Schmone Schmad Schmapple

Cabinets were my job. They came with wordless, diagrammed assembly instructions, and I’m better at following those things than Johnny is. So while he and Andy continued the destruction – tearing out the floor that had rotted under the leaky sink; deciding to go ahead and tear the floor out along that entire wall; putting Durock down instead of sub-floor so we wouldn’t have to worry about that problem again (or maybe in addition to sub-floor, I don't remember); ripping out the ancient, grease-clogged exhaust fan which, when we moved in, had been covered with an equally greasy rag against the cold; and filling the greasy hole it left with foamy Great Stuff – while he and Andy continued all of this, I assembled cabinets in the master bedroom and lined them up, on towels, on the brand-new wide-pine floor around my bed.

(I am inordinately pleased to note that even Microsoft Word doesn’t think that last sentence is a run-on. 120 words, and not a scoldy squiggle to be seen. Beat that!)

I actually enjoy this kind of work. It’s like a game, a puzzle. Look at the picture, find the piece that looks like that, and make the shape you see. Hm. More like an IQ test, now that I think about it. Or a psychiatric evaluation. Well, then...

No wonder I enjoy it!

Anyhoo, one of the kits had a piece with a smashed bit on it, but I put it together anyway. Enough wood glue, I figured, and it would hold up fine. Johnny said no, and Andy agreed. Because the smashed bit was on the corner, it encompassed the holes where the hardware was supposed to go. Without the hardware in its proper place, the structural integrity of the cabinet was compromised. And without its integrity, the cabinet couldn’t be trusted to bear the countertop.

Whatever. Just pretend I never said anything, okay? Just use it? Please?

No.

Johnny called the company to ask them their opinion, and they said not to use it. They said they’d send us a replacement piece. And they did. In less than three days, too. But with all that wood glue I’d slathered in, I couldn’t get the g-d smashed bit to come off without smashing all the other bits to match. And of course, with it all put together and glued-up like that, I couldn’t even return the faulty thing. So I had to go back to Home Depot and buy another, non-smashed cabinet as a replacement for the one I was too defective to know not to use.

And Johnny, being Johnny, didn’t want to throw away the smashed one. It sat in the front hallway for half a year while he and I tried to out-stubborn one another. I guess he won, because finally, when we had the floors done, I threw the damn thing in the attic. It’s still up there now. It’s got no doors or shelves – or top, for crying out loud – so the crap that wound up getting shoved in there could just as easily be sitting in a pile on the floor. But hey, you never know, that doorless, topless cabinet might come in handy someday, smashed corner-bit and all.

As might its replacement piece. Which, still packed in shipping cardboard, stands vigil in the attic by the poor broken bastard's side.