September 26, 1996
Dear Everyone:
We spent all day
Saturday assembling “Jeannie’s” new desk.
I use the term “we” loosely.
“Jeannie” got out of most of the work through the simple
expedient of developing some sort of food poisoning the night before.
She called me at 8:30 Saturday morning (an exceptionally early
hour for her) from the bathroom floor to announce that she was sick and
was I still coming over to put her desk together?
What some people won’t do to get out of a little work.
On the other hand,
24 pages of instructions can
be a little daunting. Ditto
a parts list that covers 2 of those pages.
The parts were lettered from “A” to “KK”.
Add two big bags of
hardware. ½-inch screws;
¾-inch screws; 1-inch screws; kd bolts and fasteners (whoever “KD” was);
lots and lots of bits of hardware.
Step One:
Take everything out of the two big (and very heavy) boxes and
make sure all the parts are there.
Soon there were mini-piles of laminated particle board scattered
all around the living room, our main staging area.
Step Two:
Pour all the bits of hardware out of the bags and start
corralling them according to species.
A problem arose at this point because “Jeannie’s” big white cat,
known as “Big White Kitty” wanted to “help”.
He came up, sniffed at the bits of hardware, then lay down right
on top of everything.
“Jeannie”, who could barely stand up without getting dizzy, lured him
away with a hair brush. Big
White Kitty loves to have his hair brushed.
Working quickly, I soon had many
little bags of hardware.
Step Three:
Read through all the instructions carefully and thoroughly.
Assembling a desk is not unlike making a dress, or a suit, except
that you get blisters in different places and there’s no basting
required. On the other hand,
with a sewing project, if your seam allowances are slightly off, you can
make adjustments. With
particle board, if the “matching” holes don’t match, you’re up the
creek.
Step Four:
Ignore the instructions and put the desk together any way you
want to. I had brought a
number of video tapes over for The Project.
The criteria for a
good Project Movie are: You’ve
seen it at least six times already and it has great background music,
since you won’t be looking at the screen except when taking a break.
We put on
The Last
of the Mohicans (great
music) and I proceeded to work on small things, like attaching the
runners to what would eventually become the inside of the drawer
assembly, and putting the drawers together.
When a piece got big enough to start getting heavy, I would move
it into the dining room and start assembling something else.
When one movie ended, we’d put in another and keep on screwing
things together.
Eventually,
“Jeannie”, who had eaten a bagel that seemed inclined to stay down,
declared herself well enough to screw in a few kd bolts.
We moved operations upstairs and began to actually put a desk
together. At this point, it
started to go quickly because you could look at the directions and say,
“Did that already” to whole pages of instructions for the small stuff.
One broken blister,
one cut toe, three movies and eight hours later, we had a desk where no
desk had gone before. And I had a
slight bruise where part “HH” slipped and fell on my foot.
No movies this week.
We were too busy doing all of the above on Saturday and too tired
on Sunday.
Love, as always,
Pete
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