Furniture In A Box

The boys and I spent a good part of today assembling the "Adirondack Rocker" that we picked up on sale at JoAnn's. Amazingly, even though the pieces have been laying around our house for a week, we didn't lose one single sheet of directions or piece of hardware. It looks decent for mass-produced, lightweight pine. With a little paint and some sturdy pillows it should be perfect for our front porch. I had lots of help (eeek!), but we did made it through without any splinters or gouges. Ta da!

Some things I learned in the process of assemblage:

1) The hardware provided in kit furniture is usually inadequate to the task of holding things together. Case in point, the instructions recommended additional long wood screws to support the back braces, these were not included and not mentioned anywhere on the outside of the box.

2) Pre-tapped holes are less useful than they sound. A good many of ours turned out to be too shallow to allow proper tightening of the short wood screws we needed to use. Also, one of the bottom rocker pieces was drilled off-kilter, meaning the board wouldn't seat right and we had to drill entirely new holes. It is still a bit warped, and I had to saw a teensy bit off the leg to make it rock correctly.

3) The hardware you need to complete the three crucial pieces you are holding together with one hand, two feet, and your forehead, are always the farthest from you. Or, conversely, they have been sniped by your toddler who is trying to install them in your refrigerator with your power drill. Which you ALSO need to reach with your one remaining hand.

4) The power drill is mightier than the Phillips. I know this is sort of a "duh" one, but when your instructions tell you to use a Phillips to avoid stripping soft wood you take them seriously, right? Right? WRONG! Halfway through the project I flung the manual tool/torture device out the door in favor of the drill, and this is why: the extra time it took to tighten by hand was making it almost impossible to keep the kids from climbing all over the chair. This in turn was creating screw placement that looked like it had been done by Lurch. Or maybe he would've done a better job, I dunno. The point is, if I wanted any of these screws to go in straight and remain thoroughly attached, things needed to move faster. Thank God for power tools!

5) The downside of power tools is: every time you put one down, there will be a small boy waiting to pounce on it, who proceeds to attempt drilling of unnecessary holes in places that were never meant to have any. You have to be very adept at unplugging it before their itchy trigger-finger reaches the tool. Repeated shouting of the phrases "Put that down before you drill your hand" and "If you turn that on I'm gonna tell your dad" are less effective than playing keep-away with the extension cord.

I'm not foolish enough to think I can get away with painting this thing while the boys are awake. I will post a fully painted pic tomorrow, though. Right now I am content to look, and very afraid to sit on, my handiwork.

Bidders Anonymous Needed

Okay, I admit it, I am sick. I am addicted to Ebay! Now if someone will please point me towards the correct support group..... Really, I do manage to hold off bidding on a lot of things, so it could be much worse (be afraid, R, be very afraid). There's just so many nifty old things that I could sooo use, it's hard not to drool a lot. Some of the items wearing droolmarks this week:

This beautifully restored Hoosier cabinet (to replace all that "big box" cabinetry for kitchen storage). Look, a microwave would fit perfectly behind that accordion door!

And this antique "Quality" gas stove in lovely greens and white, knobs intact and just needs some rust removal. Crave! I can just see it in a subway tiled alcove. I may actually bid on this, it's pretty reasonable and we're probably moving next month.

I also search routinely for antique matelasse (jacquard woven kind), candlewicked bedspreads, homespun wool blankets, vintage copper and cast iron cookware, brass beds, and vintage kitchen gadgets. Occasionally I find neat things, like the kitchen sink. Or rare things, like the 80 year old near perfect, butter yellow matelasse coverlet, with the nouveau-style tulip design (more on that in a later post). R does his best to talk me out of the stranger items (who wouldn't want a 5 gallon stoneware churn from the 1800s?). All in all it's not so bad, this being addicted to buying other people's junk. Ooh, I wonder if anything new came on while I was posting this?