There's nothing that brings a marriage to a screeching halt faster than assemble-it-yourself furniture projects. I speak from experience.
We have two computer desks. They're big, hutch-like contraptions made of imitation, wood-grained stuff and they come inconveniently flattened out like big brown manta rays in boxes larger than garage doors. Add to that
the fact these boxes usually weigh more than the Green Bay Packers after an all-you-can-eat buffet and you'll understand why it took half the neighborhood to carry them from the car.
The first one we bought had
approximately 17,000 parts. My husband opened the box, took a look at the directions, which were the size of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and promptly went outside to work in the yard. A week later, I found him doggedly
attempting to mow a still-brown lawn and ordered him inside to pick up his mess. He went with the enthusiasm of someone who's just received a horse's head from Don Corleone.
Situating himself on the den floor, he
carefully spread the parts around and spent the rest of the day putting them in order. The next day he started putting the parts together. He lived in that den for three solid days, but finally the moment we'd both
waited for came: He was finished. Then he called me in to admire his handiwork. I looked it over and pronounced it fine, with one teeny little exception.
"Why, did you install this backwards?" I asked, pointing to the
little corkboard on the back wall of the hutch part of the desk.
He was so grateful to me for catching his mistake that his eyes rolled back in his head, which made him look a little like Peter Lorre. It took another
day to remove all the screws, nuts, bolts and other hardware and turn the corkboard back around but I know he thought it was worth it. I could tell by the way he kept looking at me and mumbling something – I'm sure it
was his thanks – under his breath.
Then we had to deal with the location. The completed desk, which was the size of a mini-van and weighed about the same as all our kitchen appliances combined, had to be carried to
the other side of the house. Hubby and I couldn't manage it alone, so we recruited a neighbor, who – upon viewing the desk – asked the logical question of why he didn't simply assemble it in the room where we were
putting it.
To tell the truth, the same thought also crossed my mind, but in view of the fact I'd already pointed out one mistake, I decided it was politically expedient to keep my mouth shut. At least while he had
access to a monkey wrench.
So the three of us slipped and slid and pushed and shoved and groaned and grunted and finally got the desk where it was supposed to sit. My spouse swore off furniture that had to be
assembled and he finished watching the rest of the basketball tournament that aired during his construction phase.
A year went by and the desk was fine, except where the kids sat on the roll-out shelf where the
keyboard goes and broke it. During this time, my spouse decided he, too, needed a computer because I was always on the first one. We bought another one and that meant – yes – we had to buy another computer desk.
Hubby
went out big desk shopping and found one quite similar to the first one only bigger and more complicated and in a different color. He hauled it home and the box was even larger and heavier than the previous one. And, as
is his habit, he hauled the box into the den, turned on the basketball tournament and started putting the second one together. This one took even longer than the first, but eventually he finished it and called me in to
look.
"Hey, you put all the parts on right this time," I said, drawing a grateful scowl from my beloved. I pointed to a small pile of hardware on the floor and asked what those were for and received a rather defensive
reply that he didn't know and didn't really give a horse's behind. Then the time came for us to move the desk.
Somewhere during this process we had decided to move the old desk into the den and put the new one where
my computer is – halfway across the house. That meant we had to move not one, but two desks the length of the house! So we called our neighbor, who came right over and offered to pay for psychiatric evaluations. It took
three men and a boy (well, two men, one woman and a boy) to reverse the locations, but we finally did it. Later, I asked him why he couldn't put the thing together in the room where it belonged.
"Because the ACC
basketball tournament is on," he said, pointing to the big, color television in the den. Of course! How stupid of me!
Boy, do I feel dumb for not figuring that one out!
