Jewel of a Find

I had been searching and searching for the right piece of furniture to act as a sideboard in my dining room. I needed something that wasn’t any deeper than 14” and had storage. A charger and serving platters had to fit in it too.

Oh yah, it had to be cheap, but nice. Hubby was a little tired of my decorating expenses. Sometimes you have to give them a little sense of control so I agreed to look for something less than $75.

I found things on Craigslist, but they were either too ugly, too expensive, too deep, too long, too tall, too not storage-y.

Then miracle of miracles, I found one that was nice looking, perfect depth & length, had plenty of storage, a little on the tall-ish side, but it was FREE!

How did I come upon this jewel? Well, it all started one night after dinner.

Ken, Barbie & brood had come over for dinner. The kids were driving us nuts so they were relegated to the upstairs. Hubby & Ken got out Guitar Hero (the one that only cost $5.65 – are we lucky or what?) and started jammin’. So Barbie & I were left alone for chit-chat. That by itself is a miracle.

A few glasses of wine (each) and lots of girly talk led us to the office closet. I can sense the gears in your brain moving. You know all the men reading this leaned forward and went “there”, right?

I just “had” to show her the fabulous curtain material I scammed a deal on (The guys just slumped back in their chairs. Did you hear it? I’ll be lucky if they bother to keep reading).

While poking around, Barbie noticed a bookcase. Cherry in color, glass doors, about 14” deep. Now the gears in our brains got chuggin’. They had totally been slowed down by all the wine.

“Why don’t you use this in the dining room?”

“Because it’s filled with crap.”

“Get a measuring tape, let’s see if it will fit.”

“Barbie, look at all the CRAP. And there’s all this crap on the floor in front of it.”

You could barely walk into the 6X6 closet!!

I rolled my eyes. We measured the bookcase.

“Fine, I guess it will fit. Now where am I going to put all this crap.”

“Worry about that later.” She started taking stuff out and setting it on the futon. Sure, I’ll worry about it later. Like when she’s gone home and doesn’t have to worry about it herself.

The futon was loaded up and we were ready to move the bookcase out of the closet. We needed those moving men thingys – good thing they were part of the crap that was in the bookcase earlier.

As we were pulling/pushing the bookcase out of the closet, we had to turn it right away, but the futon was in the way. Since we had loaded it up with crap, it was heavy. Some of the crap needed to be moved. So we put it by the closed side of the double doors to the room.

With the futon out of the way, we made tracks across the office floor to the door. Crap! We needed the second door to the room opened to get it out. We had to move the crap back to the futon.

To get to the dining room we had to go through the family room. The boys were in the middle of a song so we just stood there letting the bookcase hold us up (remember a lot of wine was involved – our limbs were wobbly enough without the added deprivation of oxygen from all the crap movement).

When they finished (never mind pausing the game), they moved out of the way so we could push it across the room. Did they help us? No. Did they even offer to help us? No. We didn’t really need them, but it would have been nice.

After quarter-inching (you know when you move something just a smidge to the left, right, back, forward, up, down and then move it back again – this drives men nuts, you women should try it sometime for a little fun and/or revenge for whatever manish thing he did) the bookcase about fifty times, we got it right.

Five kitchen cabinet shelves later, all the fancy-wear made it to the dining room.

Barbie & her brood left, and of course, I still had an empty office closet and a futon full of crap.

Hell’s bells, I’ll worry about that later!

Silver lining:

1. I have five empty shelves in the kitchen – whoo who, I can move the miscellaneous kitchen gadgets out of the pantry and into the kitchen. More room for food – we like food so it’s a good thing.

2. Did I mention the bookcase was free? Of course, I paid for it at one point, but in accountant speak, that’s a sunk cost.

3. All the crap made it back into the office closet right before my mom came to visit three weeks later. Did it take me three weeks to move it all back? Oh, no – it took three weeks to come up with the motivation.

4. I managed to use the word crap 13 times in one post. Gee mom, you must be so proud.