The furniture I have in my house has been mine for a long time. Many pieces were either hand-me-downs or they were things I “inherited” when an old roommate left them at my old apartment. Most of the things I have are things that I brought with me from my old place to my current house, so I’ve had them for at least 10 years. And while most of the pieces I have are in great condition and I have no plans to replace them, I’ve also tried to start upgrading things bit by bit as I could.
The setup I had for my TV was something I had for a very long time. The DVD towers were something I purchased when I lived in my old apartment. And the TV stand was a cabinet that an old roommate purchased that we used in the entryway of my old apartment. When I moved into my house, I took the doors off of the cabinet and my dad helped me cut the back so the cables had a place to go. It’s worked for a while, but it felt flimsy and I have been wanting to get something nicer for a while.
The problem with wanting something nicer is that they usually cost a lot of money, and I didn’t have that. But when my parents were in town, my mom and I did some online shopping to see what we could find. We also discovered that a lot of TV stands were very low to the ground because most people have huge TVs. I don’t and I needed something taller. We did a lot of searching online and finally found the perfect thing that also happened to be on clearance. It wouldn’t be delivered until after my parents left, but I’ve put together lots of furniture before so I knew I could it.
When the box arrived, it was huge! It was almost taller than me and it weighed a ton! Getting the box into my house took forever and it probably looked pretty funny. And once I got the box in my house and open, it took up a big chunk of my living room.
I asked a few friends if they could come over to help me, and my friend Andie was able to. But the night before she came over, I decided to work on unpacking the box and trying to put together what I could. A lot of pieces were huge, but there were little things I could do like building the drawers and putting handles on things. When I went to bed, my house felt like a huge disaster.
When Andie came over, I was hoping we would be able to put things together quickly because I had done a lot of the work ahead of time. I was wrong. Some of the issues we had were because the pieces weren’t fitting together perfectly. We were able to make them fit, but sometimes it took a little bit of force (and once it took my rubber mallet). Andie helped me for a few hours, but she had something she had to do that evening so I was finishing things up on my own. And then I hit what would be the biggest setback for building the cabinet.
For some reason, I couldn’t get the drawers to go in. I know I was exhausted, tired of working on the cabinet, and needed to eat some dinner; but I wanted to get this done. I FaceTimed my dad and he was trying to help me figure it out too. Neither of us could figure out the instructions or how they were supposed to work. I’m sure if my dad was here, he could have done it. But virtual help didn’t help me. I eventually went to bed with the drawers on the ground and decided to work on it the next day.
In the morning, my friend Dani came over because I was giving her my DVD towers. She needed something for her house and I was so happy that I was able to find someone who could use them (another friend needed the TV cabinet and I gave it to her). When Dani was over, she was checking out the new cabinet and I was telling her about the disaster of putting it together. And I explained that I couldn’t get the drawers to work and gave up on them.
Well, Dani must be a miracle worker because it only took her a minute or two and she had it figured out! I was ready to cry from happiness that she helped me because I didn’t want to work on building the cabinet for more than 3 days (seriously, 3 days was long enough). And once it was done, I could finally start organizing things and deciding how I’m going to decorate the space. Right now, I’m still playing around with what I’ll do, but this is what it looks like.
I think it’s a huge improvement over what I had before and it makes the space look so much bigger and nicer!
And even though I spent 3 days building it, I was ready the next day to build another thing. I had a replacement for my defective desk chair on the way and it arrived. I got the box inside, opened it up, and realized they only sent me about 25% of the parts needed. It was so bizarre that it was funny. They only sent me the wheels, bottom cushion, and armrests. No base, no back, no hardware to attach things. I honestly couldn’t believe it.
I did call the company that sent me the chair and asked if there was another box coming, and they said everything should have been in that one box. So they sent me another box with the rest of it. That hasn’t arrived yet, but as soon as it gets here I’ll be building something else. I’m tired of sitting on my dining room chair for 8 hours because they aren’t the most comfortable chairs for multiple hours. But I guess it did give me a break between crazy furniture builds and hopefully once the rest of the chair arrives I’ll be ready to build it and be done!
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