Single Gal DIY's

Or, "Jana's lazy adventures in assembling furniture."

Before Christmas I ordered a couple of pieces of furniture for my bedroom--a round side table from Amazon and a dresser from Target. The table came in about three days after I ordered it. I assembled it the same day in about an hour. Or maybe 45 minutes, I can't really remember. That was a month ago, you know.

The dresser came in the week after Christmas. The UPS guys left the box at my carport door and since the thing weighed two tons, it took me a minute to figure out how in heck I was gonna get the thing inside. I really didn't want to call Daddy for help because a) he's not in great physical shape these days b) I'd never hear the end of it and c) I hate asking for help. (Mostly C.)

I ended up opening the box on the carport and carrying it in piece by piece. And there were a TON of pieces. Then I looked at all those pieces and thought, meh. It needs to acclimate to the climate of my home, right? Kinda like wood floors do before installing, you know? (At least that's the excuse I'm going with and I'm sticking to it.)

I let the pieces acclimate for about two and a half weeks before I decided it was time to put the pieces together and make furniture. Besides, if I stubbed my toe one more time on the drawer slats, someone was gonna get tossed out a window and it wasn't going to be me.

So late Saturday afternoon after a full day of laundry, dishes and sweeping, I decided to assemble the drawers first. There are six of them and the first one took me roughly thirty minutes. The first one's always the hardest, yanno. After I got it finished, the last five were done in no time and I only had to go back and redo one drawer one time. A major fete for me, let me tell you. The last time I put a large piece of furniture together (with Sis2's help) we had to disassemble and reassemble three times before getting it right--and the doors still hang crooked!

Libby was a little doubtful in my building skills...oh she of little faith!

But I digress...

The drawers were done in about two hours. By then my hands, back and legs were screaming bloody murder at me and it was nearly supper time so I decided to take a break. (More on supper tomorrow.) I cooked supper and by the time I'd finished, I decided that the rest of the pieces needed to acclimate some more.

(Read: "I was tired, my body ached and I had a free preview weekend of Starz to catch up on.)

Fast forward to Sunday night. It was now or never. If I didn't get the rest of the dresser put together then I knew I'd never do it. And since it wasn't cheap and I REALLY wanted to see the end results (and would get tired of six drawers filling up my entryway!), I dragged all my tools back out and got to it.

I decided to assemble it where I intended to place it since I have that whole "hating to ask for help" thing going on and knew I wouldn't be able to move it myself. It took me about two hours and a blister on my palm to finish it. I'd have gotten more pictures of the during, but once I was in my groove, I couldn't stop for fear I'd never get started again.

And I'm really glad I finished it. It looks exactly how I pictured it, I have a TON of extra storage now and it gives my room a nearly finished look.

So, lets take a gander at the very first "before" pics.

And now the freshly garnered "after" pics.

(dresser on the left, new table on the right.)

Now all I've got to do is paint the paneling, spraypaint my headboard black and get new carpet and I can stick a fork in this room and call it done! Yay! Eventually, I do want to get the yellow chair reupholstered in a cream or beige, but that's a project for another decade. lol