I am not naturally gifted when it comes to building things.

The thing is, that’s never been a big problem for me. I am really lucky in that my life is filled with naturally gifted builders/fixers. I’m surrounded by the contractor/mechanic version of those little old grandmas who hover over a stove and say, “Oh, you just throw spices in until it smells good,” and then they magically whip out a 7-course meal complete with duck a l’Orange.

Case in point: last summer The Bean picked up a car for cheap… which was good, because it broke on the way home. He clucked his tongue in disappointment, made friends with the tow truck driver, ordered the parts online, wheedled some other part from a random mechanic for about 10% of the cost it was supposed to be, and boom. We now have a second car that runs like a dream.

He did this on the weekends with all the planning and preparation I would give to making peanut butter sandwiches for dinner.

My stepdad is the same way. I asked him to look into helping me keep the goats off the porch and letting me know what hardware I should pick up to put together some kind of a barrier. I knew I could do it.  After all, I’d checked out a bunch of carpentry books from the library and was researching it online.  Still, it didn’t hurt to ask for help. He was so much better at it that I that I figured he’d be able to point me in the right direction without too much of a headache.

I left for work and came home a few hours later to a brand new absolutely stunning wood fence he’d put together from… I dunno.  Scraps and twigs and a little bit of spit?

Sometimes it’s disheartening being surrounded by savants.  I seem to come to building things the same way I came to cooking: I’m not gifted at it, but there’s enough recipes and cook books out there that I’m becoming good at it, through sheer determination. The good news is that the information is out there, and it turns out that if you follow the directions carefully, step by step, you can cook or build almost anything.

See, that’s the beautiful thing about the age we live in. Last summer we built a fence in our backyard.  Now, before I started I no idea how to put up a fence – but the information was out there. I checked out books from the library, and that gave me enough of an idea that I was able to look up actual search terms on the internet for better pointers. I watched a couple of YouTube videos, phoned a couple of contractor friends for pointers, and BOOM.  We built a fence, despite having no experience and an incredibly sloped backyard.

Maybe nobody is naturally gifted at building things, except for a rare few.  Maybe everyone is awful at first, but they quietly get better when they were young, and I just arrived to the scene late?

I’m not complaining.  I love the age we live in. The internet is wonderful (most of the time). If I were born in the 1950s I would have either had to hire someone or make do with whatever grainy photos I found in the one available book at the library.

Which leads me to the point of this post:

Sometimes you find information you find on the internet is so incredibly useful, you wonder how you lived without it.

And then sometimes you find Wiki-How.

Okay, maybe I’m throwing them under the bus unnecessarily. It’s not really Wiki-How that’s the problem – it’s more like it’s the Wiki-How pictures. I bet there’s already a Tumblr out there dedicated to them, somewhere. They’re that bad.

I’m not bashing the artists – the art is actually quite good, if unsettling at times. It’s just what they choose to draw that leaves me scratching my head.

The pictures are so, so incredibly useless when it comes to actually imparting information, it makes you wonder why they bother including them.

If you don’t believe me, let me show you an example.

I’m currently trying to decide which projects I can get done this summer before winter hits. I have a variety of things I need to do, althought not enough time or money to do it all. Our bottom acreage is not fenced – we could be saving money by letting the horses graze, but instead we’re mowing it and buying hay. That is frustrating to no end. I actually know what I need for this project, but it’s just a matter of actually getting the time, money, and lack of broken arm to do it.

The goats need to be moved out of the backyard. This one is a top priority – all we need is 8 holes, some fence posts, welded wire and a fence stretcher.  We’re going to separate out a small section of the horse paddock to do so.  I’m hoping to save up and buy the moveable electric fence so we can start strip grazing in the lower pasture and decimating the black berries, but that’s definitely on the back burner.

I need to either extend the horse’s stalls (bringing them out to 12 x 20 instead of 12 x 12, so they aren’t so cramped in winter) or I need to build a roundpen.  I can’t do another year of trying to work a baby horse in slop.

I’m thinking I’ll probably have to settle for extending the stalls, as it will be cheaper, but juuuuuust in case I’ve been doing a lot of research on building my own permanent roundpen .  In a perfect world I’d just buy a bunch of cattle panels and make my own, but even used panels are stupidly expensive so I’m researching how to build it from scratch. What materials are best? Which wood holds up best over the years in the damp Pacific Northwest Winter? How far apart do you put the posts? How big should it be for stride length without making it too big to be able to keep dry with sand, like I did with the paddock?

Etc, etc.

And thus I stumbled upon How to Build a Round Pen (with Pictures) on WikiHow.

