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As you may know it is my dearest ambition in life to one day make a piece of flat pack furniture without making any mistakes along the way. It's a very hard thing to achieve as flat pack furniture instructions seem to assume some basic idea of competency and also that you'll somehow be able to work out from vague sketches which way up or around a particular bit goes. Also I am terrible at DIY (if flatpack furniture even counts as that).
We've had a TV stand sitting in a box for about three weeks, waiting for one of us to have the time and energy to construct it. Tonight, emboldened (and hampered perhaps) by two bottles of beer, I decided to give it a go. Even though on the instructions it said that it was a two person job.
My first obstacle to overcome was the huge amount of polystyrene in the box. How could I get it out without it rubbing against itself and making my skin crawl? The answer was I couldn't. And how was I going to fit it all in my tiny wheelie-bin which was the only chance I had of it being taken away by the dustbin guys. The answer was I wasn't.
It was a pretty complex TV stand, incorporating wooden shelves, metal brackets, a glass top shelf and two metal portions which needed to be attached and then bent around the back of the unit and then screwed in (the part, I was guessing that would require two people). But I plunged into it all and though they didn't make it clear which way round the back wooden portion had to go (was the varnished bit meant to go to the rear (where presumably it wouldn't be seen) or face forwards so that you could see it when the doors were open? There was no way of telling from the diagram. I googled the stand and found some pictures and was surprised to see the varnished bit at the back.
Then I got on with screwing in screws and attaching brackets and putting on shelves. It was going really well. I got the lower bit done perfectly. And I allowed myself to dream. Because surely most of the rest of the job was just a repetition of what I'd just done. I was going to do it. I was going to make a flat pack piece of furniture without error.
Hubris, thy name is Herring. My complacency meant I didn't look closely enough at the diagram as I screwed in some screws. I realised when the screws weren't emerging from the other side of the wood that I had put them in the wrong hole. And when I tried to take them out again I found one of the screws was stuck. The bit it was stuck in came out as well, but try as I might I couldn't get it to budge. I had fucked up and potentially ruined two aspects of the cabinet. I was angry and tipsy and thinking I was going to have to ring up for replacements. I tried to wedge the bottom bit under stuff so I could somehow unscrew the screw, but I scratched some paintwork and then broke a bit off of a screwdriver. I tried to weave it under the toilet seat, but that didn't work either.
I didn't think I had any kind of vice or clamp that would rescue me, but headed to the garage where I discovered that I did have one of those little clampy tools - like scissors but with grips instead of blades - and amazingly using that I rescued my screw.
No damage done to the furniture and only a few bits of minor damage elsewhere, but I had not achieved my dream.
And I didn't have time to finish the job, leaving the piece half finished and wondering how I could bend the metal sheets around on my own. But this was a problem for tomorrow Richard Herring. I am sure he will fuck it up.
