My brother-in-law came over to my house this last weekend to emasculate me. No, not purposely, and not literally, but definitely figuratively. He’s a great guy that actually donated a kidney to another one of my brother-in-laws. We definitely wanted him to come over. He is a retired carpenter that we have hired to do many manly carpentry-based jobs over the years. Now, we wanted him to install a floor in our family room. That’s where my emasculation comes in.

It’s not like I couldn’t install the floor in our family room. I just didn’t want to. I installed our basement floor by myself. It worked out okay, although I do encourage people to avoid walking on the floor. I prepped our family room floor by removing carpet, padding, trim, staples, and old leveling compound from the floor. I added new leveler and sanded as needed. I did a lot of demo and prep work, but that is nothing compared to laying floor planks down. That’s real man’s work, and I would not be doing it. Let my emasculation begin!

Even worse, I would have to hang around the house to ‘assist’ my brother-in-law in various ways. I imagined some of them to include:

• Get him beverages.
• Get him snacks.
• Bring him tools.
• Be embarrassed when he asks to borrow a tool from me that I should have because I’m a guy, but don’t.
• Say how nice his handiwork looks.

But no, no, no. That didn’t happen, thanks to this beauty …

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