Bookcase

When I was in Brooklyn, and I asked Harold to come over and help me put my new bed together, I assumed he’d be done in a few minutes, and probably make a few modifications and improvements on the design. My first sign that I was not entirely accurate in this assumption was that Harold doesn’t own a toolbox.

Most of the men in my life are do-it-yourself New Englanders, Eagle Scouts, engineers with a penchant for improving things, and so forth. (Eric is all of these!) I was kind of shocked that Harold doesn’t have a tool box. If you have guys in your life like Eric, or Scep, or Stick, or my dad, or basically every man I know, you don’t really do too much with tools. I mean, I’ve used a screwdriver when upgrading parts of my desktop, but most men I know will turn an Ikea box into a couch in seconds. Usually with a couple design improvements. (Message to the reader: Sometimes when I am being positive, readers assume I am being sarcastic. I actually mean real improvements like the reading-and-glasses tray Eric built for my loft bed in college. I am not using “design improvements” for things that fall apart, because everyone is so freaking good at this that nothing falls apart.)

Since we’ve been in Chapel Hill, I thought I’d give some of this furniture assembly a try. After about ten minutes, I had a working lamp, and that was pretty cool. It’s grown from assembling package furniture to doing a couple repairs, to… somehow ending up with a dresser in pieces on the floor. Harold’s mom brought it over, she runs a secondhand shop, and comes across cool pieces all the time. I was only going to going to take the drawers out to spray the runners with WD-40, but then I thought I might as well stain the worn parts, because I already had some wood stain from doing the dining chairs, and then if I’m going to go through all that, I should varnish it, right? Right?

I thought he was being nice to me, but as it turns out, Eric has been hogging all the fun.