Presumably, the goal of all this labor is to give ourselves something nice to look at during the 20% of the time we are actually in or around the house and not sleeping. Or maybe the objective is to impress the paramedics who eventually come to drag our aged, overworked corpses off to the morgue: "Hmm. Looks like the old guy had a heart attack while re-painting his den. Nice hardwood floors, though..."
My personal theory is that we all have been bestowed a finite number of heartbeats to use any way we wish. Since we choose to spend them weeding daylillies, therefore, we are all morons.
Hey, I know you have you maintain your living space - you can't just let it decay away, after all. So when the family was in the middle of dinner and a huge CRASH! suddenly blasted from the rear of the house I what-now-ingly decided to go check it out instead of finishing up my pizza. Above and beyond the call of duty, that's me.
It turned out the shelving unit in my son's room collapsed. It was a cheap-o wire unit from Lowe's but it was pretty secure. It was only attached with drywall mounts but there were no fewer than 6 mounting points. It must have been seriously overloaded with blankets and clothes and toys and Pottery Barn Storage bag contraptions to rip itself out of the wall like that... It gave no indication of being weak before it gave way catastrophically.
The wife took all the stuff out and moved it to the guest bedroom while I patched the holes. I didn't paint the walls because it was more important to get a storage and clothes hanging solution in place quickly. "Lack of time" is also why I couldn't build one from scratch, which would have been cool.
No, instead I was forced to do what I swore I would never do again - buy and assemble modular furniture.
The handsome Allen + Roth Hardwood Closet System on display at Lowe's carries a sign claiming that it will fit closets from 6 to 10 feet wide. I was a little bummed because the width of my kid's closet is only 67 inches. Ok, no problem, I can just cut the shelf, I guess. It is "hardwood" after all so it should be ok... Wait a minute.
How can it be "6 to 10 feet"? The hanger poles might be collapsible, but those wood shelves sure as hell aren't. I call the Lowe's people over and they look at it and we all come to the conclusion that the sign must mean "6 OR 10 feet" - you just remove one of the 4-foot shelves - mystery solved. Then one of the guys took out a tape measure and measured the unit at 8 feet.
Urrrrr? Well... fine... then in that case they must have cut down the unit to fit in the display. Just load it into the truck before I change my mind.
I opened the box and began hauling out the particleboard pieces and angrily sorting them - "Hardwood, my at-symbol dollar sign dollar sign!" Whatever. Calm down. Assemble now, rant on blog later. After all, page 6 of the instructions says that the estimated assembly time is only 59 minutes.
That's right. 59 minutes. Not "one hour" or "about an hour". Not 58 minutes. What the hell? That seems remarkably specific. What was that, Steve the Factory Worker's personal best or something? Was someone trying to lamely impress Sarah the Tech Writer: "Yeah, baby, I can knock together one of these puppies in *snif* 59 minutes [flex]". Maybe it is a Chinese factory version of Name That Tune: "I can build that closet unit in... 63 minutes. I can build that unit in 59 minutes. Build that unit!" Again, whatever.
The items required for assembly are listed as a Philips screwdriver, a power drill, a 3/16" bit, a 3/8" bit, and a 1/2" socket wrench. This list is a little short. Unless you live in a magical world where your closet is exactly 10' wide and there is no gravity, you will also need a level, a hacksaw, clamps (or a vice), a table saw, a spare piece of lumber, a stud finder, a 12 mm socket wrench (not 1/2"), measuring tape, and at least one other person. Also you will need closer to 300 minutes because Factory Steve is a freaking liar.
The instructions are pretty good, although they do assume that you will be bolting the unit to the back of the closet through two studs(which, unless you have no baseboards, is why you need the spare lumber to act as a spacer). Why is this a problem? Well, given a standard stud spacing of 16", there is about a 1 in 3 chance you cannot use both studs (you do the math). I could only use one stud, myself, but both lag bolts are screwed through the spare lumber which is then screwed to the studs with 4" screws. This step was a giant hassle and took a long while to get right, longer even than the 59 minutes Factory Steve and His Amazing NASCAR Pitcrew Slash Furniture Building Team took to put the whole thing together.
The cutting down of the particleboard (grrrrr!) shelf went better than I hoped, as did the cutting of the cross bars (they weren't collapsible, it turns out). The assembly hardware is well labeled and the drawer slides are pretty smooth and quiet. The whole piece is solid and sturdy and I was very happy to get everything so level and perfect. Nope, that thing ain't going nowhere.
Damn shame I have to rip the whole thing out in a couple of weeks to prepare for hardwood floor installation.
*Sigh*
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