A new desk, and a tribute to the old one

Short version of this post: my wonderful husband spent three hours putting together a flat-pack desk for me, early last week. This was the result:

For those who like to read my ramblings, here's the longer version:

When we first moved to Cyprus, quarter of a century ago, we bought some furniture inexpensively from the organisation my husband was seconded to. Much of it was quite old and well-used, but also solid and likely to last at least as long as it had already. One of those pieces of furniture was a heavy desk which we put in my study, where I had my computer: 

At some point both the computer and the screen were upgraded by my husband and sons, and we acquired a scanner. The desk stayed in the same place, easily able to hold these, a large keyboard, and whatever books or other random additions I needed: 

When we moved to our current house, sixteen-and-a-half years ago, we discussed whether I might like something smaller. I already had a flat screen and a more compact keyboard by that stage. But I was quite attached to the desk. It had four good-sized drawers and a cupboard on the other side, and I liked the old-fashioned wood look. So some strong people who helped us to move carried it up the stairs to my new, larger study, and there it sat: 

This study had a lot more scope for moving furniture around. That happened several times, leading to, for instance, this: 

And, later, this:

.. which is where it remained since about 2016, facing the door. This is my preferred orientation for the desk. I did move other furniture around, but the desk stayed where it was. 

About a year ago, the desk started to become a bit wobbly. Perhaps all the moving had weakened one of those legs. They are quite small compared to the size of the desk. Having a large cat jumping on and off probably didn't help, either, but the desk, we reckoned, was probably fifty years old. It didn't owe me anything. I wondered whether I might be able to find something similar, with stronger legs.  

I looked at several possible shops online, none of which had desks I liked. Those they had in the shops seemed extortionately priced. I would have shrugged and forgotten about it, until one day I realised the wobbliness was worse. One of the front legs had become detached. 

Creative as ever, Richard found a temporary solution:

This was shortly after I had upgraded my elderly computer and laptop into a newer laptop that could be used with my screen, keyboard, mouse (etc) while not travelling. Richard made me (from scratch) a very nice wooden shelf to raise the screen, and to house the laptop. 

Inevitably there were a lot of wires, as well as the speaker, and a kind of hub thing which enabled the laptop to connect to the screen and other peripherals. Our white cat Alex liked sleeping on the desk, knocking off anything that came in his path. Hence the rough cardboard box, in stark contrast to the  pristine wooden shelf:

We spent a morning, early last summer, looking for possible replacement desks. We tried the Thrift Store, a couple of second-hand furniture shops and several large stores which sold desks of all shapes and sizes. We didn't see anything I really liked. I didn't want a modern streamlined table with movable drawer units, nor a metal desk. Since I had a (mostly) functioning desk, I was only going to replace it if I found one that felt absolutely right. 

Richard wondered whether he could repair the broken leg. It would have meant considerable disruption, but he thought he might possibly do it while I was away last summer. In the event, he was so busy he didn't have a moment to himself, let alone the time needed to find a way to repair it that was going to last, and which would also need to have strengthened the other legs. If one breaks, we realised, it's probably not long before others follow suit. 

So the dictionaries remained in place. Richard said, once or twice, that he should think about repairing the desk, but I was reluctant to go through all the hassle of disconnecting everything and emptying out the drawers and moving the desk...

Then, nearly two weeks ago, the computer refused to connect to the screen. That happened a couple of times before and Richard had shown me a sequence of unplugging wires and re-starting the computer that seemed to work. 

Not this time. And when I tried to follow the wires to their sources, wondering if something had become unplugged, I realised that the hub conversion gadget thing had no lights on. Re-plugging that didn't help. Without it, there was no chance of connecting to the screen. I could use the laptop as a laptop but nothing else, and it looked as though the computer was not even charging...

Richard wasn't home, and I was due to meet my younger son and daughter-in-law online for a crossword-solving session.  Thankfully my son is familiar with the system, and managed to talk me through - on the phone - plugging in the charging cable, and also temporarily enabling the printer so I could print out the crossword they sent me. 

So the solving session happened, and we successfully completed another tricky one. 

Since the hub thing (Richard calls it a 'breakout box', and its official name is 'multi-port adapter') was less than a year old, and did not seem to be working at all, we took it back to Stephanis in the evening. They said they would send it away for repair. It would probably take about a week, they said. 

