Residents of Maple Hollow say they’ve grown accustomed to the rhythmic clicking of a tape measure coming from Gerald Thistlewood’s garage workshop, a sound that has now persisted for four consecutive years without a single saw blade making contact with wood. Thistlewood, 58, began the project—a modest set of kitchen cabinets for his sister-in-law—in the spring of 2021, and says he is ‘getting very close’ to finalizing his measurements.
‘People think I’m dragging my feet, but that’s just not true,’ Thistlewood said, holding a measuring tape in one hand and a second, backup measuring tape in the other. ‘The old saying is measure twice, cut once. I’ve simply chosen to measure 6,000 times, cut zero times. It’s the same principle, just more thorough.’ Thistlewood reports he has filled fourteen notebooks with measurements of the same 34-inch cabinet frame, each entry slightly different from the last due to what he calls ‘seasonal wood breathing.’
His sister-in-law, Denise Okafor, says she has stopped asking for updates and has instead purchased a set of pre-made cabinets from a home improvement store, which she has quietly installed while Thistlewood continues working in the garage. ‘I didn’t have the heart to tell him,’ Okafor said. ‘He seems so happy out there with his little pencil behind his ear. Last week he told me he was finally ready to consider what type of pencil to use for the actual cut marks.’
Local hardware store owner Phil Grunwald says Thistlewood is one of his best customers, having purchased eleven identical tape measures after convincing himself each previous one had developed a ‘measurement bias.’ Grunwald estimates that at Thistlewood’s current pace, the cabinets should be structurally complete sometime in the early 2030s, assuming he doesn’t discover a new type of wood grain to worry about. ‘Gerald’s a perfectionist,’ Grunwald said. ‘Either that or he’s found the one hobby where doing absolutely nothing counts as making progress.’
