When I worked at Calvin College, they had a maintenance building on the far end of campus. Like many of the warehouse buildings in the area, the maintenance building featured a 24′ high ceiling in the warehouse with a 10′ high ceiling in the office attached to the front. And like many of the warehouse buildings in the area, the office area was enclosed by prefabricated walls made of foam insulation sandwiched between two pieces of sheet metal.

As the maintenance staff expanded, it became necessary to expand the office area. So, work began to put an addition onto the front of the office building.

The plan called for the new addition to be completely enclosed. Then, when that was done, they would remove the wall separating the new addition from the old office area.

Since the wall between the old office and the new addition was made of sheet metal and insulation, they decided that a Sawzall would be the perfect tool for the job.

A Sawzall is a hand held reciprocating saw, kind of like a saber saw only much larger. It can easily be used to cut wood or metal and do so quite quickly.

When the addition was finally enclosed, a couple of the carpenters grabbed the Sawzall and began cutting down the wall.

Their approach was simple. Since the addition afforded them more room to work, they decided to cut through the wall from the addition side. They drilled a hole in the wall large enough to insert the blade and began cutting down the wall about 3 inches above the floor.

At first, the Sawzall cut through the wall like a hot knife slicing butter. But then suddenly, the pace slowed for a couple of inches and then resumed again. This perplexed the carpenters but since the pace had returned to normal, they didn’t give it a second thought. But, once again the pace slowed for a couple of inches only to return to normal. They concluded that there must be some sort of re-enforcement in the walls that was slowing their pace. And so, the fast/slow cutting pace continued for the duration of the wall.

When they finally got the wall cut free, they discovered the really reason for the fast/slow cutting pace. They had cut off the bottom of the legs of two chairs and a table that happened to be up against the old wall.

The chairs were still functional, but they just had more of a lounger look to them instead of the straight backs that they used to be. The table, however was a loss. The incline made it impossible to use as everything would slide off of it. So, it was decided to sell the table and chairs at the spring garage sale.

When people would ask why the table was sitting at an angle, they were told that it was an old drafting table. When they asked about the angle of the chairs, they were told that they went with the table. Mr. Haney would be proud.