As I mentioned in the last post, I finished Section 2 on Sunday evening, and last night I was so anxious to work on something puzzle related that I pulled out my 2,000 piece Vegas, Baby puzzle that I had started back in 2009 before we moved from our first house in Lake Mary, FL.  It was one of the first puzzles I bought and started working on after getting my first puzzle roll.  I had completed about 50% of the puzzle when we sold our house and moved into a rental house while waiting for our next home to be built.  Unfortunately, the puzzle roll got put on the moving truck accidently.  After that, I was afraid to unroll it and see how bad it was as I was pretty sure pieces probably fell out on the truck.  So, I put it away and had no real desire to work on it again.

A few months ago, after spending a lot of time chatting with other puzzle enthusiasts, I decided that I probably should dig it out and try to finish it….so that’s what I did last night.  Because it was still on the puzzle roll, and I am not fond of putting puzzles together on the felt any longer now that I’ve got a table, I decided to try and move the puzzle from the puzzle roll directly on top of my completed Section 2 of Life.  Since I had not yet flipped it over to put contact paper on the backside, I figured it would be easy to finish the Vegas puzzle on top.   Boy oh boy was I wrong, and I learned a couple of very valuable lessons.

A.  Buffalo Games makes a good quality product.  Having only dealt with Educa’s Life pieces for the last 3.8 years, I had forgotten that other puzzling companies make pieces that are much easier to keep together.  Well, that can be a good thing and a bad thing….good that it sticks together – bad that it was on a puzzle roll as it was very difficult to move without messing it all up.

B.  Back when I first started the Life puzzle, I thought I would follow Scott Slater’s method and do each section, one on top of the other.  As I stated in a previous post, when I finished section 1 and started section 2, I had intended on trying out his method even though I thought it would be difficult on my eyes.  And, it wasn’t so bad when I started section 2 as I just put the top and bottom border on top of section 1, but I ended up taking it off and flipping section 1 over so that I could put the contact paper on the back, and build the next section on top of the backside of the previous section.  I initially did this not so much because it was bothering my eyes to see section 1 underneath, but rather because I didn’t want to have issues later on when I needed to flip each section in order to put on the contact paper.

Now I am so glad that I did NOT end up trying to build section 2 on top of section 1!!!  When I finally was able to pull the Vegas puzzle off the puzzle roll and get it back together on top of section 2 of Life, I was amazed at how difficult it was see the areas where I still needed to fit pieces on the Vegas puzzle.  It was highly distracting seeing the Life puzzle showing through from beneath.  I did not like it at all.  I cannot even imagine how difficult it would have been to try and put together 6,000 pieces like that.  UGH!  So that was the biggest lesson learned.  I will not, under any circumstances, be doing any puzzles like that in the future.

So at this point I’m sure you’re thinking – okay, you’ve got this half completed puzzle sitting there, what are you going to do now?  Well, I took all the remaining pieces and put them face up on one of my working boards, went to bed for the night, got up this morning and when Cole went down for his nap – I demolished it and put it back in the box!  LOL

I couldn’t stand trying to work on the puzzle with the other one showing through, but there was no way I was going to put it back on the puzzle roll since that was such a pain to get off there in the first place.  So, I ended up just taking it apart and putting it back.  I WILL at some point put it together again, from scratch this time when I have my puzzle board free and clear of the Life puzzle and can easily lay out all the pieces face up on the table while assembling.  I don’t think I have very many, if any actually, pieces missing.  I tried doing a rough count while I was putting it back in the box, and I know if I am missing any, it’s maybe 1 or 2 which is amazing to me given what has happened with it over the years.

There was a secondary reason that I decided to give up on the puzzle and put it all back in the box – I really am anxious to get back to the Life puzzle and start section 3!  LOL  I know it’s crazy after having worked on it now for almost 4 years, but I truly could go down to the puzzle room right now and dig right into Section 3.  I think I am still going to attempt to do one small, 1,000 piece puzzle before I get back into Life, but that will be it.  And if this puzzle doesn’t come together quickly, I may put it aside and get back to Life….I really do miss it already!

So, even though I put the puzzle back in the box for now, it helped me see that doing a large puzzle section on top of section is definitely not for me, and that in itself made it all worth it.  LOL