Gonna Build A Mountain

At least I hope I will!

I told you last weekend about the unfortunate event at the office. The lady upstairs has some serious bathroom issues causing our ceiling to cave in and make a big stinky mess all over everything. The carpet was trashed along with a lot of the furniture in the office.

The furniture was no big loss. My desk is this HUGE block of wood from the 1950’s. It’s not meant for computer use, it’s scratched up something fierce and none of the drawers have opened since disco was in fashion.

Construction guys worked their magic this past week and put in a new ceiling and did some drywall repairs and yesterday some junkers came to take all of the damaged items. This included my mom’s desk which was even older and more scratched up than mine. The carpet guys were also busily laying down a blue gray berber much nice than the one that was there before.

Since my mom can’t really work on the floor, my dad and I went next door to Staples to look at a replacement desk for her. We found this beautiful L shaped computer desk on clearance. It was maple and black, one of my favorite combinations and it had 75 inches of work space. It had little shelves and nooks and crannies and nothing dangling down to bang your knees on. The matching printer stand/file cabinet and bookcase were also on clearance.

“This is the one!” I exclaimed. My dad pulled up an office chair and sat at the desk. Next thing I knew he was whipping out his cell phone calling the junkers who were at our office. He wanted them to take everything, including everybody’s desk, damaged or not. He does things like that sometimes.

My dad told the salesperson that he’d like 5 complete sets of this office furniture. 5 desks, 5 printer stands and 5 bookcases.

I reminded my dad that this stuff had to be assembled. That's a small mountain of work.

“That’s ok. I know you can do it.” he said. His confidence in me is overwhelming sometimes. I can put them together, yes, but assembling 15 pieces of office furniture is not exactly an afternoon project.

After we hauled all of this stuff back to the office, I found a corner and tore open the box to Desk #1. I carefully laid out all the pieces which, thank goodness, were actually labeled and checked out the instructions. It said all I needed was a screwdriver. Did we have one of those?

No, of course not.

I went across the street to the Ace Hardware and when I returned, all of my pre-packaged and labeled screws had been opened and laid in one pile and all of the little stickers that designated “Shelf A, Leg B” had been removed! WTF! Who would be dumb enough to do something like that?

No need to guess. It was The Goonan.

He said my dad told him to help me and he didn’t know what else to do. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....Fine, whatever. The instructions were pretty clear and I’m sure I could figure it out. I also had 4 other boxed desks I could tear into if I really needed part label comparisons.

I spent the rest of the afternoon with Goonan hovering over me and only assembled one desk and one printer stand. My dad would really like the office to be ready to go by Monday morning.

I don’t know how I’m gonna do it, I only know I’m gonna try.