Yesterday morning early, as I was coming down the stairs, it struck me that something wasn't quite right. And looking through the banisters I saw immediately what was wrong. And how, I wondered, with all my experience, could I have made such a mistake.
What I was looking at, was a dressing table, a flat-pack, that I had partly assembled the day before. And what was wrong, was, that I had installed the undersides of the cabinets, (into which the drawers are fitted), upside down.
Now this would not have mattered had both sides of the furniture been stained and polished. But as that was not the case, and as these undersides extend as a lipped surround beyond the area of the drawers, what had caught my eye, was the raw timber. A mistake, that however unlikely it might seem, brings me to my parenting skills.
Among the many gems of wisdom that I sought to impart to Leo, down the years, was the truth, that the real skill in DIY, is in knowing how to solve a problem. And not least, in this regard, in knowing how to rectify your own mistakes.
Well, true to these credentials, the solution came in an instant. Instead of dismantling the furniture, I thought, only to have to rebuild it, I would stain and varnish the offending timber, with materials that I had in the garage. So imagine my dismay, when, returning to the task at mid day, I discovered that there was not just one mistake, but two. Not only were parts of the unit upside down, but, when I tried alligning the drawers to their respective runners, they were sitting - high on the left and low on the right - Or, if you prefer, lopsided. An extraordinary circumstance, given the care: the checking and double checking that I had done, to ensure not just that all four runners had been fitted correctly to each panel, but that when all four panels were laid side by side, the runners were in parallel.
Now another of the gems of wisdom that I sought to impart to Leo, (in moments of boyhood crisis), was the truth, that "every problem has a solution". Firstly, because I believed it to be true, and secondly, in the hope that in time, this additional insight would help him to take the ups and downs of life in his stride. As a strategy it worked, or seemed to, until someone in whom he confided, (and who was just as concerned with the truth, as I was), told him that it wasn't true! that every problem has a solution. But it is true, I insisted, adding, that what I had hoped for was, that in time, Leo would come to accept, that in some situations the solution lies, not in resolving the issues, but instead, in accepting that there is nothing more that you can do.
So what was the solution, and what had gone wrong in my own case.
At first it seemed, that this was another case of two of the pair of panels, (one in each case), having been fitted upside down. For I could see that if I turned them around, the metal runners on either side, would be at a corresponding height. But just as quickly it came to me, that if I did this, I would be exchanging one problem for another. For with the offending panels reversed, their polished edge would be facing out from the back of the unit. So there was no alternative. I would, after all, have to dismantle the dressing table and realign the runners. A task that would require patience and skill, given that the backing panels were already nailed, firmly in place.
And as fate would have it, Leo was coming to lunch, and arrived just in time to see his guru excel, in rectifying his mistakes. A task made light of, as in fake Dublin accents, we discussed t-terrors of flat-packed furniture.
As for what went wrong, well, I think I know. But I am not prepared to dismantle the dressing table, yet again, to prove the accuracy of what it is that I am about to tell you.
As part of the mass production process, each of the side panels had been cut to a general purpose template, with the result that many of the markings were not required in what I was doing. And though everything looked in order when I took the additional precaution of checking the position of the runners in relation to the unused markings, in laying the panels side by side, I had made a crucial mistake. Instead of thinking of these panels as pairs, and aligning them as such, (in effect back to back), I had set them out as individual pieces. Yes, all the runners were aligned, and yes, all corresponded exactly to the unused marking. But what was crucial in disguising my mistake, was, that the runners at either end of each panel, were not designed to be equi distant from the edge. Consequently an upside down panel looked right in relation to its neighbour. - And there were two of them.
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© Cormac McCloskey
Note: This blog, "All In A Day", was first published on Windows Live Spaces, by me, on 16th July 2008
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