friend, and hero of the hour, Michael. It was time to bring in the big guns. Michael, his 18 volt drill, and saw came over the next afternoon. I wished him good luck and he made his way back to the bedroom. I went back there a few minutes later to find him pulling out the final screw. He pulled them out with his drill like it was nothing. Michael swore to me that it wasn't my fault and that I just didn't have the right tool. At that point I was so thrilled I didn't even care. I wanted to hang the mount on the wall as a source of pride and accomplishment, like a diploma or a deer head. But then again, the point of this all out war was to get the stupid thing off the wall so it seemed a little silly to put it back up there. Maybe I will hang it in the garage.

The mount was off the wall, but there was still the issue of the hole. Thanks to a little spacial, a giant wall patch, and a few instructional videos on YouTube, I was back in business. After a coat of new (not yellow) paint, it looked like nothing ever happened. The war was won. Bob Vila, you better watch yourself.