I might have gone a little crazy. I attribute this to not having to work at a regular job anymore with its demands, reports, meetings, and seemingly endless list of things to do. I am now able to turn my attention to the stuff of ordinary living. You know, like a roof over my head, a bed to sleep in, and the maintenance that a century-old house requires.
Last November I wrote about my move from a furnished rental unit back to the house that has been in the family since 2006 (see My Last Move). If you don’t live in California, that may not seem like a long time, but it’s actually an eternity in the Bay Area real estate market, where you measure home ownership in dog years.
The house was built in 1929 in a neighborhood designed for Del Monte workers at a nearby canning facility. I had lived in it previously but moved back in November with a couch, file cabinet, two wooden card catalogues, and little else. I had given away or lost nearly everything else in moves that took me to Virginia, Washington, DC, and the Bronx. The reasons for that are best left for another post and a couple of dry martinis. Suffice it to say that I lacked basic necessities like a broom and can opener to name just a few. I have since bought a red can opener to match the dinette set.
That brings me to the craziness. It started with a retro dinette set made of Formica and chrome with red, chrome chairs. I ordered it online and had to assemble everything on the floor of my kitchen. It wasn’t easy and took me two days as opposed to the 90 minutes claimed in the instructions, which came with the disassembled parts mummified in Styrofoam and little, plastic bags of screws, bolts, nuts, wrenches, and finishing caps to keep the legs from scraping the oak floors I had spent two weeks treating with linseed oil.
This was just the beginning. I went crazy online and ordered a bookcase, standing desk, office chairs, bed set, and box spring, all of which had to be assembled. I’m sure the Amazon drivers know me by now. They may even complain, since some of these items like the standing desk and box spring were labelled “heavy” in big letters with a yellow background as if they contained radioactive isotopes.
The standing desk challenged me, since it added another dimension–time–to the final product. That is, I wasn’t just dealing with the usual length-width-height measurements but had to make sure the thing could rise and fall at the press of a button. The biggest surprise, although not much of a problem (I beat the time listed in the instructions) was the boxspring. I didn’t know you could order one online. I also didn’t know they had to be assembled. Who assembles a box spring? But the company assured me that it would be easy enough and that I would thoroughly enjoy the metal frame, which could hold up to three thousand pounds of weight. Unless you’re sleeping with an elephant, that’s not really necessary, but okay, sure.
The bookcase was the hardest. It took me weeks to assemble, working on it a bit at a time and trying to decipher the twenty-page instruction “booklet.” Not only couldn’t I see the small print and figures of shelves, screws, nuts, and intersecting metal walls, but the language came in a sort of Pidgin English as if run through Google Translate from (I’m guessing) Chinese. The booklet looked like illustrations you’d find in a differential calculus text, vectors and all.
What is the upshot of all this? What can I offer you from my experience of scuffed knuckles, cut fingers, and stripped hardware? It is this: if you stick with it long enough and develop a rhythm without rushing, you can assemble just about any piece of furniture or appliance. I say “just about,” because I am leaving repair of the espresso machine and redwood fence to people more expert than me. But for everything else, show me the instructions and step aside, friend.
Speaking of friends, another lesson is to go to other people for help when needed. For me, this included the people on Amazon who took the time to rate and evaluate not just the product but the instructions. If I hadn’t done that, I never would have gotten the interlocking chrome legs of the dinette set to meet. People advised, in effect, to disregard the instructions after step eleven. I did exactly that and can proclaim to the world that I am a happy man for it.
Image credits: feature Pavel Neznanov; nuts & bolts, schematic by Dan Cristian Pădureț; drilling James Kovin; “Maschinenmensch,” Fritz Lang from the 1927 film Metropolis, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74787924. Want more? Go to Robert Brancatelli. The Brancatelli Blog is a member of The Free Media Alliance, which promotes “alternatives to software, culture, and hardware monopolies.”
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I have a daughter in law who assembled a crib with one hand, while the other hand held her iPhone as she paged through the instructions. Since she is a daughter in law, and not a daughter, that particular gene missed me altogether.
My worst experience was assembling a nice stand for our television when we lived in our house. The 3-inch deep box held dozens of shelves, supports, doors and about 20,000 pieces of hardware . Thank God it was summer, since I spent the better part of three days assembling the damn thing in the porch, and then gingerly carrying it into the family room.
When we moved to our retirement community, one of the movers cautioned me that his particular piece of furniture was a bit unsteady. That’s ok, I told him, put it here and we will place the TV on top. It will never move again, not in my lifetime.
But my best experience was realizing that Toys R Us would assemble any bicycle for a $10 charge (my kids are in their 40’s now, so there’s that), but that was the smartest $10 I ever spent – multiple times.
Rob, your guidance is good – for the easy jobs, do it yourself, it’s actually satisfying to put something together. For bikes and furniture, and all things beyond, let those who can, do.
Thanks, Vic. I like your experience of the tv stand. And, yes, I hired a carpenter to fix the fence and put a new basement door in. Was that smart? I think so, especially when you factor in TIME…While he fixed the fence I wrote a blog post…!