Be Realistic, Norm

I love to watch home improvement shows; they are the closest I ever come to watching reality TV. I like to see what people are doing to the inside of their homes and what are the new gadgets and gizmos that people can waste their money on in the kitchen. I also like the shows that teach you how to make one specific type of furniture, like New Yankee Workshop. I'll pay close attention as Norm, a bearded fellow who seems nice enough as the host, builds a beautiful chest of drawers, because in my head I'm fairly certain I could pull that off. Nevermind that I really shouldn't build anything more than shelves from scratch. (If you don't mind it being slightly off, I could also go as far as to build you a bookcase or a stand for your TV.) The rest of the stuff I've built should never be sat on by anyone over the age of 3, or at the very least anyone weighing more than 40 lbs.

My only problem with these shows is that they feature a lot of equipment that a normal person just doesn't have access too. The other day Norm was attempting to build a set of 3 tables that would fold into one another as a space saver. Well, he only had so much wood available to him, so he had to take a 1/2 inch thick piece and make it into 1/4 inch thick. He had a tool that split the wood, then another that cut it so it was square and a third piece of equipment that would sand both sides until it looked like a brand new piece of wood. Well, congrats that you have a large budget behind you, Norm, but I wouldn't even know where to shop for something like that. Then he had to cut a series of 5/32 inch grooves for the wood to go together evenly. Really, you need 5/32 inch cuts? I wouldn't even know where that is on a ruler and you expect a lay person to have a steady enough hand to pull off several cuts of that depth?

Just once, I would love to see a show done by a normal guy who just messes around in a workshop in his basement. I imagine it would go something like this:

Welcome to my basement. Today we're attempting to fix a loose shelf on a bookcase that had been like that for 3 years and I'm just now getting around to it. Unfortunately I don't have any glue at the ready and the Patriots kick off in 45 minutes. I don't have time to run to the store, but I told my wife 3 weeks ago I would get to this. So, instead we're just going to use a small piece of duct tape that I will fold over and over again until it's really skinny. Don't worry about how it looks, no one should be behind this bookcase anyway. Typically I would like to use clamps to hold the shelf in place for a while, but I don't know where my clamps are and this place is a mess, so bungee cords will do instead. Just to be safe, I'm then going to fire 8-10 nails into the shelf using my nail gun, even though 2 would be good enough, because I love to use my nailgun. By then it should be kickoff, so hopefully that will be good enough. And if it isn't, eh, we tried.

You see, that's a show everybody can relate to.