Sunday, 9:09a.m.—I swipe my roommate’s car keys from the counter and head outside while she sleeps.

9:10a.m.—I pop the trunk of her Nissan Rogue and size up the plump, tattered cardboard box within.

Don’t worry, this is not a theft. Or a murder cover-up. The box holds our joint Facebook Marketplace purchase: a coffee bar + corner shelves (brand new! never assembled!). Ellie picked it up the previous day while I was at a wedding. After a good night’s sleep, my greedy inner homemaker is itching to install a new piece of furniture.

I’d heard that assembling furniture could be annoying. And Ellie had warned me that the box was very heavy. Nevertheless, I wanted to see how far I could get.

9:11a.m.—I attempt to lift the box. It is, indeed, very heavy. It’s also already open. I grab an armful of rods and wood panels and start back to the apartment.

9:15a.m.—Three trips later, the box and its contents are in piles around our living room. The pieces are numbered, so I arrange them by number. There are thirty one different pieces and a variety of screws in little baggies labeled A-Q. The instructions “highly recommend” “professional installation,” or at least that “multiple people” assemble this product. “Assembly is to be performed by competent adults only,” the booklet warns.

Um, bet? The complexity is daunting, but not enough to dim my vision of a cute coffee station. I eat some oatmeal and pour another cup of coffee.

9:45a.m.—The church livestream blares through my headphones as I carefully assemble the metal frame. I panic slightly when two pieces that need to slide into each other don’t line up. Is this crappily manufactured? Did we get ripped off? 

I pull one of them into place and push. They slide in, easy-peasy. Whew. Crisis solved. Go, me!

11:30a.m.—Church is over and I’m cooking. I dust off each part before bringing it to my clean workspace. I cross-check screw holes with the instruction manual, making sure that they’re correctly aligned. I screw everything in loosely so that I can make adjustments before tightening them down. “This is so much fun,” I text my boyfriend. “It’s like a LEGO set for adults!”

12:15p.m.—Ellie emerges from her bedroom to find me crouched in the dining room, wearing my camping headlamp so that I can guide screws through layers of material. She is delighted and very amused.

1:30p.m.—Ellie and I have a friend on FaceTime when another crisis arises. I’m building the little cabinet section, and its thin back panel is taller than the other sides. I try to attach the bottom to it anyway. It slants awkwardly, leaving gaps in the corners.

What to do? I consider my multitool (which I use maybe twice a year). The mini saw attachment is tempting…but the option that’s least likely to send me to urgent care is to sand down the panel until it fits. I retrieve my super coarse sandpaper from storage.

3:00p.m.— I’m still sanding. My dear friend on FaceTime is patiently dealing with the background noise. I’ve donned a facemask and glasses, but some dust still lands in my eyes. Maybe cutting my hand open with my mini saw would’ve been preferable to the long-term health effects of inhaling fake wood particles. I sure hope this panel truly needs to be shorter, I think. This is kinda irreversible. But it was uneven! We all saw it.

3:30p.m.—The panel fits evenly. Hooray! Time to screw the cabinet onto the main frame.

3:45p.m.—The cabinet’s screw holes won’t line up with the frame. What gives? I don’t know what I can change, but I pull it back out for another look.

3:50p.m.—I’ve put the cabinet’s bottom on backwards. The groove in it that I thought was for the doors? Is actually for the “too-tall” back panel. Which is now—thanks to my sanding—too short.

The unevenly sanded sliver of space between the back and top of the cabinet sends my perfectionism spiraling. Only Ellie’s assessment (“…That? Oh, girl, we’re fine”) soothes me a little. I am dismayed. But the coffee bar must rise.

4:30p.m.—This morning’s luster is gone. I’m phoning it in on the shelves—tightening screws fully the first time because I “just want it to be done,” only to loosen them when I can’t fit the next piece in.

5:00p.m.—Ellie asks if I still want to go to the gym today. I do. I realize that I haven’t brushed my teeth yet.

8:30p.m.—After a workout and dinner, I return to my now-chaotic workspace. Only a few shelves left. I find two shelves that didn’t get all their screws post-cabinet-fiasco.

9:30p.m.—I try to insert the cabinet doors and realize that I assembled two left doors. Their design is too ambiguous, it would seem. Moving the magnetic strip on one leaves puckered screwholes in the particleboard. Earlier in the day, this blemish would have filled me with regret; now, I feel relief that it isn’t worse.

10:15p.m.—I tighten the last screws, sweep the floor, and move the coffee bar into place. The outlet works. The drawers slide out. The cabinet opens and closes. It’s glorious. So many shelves! We will fill them with mugs and cute things.

“That really did take you all day,” Ellie says sympathetically.

Eleanor Lee

Eleanor Lee (‘23) graduated from Calvin with degrees in computer science and writing. She grew up in South Carolina but currently lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She loves coffee, laughing, and bringing emojis to the workplace.