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It wasn’t exactly a credenza that tried to kill me.
It was more of an armoire. I think that sounds classier than “thing full of tomato sauce and potatoes.”
Step 138 of our 46-year remodeling project was to find a better place to store the oatmeal, flour, and leaves for the dining room table. It’s January in Minnesota, still a pandemic, and my shop is as good a place as any to spend my time. I cleaned up the mess from my last project and started making more sawdust.
I finished building the credenza/armoire/pantry a week ago. It’s 4 feet by 6 feet and looks good. Although, since it’s made of solid wood, it weighs a couple hundred pounds.
That’s important to note.
Also important to note is that even though it’s only six feet tall, it’s four feet wide, so when you rock it up on an appliance cart, it’s 92 inches on the diagonal. That means you need to crouch quite low to get it through a door.
For an old farmhouse, our house isn’t bad in terms of moving furniture. About fifteen years ago, we built a covered ramp, four feet wide, from the garage to the house. It was kind of a project, but I’ve never regretted it. And over the years, various plumbers and other tradesmen have shared my approval.
I fastened the armoire onto an appliance cart and hauled it over to the garage.
So far so good.
About three fourths of the way up the ramp, pulling it one step at a time, I hit a patch of ice and gravity did the rest.
And gravity knows its business.
One moment I was more or less vertical, the next, I was clearly horizontal.
I know you’re wondering what happened to the furniture. Relax. It could have been badly damaged, but luckily, I broke its fall with my ribs and titanium knee.
Have you ever stepped on a giant bug and looked down to see a blob of unidentified goo and a few feebly waving legs poking out from under your shoe?
Yeah, that was me.
My wife was watching from the door. If she’d been on her toes and filmed the whole event, we could have made a fortune. Of course, the video would have been shown on, “Losers, Bozos, and Clowns,” but for fame and fortune, that’s a price I’d be willing to pay. But no, instead of hanging on her phone like a normal person, she came rushing to see if I was dead.
I was about 65% under the credenza, holding onto the handle of the appliance cart with grim determination. I had a vision of the thing getting away from me, sliding down the ramp and crashing into a pile of splinters.
My wife was hovering, making disapproving sounds. This was kind of a new experience for her. Since she worked off the farm for a few decades, she rarely witnessed my catastrophes, and instead just dealt with the aftermath. I admit even that can be a lot of bother. I don’t think being part of the process from beginning to end was any more fun.
She helped pry me out from underneath and we did a quick check for body functionality. I was okay and there was only one cracked piece of trim on the furniture.
All things considered, I call that a win.
Copyright 2021 Brent Olson