All I can say is that thank heavens I speak English, because these pictures are….. I mean….. why? Why?!

 

Step 1: 
Stare pensively in the distance.  Are your sideburns square enough at the bottom?  Yes.  Yes, they are.  What about your delightfully full upper lip? It’s your best feature.  Should you try to emphasize it? How much duckface is too much duckface the first time ride with the guys? What if the other cowboys think you’re trying too hard? These are important questions. Also, why is there a shadow bird on the brim of your hat?  Is that your spirit animal?

Step 2: 
The right amount of duckface is a weighty concerns. You should contemplate it in the other direction, just to be safe. Contemplating to the right isn’t easy for you – you never were very limber in that direction.  Make sure your hat string is on tight for safety’s sake before you give it a go.

Step 3:
Measure the ground – nine inches worth of ground should be just about right.

Step 4:
Eww. Don’t measure that section of ground.  It looks…. alive.  No, don’t pet it! It probably bites.

 

 

Step 5: 
Now that’s a good question. What should your TInder username be? Think carefully.  You can never get a second chance to make a great first impression with the ladies.

 

 

Step 6:
I mean, you want to be confident, but you don’t want to seem like you’re insecure and overcompensating.

 

 

Step 7: 
Wait.  Wait, a second.  I thought we were supposed to be building a round pen.  Aren’t we supposed to be building a round pen?  Do those logs need an adult?

 

 

Step 8:
Finally, a useful picture.  Dig a hole. Dig two of them.  Make sure you dig them on the…. yellowed fingernail clippings?  I guess they weren’t alive after all.  Before you use the post hole digger make sure you stuff your pink sweatpants into your oddly lumpy dancing boots. You musn’t dirty them.

 

 

Step 9:
Man, that was a useful picture, wasn’t it?  And that is a really well-drawn post hole digger, isn’t it? Better draw it from the other side, just to show off.  You want Wikihow to feel like they’re getting their money’s worth.

 

 

Step 10:
This is sort of useful, knowing that soaking boards will help you to nail them on a slightly rounded structure (I read that in the actual Wiki post)….but it’s just not useful enough.  I see we’re soaking posts, but I still have questions.  Does the wood absorb the water so it’s the same as submerging the entire thing? Also, why are you soaking the round posts and not the boards?

 

 

Step 11:
Ta-da!  You’re done!  We definitely didn’t skip any steps along the way. If you can’t figure it out, that’s your problem, not ours. Also, it looks like you finished just in time,too.  The fingernail clippings are spreading at an alarming rate.  You do NOT want to get caught up in that mess.

 

 

Step 12:
Crap, you forgot a step!  That’s what went wrong.  You forgot to paint the boards.  It’s like Mama always used to say – a painting a day keeps the fingernail clippings away.

 

But wait…. there’s more!

What if, instead of building a round pen from scratch, you wanted to spend more money and buy metal panels that attach together on the ends and set them up in a circle?

I mean, the only confusing thing about a metal round pen is how much it is going to cost, and maybe how to get the first two panels to stand up on their own if you’re installing it by yourself. You probably don’t need any drawings. Panels are not exactly rocket science, even for the uninitiated.

Still, just in case you do need guidance, Wikihow is here to save the day:

Step 1: 
You just got out of that breakup with Chad, so you should probably get yourself out there… but man, is internet dating really worth it nowadays? Do you really want to put up with all those unsolicited pics again, every time you log in?  Also, has anyone seen your portable holes?  You swear you had them in your hand just a second ago.  They were right there, just before you adjusted your hat….

 

Step 2: 
Holy CRAP those pipe panels are expensive.   Well, there’s no help for it.  If you want a metal round pen, you’re gonna have to do it the old fashioned way.  Grow out your beard, boys. It’s time to rob a bank.

 

 

 

Step 3:
Oh, look.  They’ve arrived!  Well, that’s fairly straightforward.  They connect on the ends, right?

 

Step 4:
Ahhhh, I thought so.  That’s how they connect. That’s a great pic. I totally understand it – thanks!

 

Step 5:
…..I said I got it.  Seriously, now?  Now you’re going to get all technical and step-by-step? Because THIS is the step that seems confusing?

 

Step 7:
We’re just gonna put a happy little tree, right there.  It’ll be our little secret…

 

 

Speaking of secrets….. I am not going to admit to how much time I’ve spent looking at Wikihow pics recently.  Want to know something truly amazing?  This isn’t even the worst set of pictures I’ve found. Nope.  Not by a long shot. In fact, it’s not even close.