When M and I decided to remodel our kitchen three years ago, my original plan was to have a seating space with bookcases and a place for a small TV. As the building (and costs) went forward, things changed as they always do, and my seating space became more cabinets and storage.
Which isn’t all bad. There’s a part of me that believes you can never have too many cabinets.
When we hosted our dinner party, 10 days ago, we moved a couple of armchairs from the den into the kitchen and added more casual seating to that end of the room. After everyone left at the end of the evening, we decided we liked having the chairs there, so I went online to find an affordable option to keep in the kitchen.
The kitchen cabinets are white, the walls are grey and the counter tops are a dark grey quartz – so of course, I chose the orange, mid-century modern chair (above) for a bright pop of color.
When I got home from work Friday, the chairs had arrived and M had one of the boxes opened in the garage and all the pieces strewn around.
Okay.
I quickly got changed and went to the garage to help him assemble the chairs. He was looking at step 3 of the instructions.
“Great,” I said. “Have you already done steps 1 and 2?”
No.
Let’s start over. Back to step 1 and let’s gather all the pieces together. I may have mentioned before (when M and I were trying to light the gas logs and we had to call our son to help us) that I’ve never been one for following written instructions.
But I did learn something from that gas logs experience – following the instructions actually DOES work. So, I looked at the instructions and I took each one, step by step. Now, it’s a sad day when I’m the one leading the “let’s put this chair together” parade, but that’s the point to which we have arrived.
The good news is, M and I assembled two chairs and a variety of people sat in them throughout the weekend without getting hurt and without the chairs falling to pieces. More good news, we assembled the chairs without killing each other.
And there really isn’t any bad news.
Of course, in the old days, M would have been able to put those two chairs together before I got home from work and probably could have done it with one hand tied behind his back. But those days are gone – and the sooner I accept that and move on, the better off I’m going to be.
AND – I need to celebrate the fact that I was able to put these chairs together! Because – really and truly, if you had asked me before if I thought I could do something like that, the answer would have been “NO.”
Turns out – I can.
Yes, you can.
Yes you can.