Over the weekend I had the pleasure of playing house. This included the herculean task of fitting a round peg into a square hole. Egad.
On Saturday, I helped receive a huge 500-pound-plus rough-hewn kitchen island into Wendy’s home in McLean.
This was not the typical kitchen island but a heavy, solid-wooden work table rife with iron fittings. No Ikea piece here. Easily weight-bearing — for an elephant.
We knew the entire time that there was a chance that the island wouldn’t fit throught the door to the kitchen. I spend the morning unfastening doors from their jams and clearing the way.
It for sure didn’t fit. Not even remotely, not even just about.
The delivery guy and I tried any number of angles of attack, strategies, and tactics. Wendy almost gave up and sent it back to the antique dealer. We even started to dismantle it by removing the casters.
After removing the casters didn’t work, we decided to unfasten some bolts. Our purpose was to remove two of the legs. We knew it would then be a simple process to bring her in. And it was simple, until we realized that the legs were fastened not merely by the bolts but also by wooden pegs and by long nails.
We asked Wendy if it would be okay to rip two legs from the island. We had a vague idea that we would be able to reassemble it after we got it through the door.
She agreed to it, and I can’t believe we were able to turn her our way. I don’t know how much confidence either of us really had.
Wendy blanched and bolted upstairs as we started wrenching the legs. She just disappeared. Poof. Smart girl, because what happened after that pretty ugly. At the very least, it sounded like we were tearing the valuable and expensive antique to pieces.
We finally pulled both legs clear moved the island into the kitchen. We were even able to reassemble the entire thing into something resembling “just new.”
I attained “Most Capable and Useful Man” standing with her — I still have loads of points left.
The rest of the day was spent playing more house, including visits to Giant, the hardware store, the cafe, some Asian dinner, a visit to her parents’ house amd some weekend vegetating.
To tell you the truth, if I had a choice between living la vida loca and taking the domestic weekend path, I have to choose playing house.
How old does that make me. I loved it.
I shovelled snow, removed and attached doors, manhandled furniture, I hung out in hardware stores, visited parents, went grocery shopping, napped while watching cable, read the paper, sat and talked, and just farted around.
Fantastic!
The only thing missing was cooking, although I did make a pretty nice pot of coffee before the weekend was complete and that’s something.
To quote Kurt Vonnegut, “it doesn’t get better than this.”
