Chalk Up a Victory Over One Rather Nasty Floor Bully

When I first heard there was a 24-hour Home Depot in Hollywood I thought, “Who the hell’s gonna go to Home Depot in the middle of the night?”

I was so naive.

That was before my wife and I bought a home; before “California’s Do-It-Yourself Center” became the center of my universe.

Now, my wallet bulges with Home Depot receipts. I often go twice or even three times a day--a home improvement junkie with a jones for tools. They have 44,000 items, I’m told. I plan to own one of each some day.

One reason I keep the receipts is the store’s amazingly liberal return policy. While I’ve always had a good reason for my returns--it’s the wrong size, the wrong color, the wrong tool for the job--I’ve been tempted to test the limits.

“This electric tile cutter worked great. But the job’s done. I don’t need it anymore,” I’d politely explain.

“Whatever,” I’m reasonably sure the clerk would say. “Sign here.”

There’s also an educational element to home improvement shopping.

For example, I’m sure most of you have no idea what a “Floor Bully” is.

When you’re faced with peeling up tile that was laid in the 1950s and has the resilience of the most mutated breed of cockroach, the Floor Bully is your best friend.

An edged steel scraper at the end of a 3-foot-long pole, the Bully plows away old tile like fresh fallen snow (well, not really), revealing the cement slab below--so the real work can begin.

But that’s another story.

Yes, the allure of doing it yourself quickly fades when you’re actually doing it yourself.

Take my little tile project, for example: The plan was to pull up the carpet and old tile in a 300-square-foot room, then lay some new tile. It seemed to me a do-it-yourself task that would at once beautify our new home, boost its value, and save us $1,500 in labor--all for a weekend’s work.

Did I say a weekend?

Try three weeks.

This project alone must have accounted for a dozen trips to Home Depot, including one to attend a two-hour class on how to install tile. I knew I was in trouble when, two-thirds of the way through class, I asked the instructor--who spoke with a heavy accent, not unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger--”What is theenset?”

Thin-Set, as it turns out, is the cement-like material that holds tile in place. Needless to say, it was not good that this had escaped me.

But I was undaunted. I just needed more tools.

So I bought kneepads, a grooved trowel for spreading the Thin-Set, buckets of various shapes and sizes, and, of course, a chalk line.

Of course.

Yeah, I had no idea what a chalk line was either.

I asked a male co-worker if he knew.

“Isn’t it kind of self-explanatory?” he asked with that special blend of sarcasm favored by reporters, lawyers and cops.

He then proceeded to drag an imaginary piece of chalk across an imaginary chalkboard. “I mean, c’mon. Duh.”

Which brings us back to the educational benefits of home improvement.

A chalk line, in fact, is a spool of string wound up inside a container in which you deposit colored, powdered chalk. It’s used to create a straight line by pulling it from the spool, stretching it tight across the desired area, and then snapping the string to leave a line of chalk behind. Thus, chalk line.

You need one of these tools to tile a floor because--and this was really big news to me--walls in most houses are not straight.

OK, now for the grouting . . .

Nah, on second thought, I’ll spare you the grouty details.

But make no mistake: I’m actually proud of my tile job, and I’m planning to remodel two bathrooms and build a deck in the backyard this spring.

Again, it’s the idea of doing these things that keeps me going.

I think of pounding nails into planks on a sunny day, the near euphoria for most males that comes with hitting one just right, like driving a baseball with the sweet part of the bat or jerking a fishing rod back to feel the tug of a 10-pound bass on the other end of the line.

I think of the day the deck will be complete, sturdy and handsome, and of the celebration that will ensue.

Only in the back of my mind are the darker images of deck building: The swollen thumb resulting from those not-so-perfectly hit nails; the inevitable miscalculations, mistakes and errors; and the Moment of Truth, when the level is the judge and there may be little cause for celebration.

But, as you can see, I’m a romantic.

My wife, on the other hand, seems far more interested in what I actually do with my new tools.

She even questions the need for some of my purchases--even the Floor Bully.

“Are you ever gonna use that thing again?” she asks.

“It has a thousand uses,” I swear, unable to think of even one.

Believe it or not, the topic of home improvements came up over Thanksgiving dinner with some friends.

“Did you know there’s a 24-hour Home Depot in Hollywood?” one male diner asked. He added that one sleepless night he’d actually made a paint run at 4 a.m.

I myself have yet to make a midnight run from my house in Woodland Hills to Hollywood.

But it’s good to know that I can.