In the week running up to the new stuff arriving I had moved two of my three sets of drawers into the hall out of the way so I had space to work. I decided to start with my bedside table. I figured start small and build up to greatness, you know?
I got the frame put together and then realised I had put the base section and bit between the drawers in the wrong way round. Luckily IKEA furniture is actually easier to take apart than it is to put together so I resolved that little hiccup and completed it with no further hitches. It looks lovely. It's higher than my nan's old sewing box that I had been using and has two drawers that are deep enough to hold all my underwear which emptied one of my old drawers.
Next I moved on to my huge chest of drawers. It's bigger than I'd usually go for, but when I measured before buying, I realised that with this one I could stand in front of it and my mirror would be at the perfect height. It also means that with my bedside table, I only need one main chest of drawers instead of three.
Having done the smaller one first, putting this one together was a breeze and I didn't get anything round the wrong way this time. Once the frame was up I had to move my cupboard (it used to be a wardrobe until my parents demolished it with finesse) from the corner and lay it across my bed so that I could move the frame to its new home which is how I received these injuries.
Now what I thought was going to be the easiest bit of the process turned out to be the most soul-destroying. I thought I had made enough room to manoeuvre it round the end of my bed and past what I like to call 32 year's worth of crap. Turns out I didn't. Turns out that the drawer dividers (don't know if that's what they're called, it's what I'm callling them) aren't that strong. As I edged it round I heard a crack and saw it had split. As I tried to move it back to stop it become even more damaged, it broke!
This right here, my dear readers, is why I've called my blog Gloriously Ungraceful. I can take the simplest task and turn it into a disaster. I didn't cry, mainly because I don't think my happy pills physically allow tears to escape my eyes anymore. Instead I started putting the drawers together. Drawers I can do!
Drawers I can do until I realise I've run out of two parts and have two similar, but bigger parts left over that I don't know what to do with. Got them mixed up didn't I. The parts I needed were in the frame and because they were too small, I couldn't get them back out! I made the last drawer as best I could (I was also missing one other part, but that was IKEA's fault - WOOHOO!) and put them all in the frame. Once it was finished I realised you couldn't really see the broken bit and I felt much better.
By now it's about 9pm. I've been building furniture since about 2.30pm. Non-stop. No dinner. I was on a mission and I wanted to finish it. Of course now I had finished it, there was the little matter of the huge, heavy cupboard that was laying across my soft, warm, fortress of comfort. I debated sleeping in the living room, but I was aching all over and wanted my bed so I summoned up the last of my energy and somehow moved it to the other side of my bed.
Sunday morning I decided I needed to have a tidy up so while I caught up on Home and Away (Hmmm, Dr Nate), Bake Off (love Selasi) and Strictly (Danny or Ore?), I started to rip up all of the boxes that were scattered across the dining room. I had four bags of recycling to put out on Monday. FOUR BAGS!!! My arms have definitely had a work out after all that.
After lunch my friend came round and helped me to get all my old furniture downstairs. Once that was out the way I was able to start on my desk. Frickin' beast of a thing! It wasn't actually too bad. I got one bit round the wrong way like I did on my bedside table (easily rectified) and I can't get one end of the desktop to fit on proper, but I'm going to wait until my mum gets home. I'm not breaking anything else! The finished article is not as big as I was expecting so it doesn't swamp the room, yet it is big enough to take my printer and still leaves me enough room to do work and crafts.
Despite the things that went wrong, I am still really proud that I managed to put these together by myself and I think they finish my new room off perfectly. The pink, grey and white just work so well together. Now there's just the little matter of sorting out the dozen or so boxes and bags full of what is probably junk and I'll finally be able to say it's my little bit of paradise.
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