Oct 3, 2016 3 min read

There are a lot of really awesome things about living in an old house. There are built-in cupboards and closets, really lovely old floors, and this old style of beam-and-pin construction that makes it virtually indestructible, to name a few. We have slowly and lovingly been renovating it for over a decade now, and, while we still have a long way to go, we are beginning to realize our vision.

Our most recent renovation project entailed taking an old storage room upstairs and turning it into a bedroom for our middle girl. She outgrew the small bedroom we had made for her several years ago, although it needs very little work to become a craft room for me.

We have removed shelves, patched plaster, put up a stained-wood ceiling, built a closet, scraped trim, painted walls, built windowsills and laid carpet. Note: I have said “we” several times already in the short amount that I’ve written. I’d like to clarify, that when I say we, I mostly don’t mean “we.” I mostly mean my husband. I have basically only helped with demolition and a little painting. I’m especially good at demolition, but even that is limited by the length of my attention span.

I did undertake a solo attempt to build the new bed that we bought for the room, however. That was a mistake, as I did not understand the number of pieces that would be pouring forth from the boxes.

In addition to the (truly astounding) number of parts that were piled on the floor, I also discovered two packets of instructions designed to help me.

I had no words to explain how I was going to build this thing. No, really, there were no words written in the instruction packets. Simply a pictorial guide. I was expected to read this thing like a map, and anyone who knows anything at all about me knows maps are not my friend.

I began by sorting the hardware. Two bags of screws, cam latches, little plastic things with threads on both ends – 12 different types of fasteners were in one bag. They were assigned a number, but no description, and I had to figure out what went where. My son had brought me an egg carton to put the pieces in (the wonderfully clever boy that he is), and I sorted. After searching for several minutes, I finally discovered that they had skipped the number nine in their calculations, and there were no screws for that space in the carton. Wonderful news. My confidence in the accuracy of the picture book I was about to read plummeted further than I thought possible.

Wait, what? There are drawers in this thing? And where does this thing go? Are these pre-drilled holes off? This can’t be right. Oh, husband, are you busy?

Fortunately, he was available. Together, we still spent two to three hours building the stinking bed. (Why does a headboard come in 11 pieces – and with its own bag of hardware – anyway?) We were, however, successful in completing it. Our girl spent her first night in her nearly completed room on her actually completed bed.

I wonder what my husband has planned for his time next week. I have some ideas for that craft room.

Laura Zoeller can be reached at zoeller5@verizon.net.