assembly required

hot tip: don't buy furniture that needs building

Look, I’m not proud of this but I’m going to be brutally honest.

I needed an attractive, charismatic bathroom cabinet but everything on Vinterior is £9000, everything in Ikea looks the same as everything else and when you Google ‘bathroom cabinet’ you only get suggestions from Amazon, Wayfair and scam companies called stuff like Cabinet World Of Cabinets For Cabinetry Cabinets. Okay and Dunelm but come on, I’ve got self respect*

*I’ve bought too many things from Dunelm, so was hoping to branch out.

Wayfair isn’t Amazon, but it’s not a cute small business run by a woman called Ethel and her son Lance either. No I don’t know why I went for those names either. My aim this year is to do what I did with clothing ages ago and go 100% ethical or vintage.

Problem is, the hall-of-mirrors algorithm makes finding new and exciting small businesses run by Ethel and Lance tricky, especially when you’re slightly drunk on a train and desperate for a quick cabinet fix. So I caved.

I bought two M&S egg sandwiches, a packet of crisps (that I put in the sandwiches, obviously) and a cheap bathroom cabinet from Wayfair that looked like it could be classy if you squinted. Yeah it said ‘assembly required’ and I thought ‘how hard can it be’ and yeah, turns out it can be really hard.

Here is a list of things that occurred while I attempted to assemble the cabinet, as required:

1. I waited a month and a half after the cabinet arrived because the instruction pamphlet said I needed a drill. I didn’t check what part of the assembly would require the drill because the instruction pamphlet looked like this:

2. Once I’d got a drill and finally sat down to make the thing, it became clear said drill was necessary only if you wanted to fix the cabinet to a wall which I didn’t. So I waited a month and a half for no reason and now own a drill I don’t need. I guess it’s nice to own a drill, even if I’m too scared to drill the wall in case I drill through a water pipe or electric wire (yes, I bought one of those pens that detect voltage but I don’t trust it because the light goes crazy when I beam it at a blank wall, but does nothing when beamed directly at a light switch with wires sprouting from it).

3. I was calmed by the first portion of the assembly, which involved screwing little nails with plastic sheaths on them into holes that felt far too small but turned out not to be. To add excitement to proceedings, the pamphlet didn’t encourage you to use a screwdriver for this bit but I did, because I am a Mav (maverick).*

*That didn’t seem right so I just went upstairs to double check, and there is a large line drawing of a screwdriver next to these steps, complete with a large checkmark. Look, incredibly simple signs next to secondary signs further illuminating the original sign are a real issue for me ok.

4. Every time I used a hammer, the dog started barking. I should point out the dog starts barking at most things because we’ve recently moved house, so this isn’t a great metric. Me and my partner looked at the electricity meter the other day and she started barking. I changed the batteries on the smoke alarm and she started barking. Maybe she just hates home-based tasks.

5. The instructions were all like ‘STEP 3 (X 2)’ and then a picture of a nail labelled S31185 (5) alongside four identical panels labelled 3053582, 358923, 0938532 and 4. And the only difference between the panels was one of them had an extra hole (not pictured).

6. It took me a full hour to do the first two steps. I told myself not to look at how many steps there were in total, but the pamphlet fell open at the final page, I saw STEP 29 and had to eat the rest of my Christmas selection box - Hotel Chocolat, vegan nut milk batons (X 2) - to boost morale.

7. Some of the steps quite clearly required you to do four things, but perhaps they knew morale would be low with a 114-step instruction booklet and so intentionally limited it to 29. In saying this, understanding the logic isn’t the same as agreeing and I am considering taking them to court.

8. Quite deep into the process (STEP 10) I realised I’d put the base of the cabinet on backwards. It was too late to go back because I’d screwed so many holes in the cheap panels that they’d crumble to dust if I fannied further. So on I ploughed. Imagine how it feels continuing onwards with your mistake ever-present, looming over your shoulder. A constant reminder that you might get away with it, but then again, everything might come crashing down around you.

Will you realise during the next STEP that the back-to-front base interferes with the attachment of the cupboard doors? Will it all be fine until right at the end, when the entire thing falls over? Will there be no structural issue, but the base of the cabinet is left, say, with an ugly chipboard edge that your partner suggests you paint because ‘it really pulls focus’? Just throwing out examples here.

