Tough

Today I tackled a tough job.

I assembled a new filing cabinet.

Take a look at this beauty...

It replaces our old filing cabinet. I didn't take any pictures, but you can trust me that it needed replaced. Anyway, looks like a pretty simple assembly, right? On a toughness scale from 1 to 10, maybe a 4, right?

But what if there are a couple other factors involved (besides faulty instructions: curse you double-dowel-gluing-life-ruining-direction!!!) ?

Meet my assistants: Miniature Holdinators 1 and 2.

#1 was anxious to help, while #2 mostly occupied himself with running across the pieces with cam bolts sticking out of them, a rather nerve-wracking thing for Daddy. But we pressed forward...

Of course, what would furniture assembly be without an abundance of quickly destructing styrofoam and two sets of little hands glad to do the destructing?

Things were progressing slowly, but progressing nonetheless, until Mini-Holdinator #2 pushed a piece that had just been fastened to another so that the cam bolts and locks tore out of the offended piece and resulted in a necessary return to the store to exchange the whole package for a new one.

All in all, the toughness rated at least 15.

But I gained wisdom from the earlier experience. I didn't even take the new box-full of pieces and hardware out of the van until after I put both assistants to bed.

Then I was able to assemble it without incident, and having made the mistake of following the directions exactly earlier I was also able to avoid irritating backslides by using them just as much as I needed for reminding and no more. This time around the assembly had a toughness rating of merely 3.

And so the finished product in its new home! Note the pile of receipts in front of it... that's one reason we need a new filing cabinet.

Yeah, that's right. Who's the tough one now?