The Complete Imbeciles Guide to Woodworking
(Part III)

These next three posts are about three projects that kinda took me by surprise in that I had not counted on having to do them (which is why I mentioned the shelving as the ‘first’ project in a previous post), despite the fact that I did, actually know I had to do them. Okay, Taking down the lights is not so much a “woodworking project” as it is simply a project involving tools. I am going to count it simply because I can, and because it has raised a question that I am wondering if anyone has the answer to.

Tools Used:

  • Ladder
  • Hammer

First, we did not put up many lights over this last Christmas season, but we did line our garage door with them (along with lighting up two trees that bordered the garage). We had never done something like this before so we had no idea how to put the lights up. I ended up just nailing some small nails into the wood around the garage door, bending the nails, and hooking the lights to these.

So, as far as projects go, this one was pretty stupidly simple. All I did was get the ladder, and use the claw end (does it have an actual name?) and removed each nail one by one as I moved the ladder. The question that has come up, however, is this:

Does anyone know if there is a trick to removing a nail while standing on a ladder without dropping the nail?

Did I mention that these lights were bordering our garage? We (and the tenants downstairs) often drive our vehicles in and out of our driveway which is right in front of our garage. So, had I known the answer to the above question it would have saved me half an hour of looking for the dropped nails. I do hope I got them all.