Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Rosie's How To Make a Shelf with No Tools and No Brains.

1. On your walk home from the gym, pick up a plank of wood from outside a cafe where you later intend to ask for Christmas work, and hope they don't see you.
2. The plank is far too long for the space (even though it is only slightly longer than the too-short piece you hopped out of your car and [inaccurately..] measured like a psycho in the previous evening). After remeasuring, ineffectively, painstakingly take to it with a pruning saw.
3. Return to the space. The plank still doesn't fit, so take 100 hours to trim a little more off.
4. Repeat (seriously).
5. Since it turns out the plank has no magical floating abilities and will not hold itself up, return to the cafe wood pile. If anybody sees you, pretend to be a tree (finally - my acting training comes in handy!). Grab a drawer which, upon dismantling, will presumably have evenly measured, flat sides for propping up shelf.
6. Discover drawer sides have protruding bolts that cannot be extricated (without further crumbling shitty wood), and so try to 'drill' matching holes in shelf. With a screw. And a screwdriver. Realise this is ridiculous and try not to repeat in blog.
7. Saw slits either side of plank and slot in the stupid bolt wood. Aha! Perfect.
8. Return to space with assembled shelf and discover it still doesn't fit. What?! The space seems to shrink the further you go in. What is this? Alice in Wonderland.. land?! Smash a few things in a rage (like your other perfectly good furniture. And your husband) and return outside with the shelf.
9. Try ONE LAST FUCKING TIME to saw off the perfect amount of shelf with your pruning tool. Take several breaks to stare out into space, wondering what your recently deceased agriculturalist uncle would think of your misuse of the saw, as well as your pathetic attempt to prune back some bushes just yonder (again with the wrong tools. Which also somehow resulted in the breaking of a shovel...). Consider giving up after all this time and taking that well overdue post-gym shower, then remember that Stupidity is your middle name and proceed.
10. Try damn shelf in bullshit space again.. and it fits! It also sags in the middle and is too weak to hold all you intended, but you can bake my bottom into biscuits if you think I'm going to find a third prop.
Voila!

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