So I had to use the laptop with its built-in keyboard (which is okay) and touch-pad (which I don't like at all) and its small screen for the next ten days until it was finally acknowledged that the hub/box/adapter was broken, and they supplied a new one. 

BUT...

In the meantime, I was looking on the Superhome Centre website and happened to see a desk which looked ideal. I mentioned it tentatively to Richard, as I'm always reluctant to replace things that aren't totally broken. He said he thought I should get it. We went to have a look, and made an order, and a couple of days later went - in our van - to collect it. 

Richard hoped it might be in three separate pieces (two sides and a top) rather than all put together as he thought it could be rather heavy to get upstairs. What we had not expected was a single flatpack box, reminiscent of Ikea, but with considerably more parts. The advantage of that was that we could carry it up in several trips. The disadvantage was that it was evidently going to need a significant amount of time to put together. 

The instructions had no words after the first page, and suggested that it would take two hours for two people to put together:

I removed the drawers from the old desk, while Richard disconnected and removed the wires and peripheral computer bits and pieces. Then we managed to lift the old desk into the living room, and ran the Roomba in the space underneath, where it hadn't been able to get before. 

He then used the old desk as a workbench to start constructing the new one:

There wasn't anything I could do to assist in the actual construction, but I did empty out the two large bags of screws, dowels and other bits of metal and plastic, and sorted them:

I then passed over each item as needed. I didn't begin to understand the pictorial 'instructions', but Richard had no difficulty. This, I realised, is why building Lego models from instructions is an important life skill. Freestyle building is more creative, but for something as complex as this desk, I wanted it to be built as designed by the manufacturer rather than a creative model that might be more interesting, but would probably be less useful.

I did assist about three times, holding things that needed to be screwed in place, and moving completed parts out of the way. But I'm not sure that having a second competent pictorial-instruction-follower would have made it much quicker.  It took about three hours in all. I felt a bit guilty: had I known it would be this complex, I wouldn't ever have mentioned it. 

However, the resulting desk is exactly right. It's not as deep as the old one, and the drawers are, therefore, smaller. I was able to get rid of some ancient paperwork and other stuff that was unneeded, and they are much better organised. 

This all happened a week before we were able to pick up the new hub/adapter thing, so I had to use my laptop without the add-on peripherals. But it gave Richard a chance to think how to get the wires reasonably neatly stored so that (1) they weren't on the desk getting in my way, or pushed over by cats (2) they weren't on the floor (where the Roomba might try to eat them) and (3) they weren't dangling at the back, where the cats would want to play with them, and pull things off the desk. 

One of the features of the desk is that instead of having four drawers on the left, there are three, with a shelf at the top. So Richard drilled a few neat holes in the back. My hubs, hard drives and random essential wires are able to be housed there, out of sight, and yet not too difficult to access if needed:

Alex's cardboard box was looking very tatty, but he still likes it, so I covered it with some sticky-backed paper, and put it on the scanner rather than the desk. He's not as keen on it as he was, but in this rather chilly time of year he prefers to sleep on a beanbag anyway.

And the old desk...? 

Some teenage friends have been doing some outside painting for us. They came the morning after Richard built the desk, and were happy to help us move the old one down, prior to taking it to the dump. Our indoor cat, Lady Jane, has twice raced between our legs as we come in the front door, and down the stairs to the desk. She didn't want to escape, just to smell it and roll around underneath. Thankfully she was easily bribed indoors again. She hasn't tried to get out for a long time but evidently saw the desk from the upstairs balcony, and recognised it. 

Since we don't want her getting out - she has no road sense - we were thinking about getting it to the dump, when another young friend said he had a use for it, as a kind of outdoor work bench (under shelter) with different, taller legs that he will construct. I had felt a little sad about abandoning the desk entirely, so am very pleased that it will still be useful. 

Assimilating Bookcases

Our son Tim has been living in Cyprus for the past three years; initially with us, and then, for the past couple of years, in a flat he was renting close to his workplace. However he's now accepted a job back in the UK, and will be moving there in about ten days. So he and his cat have moved into our guest flat, temporarily, and the last fortnight has been spent clearing out and cleaning his flat. His landlord bought some of his furniture, some has gone into storage, and some has come to us.

