Tuesday 11 March 2014

The wardrobe takes shape. But not necessarily the shape of a wardrobe

If you missed parts 1 and 2 (and let's face it most people did), you can avail yourselves of this professional, step-by-step guide to building a wardrobe here and here. You might want to catch up with the story before reading on. Then again, you'd find yourself in a minority.

Anyway, it didn't take that long to put the bed back together. Compared to HS2 say, or a cricket test match. Four hours tops. I was safely ensconced in the spare room well before 1am.

However I seem to have now installed a slight squeak in the bed frame somewhere. A squeak that I would have been proud to discover in previous years, but now it seems to occur when one is simply breathing rather than breathless.

Anyway the door went back on just fine with some fresh screws. It is true that it doesn't quite close any more, but that's a mere detail....

The next day I was up bright and early. Sleeping on the floor in the spare room can have that effect.

And with renewed determination and the use of a hammer, I got the bloody two-part 'frame' into place against the wall. Thereby breaking the back of the whole project in a single move.

The trouble was that without anything to support the other end of the horizontal 'beam' (even though it was screwed to the vertical one very tightly) it tended to sag a little at the other end.

I may be exaggerating when I say 'a little'. It actually sagged quite a lot. It's a 3 metre long bit of 'four be two' and quite heavy so it was bound to sag I suppose. However it stopped sagging almost entirely when it hit the (fucking) floor. Apologies for the Anglo Saxon vernacular but no other word quite sufficed, either now or at the time.

So instead of a nice tight inverted 'L' shape, I now had a rather slovenly inverted 'V' shape of 3 metres by 2.4 metres. I was tempted to ask if she'd prefer a unique, artistic, unsymmetrical wig-wam shaped wardrobe instead of the boring rectangular one she'd specified, but wisely thought better of it. The spare room is not luxurious, but it is markedly more so than the shed.

Anyway I then had the brainwave of building the other vertical post, at the other end of the wall (not quite the end because that's where the [broken] door is and whilst it won't quite close any more, it's still better than if it didn't open at all for the reason of being behind the wardrobe, in my humble opinion).

So I measured and drilled and screwed, and then came back home to work on the wardrobe. (That's just a joke Dear). And in a matter of moments (that felt like hours - and in fact were hours) I had the second of my 'goalposts' up and securely fastened to the wall.

So now it was just a simple matter of single-handedly lifting up my 'crossbar' and attaching it securely at both ends. Simple.

Again, I may have to admit to a slight exaggeration here. You see you'd have to be Atlas to be able to lift a 3 metre plank (let's call it what it is) of 'four be two' from one end and keep it upright (horizontal) while you attach the screws and brackets to keep it in place, then hold it up and 'walk' along the length of it, at a height of 2.4 metres and then address the other end. Especially when, standing on the step-ladder, trying to keep the thing straight, and with nothing to hold it in place but your screaming arm and shoulder muscles, you find that the drill, cordless bloody screwdriver, brackets and screws are actually 2.4 metres below you, in plain view, neatly arranged, but so far out of your reach that they might as well be in Alaska.

I put some new carpet down on the floor in the spare room that second night. It was much more comfortable.

To be continued...

Unlike Dallas I don't somehow think this is a dream.





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