August 7, 2020
Dear Everyone:
What a wonderful idea!
I mean replacing the old “desk” in my bedroom with a much larger
“conference / training” table.
“Jeannie” came down to my place last Saturday
to help me put the whole thing together.
Technically, we’ve both been sheltering in place and have neither
of us exhibited any Covid-19 symptoms in the last five months.
Of course, we could both be asymptomatic carriers, but it seemed
unlikely. We decided to
chance seeing each other in the same space at the same time.
Naturally, we opted to go to lunch first.
After all, “Jeannie” arrived around “noon-ish” and we were both
hungry. I had seen signs
advertising that a local restaurant had apparently changed its name and
was hoping to attract possible customers.
It is actually part of a local golf course, and honestly does
most of its business in hosting large parties such as wedding
receptions, corporate lunches and the like.
Not that there is much of that going on these days.
But it meant that the restaurant would have
access to a large outdoor space, as it did.
We ordered hamburgers, which neither of us had enjoyed in many
months. The fact that the
meals arrived in cardboard boxes generally used to take home “leftovers”
did not detract from how delicious it was to eat something that did not
come straight out of a microwave oven.
Back at my place, “Jeannie” enthusiastically
opened both cartons to reveal the large, 60-inch-by-26-inch table top,
four legs, four casters, four square metal plates, and several plastic
bags filled with numerous screws.
Also a page of “instructions” that consisted mainly of diagrams
meant to give a clue as to which screws went where.
I suggested that it would be a good idea to
remove the old desk before starting in on the table.
We manhandled the desk out of the bedroom and into the dining
room, near the front door. I
have a small, collapsible hand truck that we could use to escort the old
desk out to a space in front of the dumpster enclosure.
We could have placed the desk inside the
enclosure, but it would have blocked anyone trying to reach either the
recycle bin or the actual garbage dumpster.
In any case, I had seen plenty of instances where other residents
had placed unwanted furniture in front of the enclosure as a sign that
such things were available for adoption, should anyone desire to avail
themselves of the opportunity.
That cleared the space in the bedroom, in front
of the windows, for the new arrival.
I pulled my tool bag from the outdoor closet.
The bag contains many useful objects, including multiple
screwdrivers of various sizes and denominations and a pair of pliers.
The pliers allowed me to fasten the casters to what we presumed
to be the bottoms of the table legs.
The screwdrivers were used to attach each leg
to a metal plate. Then we
placed the table top face down on top of the bed.
This allowed us to screw the metal plates into the prefabricated
holes on the underside of the table.
After that, it was a simple matter of leveraging the table off
the bed and down onto the floor.
And it happily rolled into its new home.
While I was waiting for the table to arrive, I
had also purchased a couple of little 2-drawer storage chests, each
slightly over 12 inches in any direction.
I had already assembled one of them and taken it for a “test
drive” on top of the old desk.
After “Jeannie” left, I put the second set together.
With one cube on each end of the table, I had
four small drawers to corral all those small things that one can’t live
without in a bedroom. Later,
I added a “wooden” shelf across the tops of both cubes to act as a
bridge. And a “hutch” was
born.
All in all, it is a very satisfactory assembly.
And I have so much more space to use than before!
Moreover, moving the total thing away from the windows and back
again is a breeze. Add to
that, it is no longer necessary to raise-and-lower the chair all the
time.
As for the old desk, Monday morning I heard a
clattering noise outside.
When I looked out the window, the Association “Porter” (i.e., janitor)
was busily attending to the desk.
Wielding only a hammer, he disassembled the entire thing and
popped the resulting pieces into the dumpster in less than a
quarter-hour. And that was
that.
Love, as always,
Pete
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