While Todd spent Friday evening and Saturday morning over in Redmond playing video games and frisbee golf with friends, I was busy with some projects at home.
Since we both lived separately in small apartments, neither of us had a table to contribute to our place when we got married. We made due with just eating meals on the couch, using the coffee table for our dining table. Somehow we got used to it, but it’s not something I wanted to continue doing for too long. It hurt my back, got food on the couch, and I particularly disliked it when we had guests over and they were forced to dine ‘Harris Style’.
So Friday when I dropped off a friend at the airport, I stopped by IKEA on the way home to do some browsing. Honestly, I just went there to browse!
Well, I had access to an SUV (not our ’2-seater, no trunk space’ car), and I ended up coming home with this:
I spent the good part of Friday evening putting together a table and 2 chairs. IKEA does a great job of making their products easy to assemble, but only having a manual screwdriver made the task very time-consuming and painful for my wrists.
For fear of becoming too manly (and needing some relief from the frustration of manual assembly), I kept my feminism in check and baked a delicious homemade loaf of banana nut bread. yummy.
Thankfully, Ryan let us borrow his cordless screwdriver yesterday so I could finish up tightening the screws and making sure we didn’t have a catastrophe in the middle of dinner.
It’s a little 2-person table that has hidden sleeves that pull out to extend the table to a 4-person seating. I wasn’t sure if it would work—it has some weird contraptions going on underneath—but so far, it’s been good to us and will suffice until we move someplace big enough for a ‘real’ dining table.
I realize it may seem odd that we don’t own any power tools*, but when you live in apartments, it’s highly recommended not to screw things into your walls, etc., otherwise you’ll have to pay for the repairs. We’ve just never needed anything more than a hammer, some nails, and a screwdriver.
*Todd probably would appreciate it if I mentioned that he owns lots of tools. It’s just that they’re for cars, not building things for the home:)