The desk and credenza
I never would have known what a credenza was if I hadn’t gone to Crate and Barrell with Sarah and Madeline. I probably never would have decided to renovate the kitchen either. We went looking for the latest in kitchen gadgets after having some breakfast at Abe and Louie’s a few weeks back. The actual purchases included a snowman replacement doormat for our leaves doormat. the curse of the seasonal doormat is that you need to replace it three times per year. We also purchased an oven safe bowl for cooking a frozen French onion soup that we had bought at Trader Joes with the hope of making our own soup with tasty cheese on top. The rock hard soup has been in the freezer since summer. We still haven’t heated it up.
But the main important fact about our trip to C&B was that we made our way to the third floor where Sarah enjoys gawking at the Vendome collection. She has wanted a Vendome bed since I have known her but because of problems like our already having a bed and that once we bought the bed we would have to purchase every other item in the set or else our bedroom would get out of synch. So we left Crate and Barrell without a furniture purchasing incident.
My general experience with furniture purchasing of any sort is similar to my experience with car tune-ups. The simplest change in a system in equilibrium can tip everything that has been waiting to tip over the top. With the car when I go to fix a gas cap I end-up with new brake pads, some bracket needs to be replaced in the back, and a computer chip that needs replacement. All of these repairs are required because not fixing any of them most likely leads in one way or another to death. Electronics and furniture are also linked.
The last big furniture revolution came when I purchased a new 42” projection television. In order to make it work I decided it would be best to get a new DVD player and since I don’t subscribe to television through cable I also went into a large project to acquire proper satellite television equipment and acquired some hacking equipment to test various hacking with the satellite dish. I also couldn’t just install a television without purchasing a new couch and comfort seat fit for two. Once the new furniture was installed I decided to also purchase a TV friendly computer so that I could send images over to the television. And that could only be made possible by purchasing a receiver to split the signal from all of the components, a universal remote control, and a surround sound set of speakers from Cambridge Soundworks. That was the end of the last home revolution.
So after we got home from C&B I thought I might see if I could use craigslist to find a vendome style bed. People sell everything on that thing. As it turned out someone was selling a desk and credenza at a highly discounted rate that was advertised as a Crate and Barrell Vendome styled set and the whole set was going for $250. I jumped on this advertisement and replied to find that it was available if I could pick it up. Sarah looked at it the next day to confirm that it was something she wanted and I committed to pick it up on Saturday in a U-Haul truck.
So Saturday rolled around and Sarah managed to rope her brother Matthew into the moving process since a desk and credenza are large items. Matthew was to come over by 10:30 because according to Sarah the woman would only be available until 12 noon.
Since it was the beginning of a big furniture transition day I took my PT Cruiser over to Valvoline to get the fluids checked. While I was there I learned that they offer a tire rotating service. So I took them up on that too. Tire rotation at an oil change shop takes about six hours from what I could determine so it was approaching 10:30 when they were finishing the tire rotation. They let me know that my lug nuts are rusted out so my tires could pop off at any time but they did fill the tire that was running low on air.
I then drove home and Sarah was getting quite worried that we were going to miss the window of opportunity to pick up the desk and credenza. So I biked over to the U-Haul which is across the street from the Valvoline but there didn’t appear to be a simple way to exchange cars. The folks at U-Haul have an interesting pricing model. They rent the truck for $19.99 or so but then they charge $1 per mile. They expect the run to be fairly quick since I told them we’d be gone from 10:30 – 3:30 PM and that was about enough to keep them from charging some other late fee. They try to sell all sorts of extra things as well including plastic bags for $300/bag and insurance that costs about $30. So the advertised rate is only there if you refuse the apparently helpful insurance. The sales person let me know that someone had crashed a truck the day before and they hadn’t bough the insurance. I think they are trained to say scary things like that.
I finally hopped into my vehicle to find it to be what looked like a very old front of a truck with a big box attached to the back. How anyone would notice if I did get into an accident is beyond me. I returned to the condo to find Matthew there along with Sarah, still worried about our getting there late, and then hit the road. I called the woman selling the desk and credenza to find that she hadn’t meant that we had to be there before noon but that she wouldn’t be there until noon. So we were on the road in a U-Haul paying a buck a mile and were about to become very early. Matthew was quick to point out that when other drivers see a U-Haul they run scared because they know that you can’t see anything and have no idea how to drive a truck. This made life a little easier making the ride down on 128 towards Norwood where the items were.
Since we were driving to get office furniture I decided to stop at Staples to get a chair. Our chair by our desk, being in equilibrium, was a chair that I found in the condo when I first arrived. It was a yellow wooden chair that hadn’t been covered when people had painted a room so it had white strips of dripped paint on it. For a long time it had been covered by one of those slips that makes ugly chairs look fancy but time had destroyed it and we were sitting at our old desk with an old wooden chair that looked like it was a part of an artist studio.
