Hawaiian Studs

Hawaii is many things.  Island paradise, tourist destination, and one of the most welcoming cultures around?  Without a doubt.  One thing it is not, however, is a mecca for standardized construction practices. 

My son—bless his heart—hasn’t met a staircase he doesn’t immediately want to fling himself off of at top speed.  You’d think given he just learned to walk two months ago, that speed would be limited.  You’d think that, but you’d be wrong.  He’s a sprinting prodigy, especially when you look away for half a heartbeat.  Enter the baby gate.  With plastic and nylon, I will constrain his kamikaze runs to flat terrain.  But given his proclivity toward mixing mass and inertia, a pressure gate ain’t gonna cut it.  We went all in for the kind you screw into the wall, several inches of hard steel to hold the line against the rampaging toddler.

The thing about screws, though, is they need to screw into something.  Not a problem, I thought.  I’ve got a wooden post on one side, and the corner of a wall on the other.  Surely, that corner has a stud to drill into.  Surely, the builders of this 1989 home didn’t create an open cavity out of drywall paneling with no support.  Surely, such madness only exists for those who have spiders in their heads.

Alas, seven drilled holes later and nothing but a dusting of drywall dandruff to show for my efforts.  My head spiders are twitching.

I was so flummoxed by the situation, I called my dad—a man with significantly more experience being useful than I do.  He looked at it through the video, asked a few questions, then concluded that the original builders must have been insane.  While that made me feel better, it didn’t do anything to resolve the Evel Knievel toddler situation.  So now I have to add a Home Depot trip this week to go grab a stud finder since my wife is out of town (heyo!). 

I can’t blame the construction workers, though.  With how many termites this island has, any construction out of wood is living on borrowed time anyways.