Skilled Trades(wo)man

BEFORE
Last week, I took my $17.99 and added it to the other pennies I had been savig under my bed and purchased a wine bar and hutch. (For some reason, my friends find it odd that i do not possess a couch, a loveseat, a desk, or a file cabinet, but I now am the proud owner of a dark mahogany, malaysian wood wine bar...go figure). After I dragged it home from Cost Plus Wine Market, I got all ready to put it together. I cleared a space on the floor (which wasn't hard, as I do not possess a couch, a loveseat, a desk or a file cabinet) opened the box, found a screw driver and got to work.

The directions said that the construction should take about 1 hour. I had an hour so I got to work. The first lesson I learned is that it is definitely a BAD idea to pull off the little stickers with letters on them. Though they may not look like much, those little stickers will correspond to 7 or 8 pages of directions. Believe it or not, they are used to let you know what to connect what to. About 5 stickers into the removal process, luckily I decided not to waste time taking them off.

1:00 pm-My first challenge: building a drawer. That I tackled easily. Smugly, I grinned to myself, stretched out my legs, and admired my drawer.

1:15 pm--My second challenge: building the bar. This quickly became more and more difficult. The screws wouldn't tighten. no matter how hard I turned the screw driver, they adamantly refused to tighten into the holes. I was sweating. Mahogany malaysian wood bits littered the floor. I got a bigger screwdriver.I got frustrated when I realized the company had sent damaged washers. Half of them were split right through the middle. I called my aunt Julie, to ask for advice (should I go buy new washers, or take the whole damn thing back) when she explained to me that the "broken" ones were actually spring washers.

2:15 pm--My third challenge: undoing 5 screws which were missing spring washers.

3:15 pm--My fourth challenge: Ducking as what I had constructed came crashing to the floor.

4:00 pm--My fifth challenge: Cursing as loudly as I could.

5:00 pm--My sixth challenge: Wondering what the hell the L shaped metal tool was for they sent in the package, but was not referenced in the directions.

5:15 pm--My seventh challenge: Going back to tightening screws. Tightening. Tightening. Tightening. To no avail.

6:00 pm--My eighth challenge: Standing it up. The wine bar was missing the back (still havent figured how to get that on) and was wobbly. Extremely wobbly. I smiled at my work. I looked at the floor and realized there was still an entire bag of screws and dowels that I had not even opened. My smile faded. I looked warily at the wine bar.

The next day, I went to my job and lamented to my coworkers about my wine bar. I kept saying that the damn screws wouldn't tighten, no matter how hard I turned them. About 5 minutes in the conversation, I asked why they would give me an L shaped metal bar. What the hell is that for?

My coworker raised an eyebrow slightly. "The allen wrench?" he asked.
"Hell if I know." I responded.
"Um, Miah. The allen wrench is used to tighten screws."


So, now I have a wine bar, which is too wobbly to hold actual wine and a wine hutch that is still in the box from Cost Plus Wine Shoppe.

Touche.

*M*