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DIY Till You Die: Building Caskets for People and Pets

Americans are a crafty people. Home Depots and crafts stores sell DIY (do it yourself) books for every task in the world, be it minor or huge; TV shows supplement by offering tutorials on how to scrapbook, trim trees, and fix that nasty bathroom leak; and in a woodworking catalog I recently saw advertisements for a plan for a wood casket and for a manual titled Do-It-Yourself Coffins. DIY till you die!

To be honest the ads surprised me. The one for the book promises instructions for creating "three coffins for pets and three for people". In Europe I had never heard of people constructing caskets for themselves or their loved ones, may they have two legs or four. I searched the internet for German entries regarding building plans for coffins but nothing useful came up. Austrians and Germans seem to prefer for pros to work on theirs.

Would I want to build my own last box? Definitely not. I have two left hands and little patience for the details of handicraft and might just end up needing that casket before I can finish it.
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Comments

debi said…
LOL! You are delightful!
November 9, 2010 at 9:33 AM
Reese said…
How entertaining! This must be the highest level one can achieve with DIY.
November 12, 2010 at 8:08 AM
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