Thread by @AlexandraErin

Trying to remove old boards from an outside fixture. When I made my time budget for the project, I tested several screws to see the overall condition and found it generally good. I'm starting to think I picked the only ones that weren't warped/rusted/stripped.

Oof. So it's worse than I had thought it was when I was planning but better than I had feared when I started doing it - I can get most of the screws out without resorting to non-screw-based measures. I may have to saw a few before we're done, though.

So here's a handyperson tip: sometimes the screws that are in the worst condition are the ones doing the least to hold something together.

Another tip: be careful how you define problems.

For the demo part of my project, I'm mostly removing old boards attached by old screws. Neither of them are worth saving, but a lot of them were on there pretty good.

So I thought, "Take the screws out and the boards come off."

All of the screws I tried when I was planning the project came out easily. When I started doing it for real, I found that 75% of them were rusted, stripped, warped, etc., and not coming out easily. All are solvable problems, but time and energy consuming.

So I spent a good part of the day going between the different remedies I have for stuck screws and didn't succeed in freeing a single board in hours of work. All of them had one or two screws I couldn't budge.

Then I realized that if it's just held on by one or two bad screws...

So I redefined the parameters of my problem and focused on getting *most* of the screws out, so I could pry them off without harming myself or the structure.

And then went better! Faster. Easier.

But I was still lost.

It wasn't ever about the screws.

It was about the boards.

And if my spoonie backside is strong enough to wiggle a board that is secured by two old screws free without having to loosen the screws...

I have a tool that can efficiently turn one board secured by eight or ten screws into several boards secured by two of them.

Now, if you scroll up this thread you'll see I already had sawing the boards up on my list of possibilities, but I was thinking of it as a worst case scenario if there were screws I couldn't budge.

Why? It's not a worse solution.

But I got focused on the screws as my problem.

By the way, I'm describing these things in terms of problem solving because that's what I like about carpentry and other stuff.

Early on when my first plan started to disintegrate, I had some moments of thinking I'd made a huge mistake, committing to this.

But when I realized what I was doing wasn't working and started altering my plan, I gradually stopped thinking in terms of "How do I salvage my plan?" and started thinking in terms "Here's where I am. Here's where I need to be. These are the obstacles. What is the solution?"

When I talk about assembling things on here, I have to clarify that I'm not being sarcastic when I say that I find flatpack furniture kits relaxing.

Every project is a series of discrete problems to solve on the way to solving one or more bigger problems.

Defining your problem is the first step in solving it.