9. Had a hot chocolate to boost the morale that had once again plunged post-selection box. I went to the loo and came back to find the dog licking the mug. Chocolate is dangerous for dogs but luckily I’d already scraped up every last bit of chocolate with my finger like a raccoon so there wasn’t enough poison present to necessitate a vet trip. The last vet trip was because she ate a family sized bar of Galaxy on the beach and we had to pay £250 for a vomit injection to help her throw it up. She’s also had vomit injections for: more chocolate, a bag of raisins and half a welcome mat.

10. Thought I’d cheer myself up further by making the drawers, because I’ve never made a drawer before. Full disclosure, this substack was meant to be a fun DIY video on my Instagram, an idea I abandoned when I realised the footage was seven hours long and that I never wanted to think about what I’d experienced again, let alone watch it back and edit it together.

Also it wasn’t entertaining to watch, as you can imagine from such exciting bullet points as: ‘The instructions were like STEP 3 (X 2) and then a picture of a nail labelled S31185 (5)’. Imagine that as a video. It barely works as a substack post, but give me a break okay, I’ve had a hard time.

The only bit I remembered was the drawer section, so enjoy this short vignette of me making the drawers. It was hour five of seven.

11. OK I lied, I didn’t do the whole thing in seven hours. I went to sleep after getting stumped by STEP 25 (X 8) due to a door hinge issue, so if you include the sleeping, it took me 16 hours.

I wanted to follow this up with a ‘that’s x number of episodes of Rivals’ joke but googled how long Rivals episodes are and they are 55 minutes. I then - not joking - typed into my calculator the following sum:

16 ÷ 55 = 0.29090909

then

55 x 16 = 880

Then stared into the middle distance for ten seconds thinking ‘what’ and now I’m giving up because life is too short.

12. The next day when I returned to STEP 25 with fresh eyes, I still couldn’t work out the door hinges. Can I just explain? If it’s very boring, please skip to the paragraph below, I just need the record to state that the hinges were all made up of two separate parts, and nowhere did it explain in the instruction booklet a) that the hinges would be in two parts b) why they were in two parts or c) how to fix the two parts together.

Hello welcome to the paragraph below! My partner took a look at the hinges - he’s also terrible at DIY, but more patient - and it turned out I wasn’t wrong, I just wasn’t pressing something hard enough! Classic me, etc. I don’t know what that means. Anyway, I was so heartened by being physically weak rather than thick that I sped through the final five stages and managed to fix all the doors to the cabinet in under an hour.

13. My wrist is still uncomfortable two days later from all the screwing, wahey.

14. My knees are bruised and it feels like I’ve pulled a muscle in my shoulder and neck from being so tense for an entire day, night (I had vivid dreams about cabinetry) and the following morning.

Hey, but how’s the cabinet Stevie?

I just went to take a picture but there are people in doing our flooring, so he’s been put underneath multiple boxes and plants and is facing a wall. I also deleted the video footage I took because it had taken up all the storage on my phone. This is a disaster!!!!! I can’t end without a picture of the thing I’ve spent the last 56,000 words writing about building????

Okay I’ll have to post a picture of him in the near future because I cannot fathom writing another substack post for this week. I just can’t start from scratch okay.

Suffice to say the doors are, on close inspection, ever-so-slightly wonky and there’s a large hole down the back of the base due to it being on backwards (plus the attractive strip of raw chipboard along the bottom) but I’ve never been prouder of anything in my life. Okay that’s a lie, but I’m very very proud of it.

Here is the picture off the website:

Oh also the cupboard/drawer handles on my version are wonky, but you really have to LOOK to see that. I don’t think people look at bathroom cabinets when they’re on the toilet, unless they’re directly in front of you which mine isn’t. It’s to the side. I can only speak for myself, but I’ve never turned my neck 90 degrees when weeing.

To conclude: I love him so much because I made him. He has been instantly elevated beyond all other cabinets in the house. I’ve even done that terrible millennial thing and privately named him - feel free to guess the name in the comments. Or just tell me what name he looks like to you, and if you say anything other than ‘Horace’ you’re wrong.

PS: I host a lovely open-door sketch show on BBC Radio 4 called DMs Are Open where anyone who wants to submit comedy sketches can do, and can get paid, plus a really amazing cast (and me) perform them live! If you want to get a comedy writing credit then here’s all the info. If you don’t want a comedy writing credit, then don’t click the link because it quite literally couldn’t be of less use to you.

The show will air later this year and I’ll probably do a behind-the-scenes thing on here about what it’s like recording a radio show or something knowing me, eh? God I’m mad etc.