So we purchased a nice office chair that spins and tilts at Staples. I also bought lots of desk stuff for our new used desk including holders for items and a drawer stuff organizer. We then went on to the real estate agent’s office that was selling the items. The woman there was quite a real estate agent. Despite the fact that we were looking to purchase used furniture from her because her expensive furniture didn’t match her new Ikea cheaper furniture she decided to try to sell me on moving into a new home and using her as an agent. When Matthew and I entered the office we saw a desk and file cabinet. I thought to myself. A credenza must be a file cabinet! But upon asking her I learned that a credenza is actually a large piece of furniture with a bunch of drawers and cabinets and a top piece with cubby holes in it. Now I was thinking that a desk should come with it’s matching file cabinet so I asked the real estate agent whether the file cabinet was on sale. Her response was that anything is for sale but that she had a use for the file cabinet but not the other two items which was why the other two were less expensive. So I decided that we already had rented the U-Haul and settled on a price $50 higher for the file cabinet than I had paid for the desk and credenza together.
Unfortunately I didn’t have the cash for it so I had to go on a little journey down the street to find a bank machine to get cash to pay her. The bank machine at Bank of America was occupied by three employees of a local grocery store who were annoyed that the grocery store had stopped using Sovereign Bank to cut their checks because now they had to go to Bank of America to deposit them. I wasn’t that interested in correcting them that it didn’t matter which bank issued a check for when you deposit them. Two of the employees were fussing around the bank machine because one was confident that you could deposit a check in the bank machine while the other was sure it would just disappear. They had no choice since the bank itself wasn’t opening for another hour or two. The main problem seemed to stem from the fact that they were going to write another check for the rent on Monday and they didn’t want it to bounce because the deposit didn’t get through at the bank. But eventually I got all the cash I needed for the transaction and purchased the furniture.
We loaded the furniture into the U-Haul and as we were driving back to Brookline it struck me that having a U-Haul is not an ordinary event. I can’t usually carry much in the back of my car. We kept passing the Christmas tree vending shops and I had recalled that Sarah had said that she didn’t want a tree this year because it would be too messy. But after passing three tree dealers in a row and when I thought there would be none left I turned into the Winston’s lot, Winston’s is apparently the Cadillac of Christmas trees, and I then negotiated a nice tree along with a stand that we then threw into the back of the U-Haul.
So finally Matthew and I returned to Brookline full of items including a surprise tree. When we brought it into the condo I needed to get my camera to film the reaction from Sarah. I wasn’t sure if she would be angry or elated when Matthew charged into the apartment with a nine foot tall tree. So we first brought the new file cabinet in. I then went back down with Matthew and we tried to set-up the tree in the hallway. I thought that Sarah wouldn’t come out but she walked right out to where she could almost see the tree. I got the camera out and then proceeded to wait about two minutes while Matthew cut all sorts of cords off of the tree and got it attached better to the stand. Sarah was suspicious because I had the camera out so I figured she had seen downstairs and knew what was coming. But when Matthew charged in Madeline started jumping up and down excited to see a tree inside and Sarah was also very happy and excited.
The rest of the afternoon I discovered that moving furniture in my condo is difficult. I finally started to make use of the storage room in the basement and placed the old desk, secretary (looks like a credenza), and file cabinet down there. We returned the U-Haul, I biked home and all was well.
But that is not the end of the story really because we had upset the fundamental equilibrium of the apartment by doing this. I had placed items into the basement for storage for the first time. Other people had placed items into storage before and over time other unit owners had built enclosures to keep the items sorted out so that you could throw out items not in the enclosures. But since I was placing items without an enclosure I needed to build an enclosure in the basement. In order to do this I was going to need some construction help so Sarah and I chatted and decided we could call Nick F. who could do the work.
But if I was going to call Nick F. to look at the condo then I might as well call him about the project we have been thinking about doing for the past three years. That is to install a bubbly tub in the bathroom and replace the kitchen appliances and cabinets. So we are embarking on a new project to plan the kitchen and bathroom replacement stuff. To install a hot tub we needed to consult an electrician so I figured I’d bring-up that I would like to stop the circuit breaker from shutting down everything in the summer and he mentioned that he could put the air conditioners on a separate circuit. To run the new circuit we figured it would be easiest to cover the current popcorn ceiling in the living room with a new ceiling and run the circuit down the middle. If we were going to run wires through the living room it also would make sense to hide the speaker wires for the surround sound, connect the wire to the roof for the antennae and/or satellite dish, and move from a projection TV to a flat screen while placing the components in a media closet. All this sounded very logical until I saw an estimate of what it might cost without the hardware. But the point here is this:
Beware that loose strand on your sweater. If you pull it prepare for more than you expected.
