The perfect project, perfectly done, perfectly finished and ready to use – except for that one tiny thing you didn’t notice, that is.

At Sally’s request I made a small cabinet for her mom’s apartment at the assisted living center near us. What she wanted was a narrow piece of furniture with shelves. It would exactly fit a spot in her mom’s bathroom where it would snuggle into a spot beneath a countertop and right next to the commode.

There wasn’t much space, so to maximize the storage capacity of the shelves I measured everything to get the exact clearance under that countertop, and between the commode and wall. Then I measured everything again. And since I’d be making this at home without easy access to where it’d be used I measured a third time. And a fourth.

The cabinet design was simple and I made sure to allow a bit of room all around for an easy fit with room to spare. It came out great. I even had paint mixed up to match the color scheme of the bathroom, so when I took it over it looked perfect.

Except for one little thing.

In spite of all my careful measuring, I stupidly forgot to take the wall’s baseboard and quarter-round base shoe into consideration. As a result, that “bit of room all around” I’d built into the cabinet disappeared. The cabinet still fits where it’s supposed to, but the bottom is butted right up against that base shoe on one side, while the cabinet top slightly bumps into the lid of the commode on the other.

I can fix it, and will sometime next week, but in the meantime it works just fine for its intended purpose.

Still, oops.

A.J.