My plan involved his poor little office. You see, when he moved me clear across the country, to a state where I knew NOBODY and had no family, for a job promotion that he wanted, I took it upon myself to kind of, sort of, claim the best parts of our new house. Now, let's face it, he doesn't care about most of that stuff anyway. But, I claimed the actual "Office" in our new house. It's a great space. Sunny. Lots of room for all my craft stuff. And, I get the good chair, the good computer, and the desk. He's relegated to a stool at the worktable. Seems fair right?
Now, we did sort of turn a spare bedroom upstairs into his work space. It is also where he has his clothes since I also claimed the big closet in the Master bedroom and this spare room actually has a walk in closet (though a lot smaller). Ok, I'm almost starting to feel a little bad about this… almost. Anyway, this poor spare room consisted of hand me down desk furniture and it was kind of sad. I tried to find a photo, but I couldn't… probably because there was nothing photo worthy about the room. I had thrown some paint on the wall, and hung some sad little curtains, but that was it.
Sooooo…. I thought that this was the perfect time to surprise him with an HGTV worthy office makeover. I was so giddy about this that I almost gave it away. The day came for him to leave on his trip, annnnnnndddd it took him forever to actually leave. He was feeling bad about leaving me yet again after having been gone the whole week before. Little did he know that I wanted him to go. I did everything but shove him physically out the door.
Then I frantically began running around to purchase the new furniture and items for his room. Of course, I couldn't get everything at one store. Nope. Not here. Not me. I had to run to no less than 4 different stores, all at opposite ends of town. While I am frantically trying to gather my stuff, I get a call from my wonderful husband stating that he had invited a few of our neighbors over for a little Bocce ball and dinner the next night. Ok… I added one more store to the list because I did not have enough of the fish I had planned to make for our family (and I needed to use it). That store was clear downtown. Perfect. Sooooo….6 hours and a tank of gas later I finally had all of the stuff at the house. Oh, did I mention that I couldn't fit everything in my car so I had to make multiple trips home?
So, now I had to "clean" out the room in order to redo it. It is 5pm. This little chore takes 3 hours of hauling all the items into another spare bedroom. Then I must clean the room, because some of the pieces of furniture have set in the same place for 7 years… Finally, I'm ready to start putting the room back together. YEAH!!!! I start with replacing the curtains with new ones. That was easy enough. Step one completed. I lay down the new rug. Hey, I thought, this is going well. I'm patting myself on the back as I go down the stairs and out to the garage to start on the furniture. Ok, furniture now comes in extremely HEAVY boxes in about 3 thousand "easy to assemble pieces." This is the part I hadn't quite thought through. Ummmmm, my husband and son are gone, and I have no one to carry these boxes clear up the stairs. So, I opt to cut open the boxes in the garage and haul the pieces upstairs one by one. This. Takes. Forever. At which point I begin to mutter to myself about how I hope he appreciates this and he better not, I repeat not, say something like, oh, that's nice. If he does, I may have yet another empty spare room for someone to use. Just saying.
The first piece I assemble is one of the bookshelves. Who knew that these simple shelves had so many pieces? I knew I was in trouble when I pulled out the BOOKLET that contained the instructions. SIGH….. At least the instructions are somewhat understandable and I manage to wrangle the pieces into a recognizable book shelf. One down. I decide to tackle the desk next…. oh my lord! Every piece of this desk is heavy. I'm talking baby elephant heavy. And I have to climb a gazillion stairs with said pieces. I think I probably put in about 80,000 miles going up and down said stairs. Eventually all of the 4,000 pieces are up in the room with the instruction booklet that tells me how to put this thing together in 100 easy steps. I open the booklet to find that they do not give written instructions, only very, very small diagramed instructions with even smaller written descriptors like Part A. Lovely. Also, unlike the shelves (which allowed me to use a screwdriver, i.e. electric drill), this desk has come with it's own tool (handmade by Satan himself) called an Allen tool, which must be used by hand. Oh joy! It soon becomes extremely clear to me that they did not mean for one person to build this item. In fact, this item needs at least four hands to hold stuff together while someone tries to tighten the bolts with the lovely, yet frustrating, allen tool. I look at the cat. He yawns and walks out of the room. Creativity is called for here, and I am a creative person I tell myself. I begin to use tape and walls to help hold things in place. It seems odd, but it kind of works. Score.
Finally, at 2am, I am down to the finally steps of desk assembly. I have two steps to go. And I discover that I missed something important in the extremely small diagramed instructions. Four of the major pieces holding the desk together apparently had an up and down side. And, yup, you guessed it, I installed the down side of these four pieces in the up position. I have worn a blister on my hand from using the blessedly devilish Allen tool, and I have to yet again use this horrid thing to undo some of my hard work. At this point, I decide to step away for a minute and go fix myself some dinner and something to drink. Afterwards, I'm feeling a tad calmer, so I go and tackle the desk again. At 3:30am, with desk completed, I haul my tired behind to bed. I will tackle the chair, the other book shelf, and decorating tomorrow.
I force myself out of bed the next morning at 8am, grab some coffee-- which I desperately need-- and get back to work. Now, I'm on a timeline. Jeff is due to arrive at 1:30. I get the chair put together (which also comes with it's own installation tool- gah) and place it behind the desk. I walk another 10,000 miles hauling up the second bookcase parts and pieces and begin the long assembly process. I am almost done assembling the other book case when I look out the window and see Jeff's car pulling in. EARLY. I think I actually growled. Why, oh why, does the universe not want me to surprise this man? This is not how I had pictured this going in my head. My perfect version was having Jeff arrive home to find his room sparkling clean and amazingly put together. I wanted the big reveal! Instead, he saw the big mess. Fun. Boy was he surprised. Especially when he walked in as I grumpily said surprise, handed him an allen tool, and told him to get to work.
In all, it turned out well. And my desired end result, which was having my husband feel special and well loved worked out, even if he did have to help me finish up the project.
If you've made it this far through this long blog, let me stop and applaud you! I do have a point to this, and here it is. In life, we are all under construction. Sometimes the process of improvement is painful, and hard, and just plain old no fun. Sometimes we may feel like there are 10000 instruction steps that must be completed in order for us to be properly put together. And often, we feel like we don't have the proper tools to get the job done. But, I have good news for you! The God of the universe is the one handling the construction process. His goal is for you to understand how much he loves you. How special you are to him. His desired result is for all this construction to work together for your good. You may feel like you are being held up by pieces of tape while trying to screw yourself together with an Allen Tool, but don't give up. If you find you have made a mistake, don't be afraid to go back and do the hard work over in order to get it right. And finally, it's ok if it's messy. Construction is sometimes a messy process, don't forget that.
So, I'll leave you with a few photos of the completed office project. Have a good week!
This chest of drawers belonged to Jeff's great-grandparents. It has all the marks and nicks of being loved and passed down through the family. I was going to paint it, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Instead, I like the fact that when I look at it , it has the character of time and lives well lived etched into it.
I love you Jeff. It has truly been a good life together so far. Can't wait to see what is up ahead.
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