Adventures in Organization - Level Two

     When we last met, you heard the story of my attempt at organization. That project was designed to be almost purely functional; it's for my desk at work, so I didn't want anything too flashy. The more time that Chris and I spent surrounded by PVC pipe, though, the more we started to think back to our childhoods and a certain Italian plumber...

One might call it a pipe dream.

Here at the VelociCrafter compound, we love video games. So when we had a chance to celebrate that love through office supplies, we jumped at the chance like it was a 1-Up Mushroom.

For the Super Mario Bros. version of this project, we just used green spray paint and added couplers to the top of the PVC. The couplers we found at the store were way too big, so Chris used a miter saw to cut them in half before I painted them. Other than that, this project should have been exactly the same as this guy.

Then, tragedy.

Our first run of warp pipes looked great, until their dry time was interrupted by a freak windstorm. You want a really unpleasant way to spend an afternoon? Spend it peeling newspaper off of a sticky, green PVC pipe.

If you look closely, you can read the weather forecast on the paper AND the pipes. It didn't mention the windstorm.

When that was done we tried to sand away the carnage, but some of the pieces were beyond help. Luckily, we had enough spare pieces to start over. Unluckily, that was about the time the actual carnage started. 

Full disclosure - I'm terrified of birds, so when we tried to go Round 2 with the green spray paint and THIS monstrosity showed up, I was done. That's a giant vulture. GIANT VULTURE. Note the ample scenery providing terrifying scale. Note the threatening pose a la the Night's King in "Hardhome". Even without seeing this thing hop off the roof and drag a dead body across the neighbor's yard (which, coincidentally, is exactly what happened after this picture was taken), you can appreciate why I had no interest in finishing the project that particular day. 

I gave the nightmare bird 24 hours to vacate the area, and then I finished painting all of the pieces. This time Mother Nature didn't interfere, and the rest of the project went pretty smoothly. The base is just painted balsa wood and everything is held together with hot glue. 

I did realize that there was a much easier way to pad the bottom of the pipes, though. Originally, I was stuffing foam circles into the bases and it took forever. It was much quicker to stuff Crayola Model Magic Clay into the pipes and let it solidify for 24 hours. The clay is super lightweight and fun to play with, so it was really a win-win.

That should have finished this project, and we were really happy with it - until we realized that we could take it to the next level.

Get it? Next level. I love video game puns.

Stay tuned for the next installment on "Adventures in Organization" where life, uh, finds a way.

Stay clever!