I was particularly keen to have his three bookcases: two large black Billy ones which he bought from Ikea, and a light brown one which I think we probably bought at the thrift store some years ago.

I can never resist bookcases, but we did already have quite a few and are running out of wall space. We had some ideas about where to put three more, but it took most of last weekend to get them sorted. I posted on Facebook that I was 'assimilating bookcases', and someone queried the term; it sounds, after all, rather 'Borg' to assimilate something. Yet the word simply means adopting, taking as one's own, absorbing into oneself - or, in this case, into our home. Indeed, I realise it's the term I used five years ago in one of our previous acquisitions of bookcases.

The light brown one was the simplest. At least, I thought it would be. There's a space in my study where I used to have one of my bookcases, and I had decided I wanted to keep the photo albums there, rather than on a high shelf in our dining room. I am still slowly scanning through old negatives, and kept having to dash to and fro to check dates in albums.

However the one from Tim's flat was a little narrower than I had thought, so I decided to make that into my recipe bookcase at the end of the kitchen:

That meant that the one which used to hold the recipe books, which was a bit wider, could come into my study.  I already had a matching bookcase which held the fiction books I'm planning to read soon, my writing books and some other reference and useful non-fiction that I refer to often, so I moved those into this bookcase:

And the photo albums then went into the matching one by my desk, making them convenient to check quickly when scanning:

So that was the first bookcase sorted and assimilated.

We knew that we wanted one of the black Billy bookcases in our living room. But that was even less straightforward. We had a pale brown Billy bookcase that held all our DVDs, but it was - metaphorically speaking - bulging at the seams. There was no room for any new ones at all.  We had a couple of old-style dark brown Billy units that we bought from friends ten years ago, which are 90cm wide rather than 80cm, so I decided to use one of those for the DVDs instead, to give some extra space.

So the DVDs came out of the old light brown unit, and the books came out of the dark brown Billy, and that went next to the window in the living room to house our DVDs, with space for more:

We have around 300 DVDs, which compares nicely with our 3,000 or so books.

The new black Billy went in the gap where the wider one was previously. I had to move some of the books it had held into the one in the corner, but I managed to move other things around to allow for that.

Unsurprisingly, this new arrangement leaves a 10cm gap, and eventually we'll probably take the books out of the one on the right and move it up, but it's not urgent.

The light brown unit which previously held the DVDs was then moved up to the room which used to be Tim's, and where he will sleep on future visits from the UK. It's housing some of his theology books at present, since he's flying with just a couple of suitcases, staying in temporary accommodation until he has longer-term plans.

As for the other tall black Billy bookcase, I realised that could go in our dining room; or, rather, the place between the dining area and kitchen, where we had a shorter Billy that held my teenage fiction. We had the place mats and a few other bits and pieces on top of it, so it was easy enough to replace the books in the tall bookcase, and put the other things on shelves:

That left us with a short black Billy which sat in the living room for a while.  Eventually I realised that that could go on a convenient gap in our staircase, where we had another shelving unit that held tall art books, old computer manuals, and some folders of music that isn't currently used (piano, guitar and clarinet, primarily) but which might be needed at some point.

It fits nicely and looks much better:

But then we were left with the slatted shelving unit which previously held all these books....

No problem; I wanted something taller in the unused shower cubicle in my study, where we keep beach equipment, cool bags, my shopping trolley and a few other random things that don't go anywhere else.

So I cleared out the old unit, which was much shorter, and replaced it with the tall one, making everything easier to access:

That left me with a smaller pine shelving unit... and it didn't take long to realise that it would go quite nicely in our main floor loo, where there was an ancient white (and rather tatty) unit.  It felt a little awkward at first, but looks a great deal better:

... which left a small white unit, and I realised today that it's gone. I have no idea where.

I think 'assimilation' is definitely the correct term!

Second week of Advent

The week started well. The builders came to work on our roof: installing loft insulation in one part, and - they hoped - fixing and cleaning the place where we have had major leaking (over our stairs) every time it rains.

So once again I abandoned any idea of cleaning and set to work to make some humus and also some mince pies. Later in the morning was the monthly meeting of the Larnaka Christian writing group, and our annual Christmas potluck meal:

It was a good meeting and a lively and enjoyable lunch, a good start to Christmas celebrations.

The following morning, Sheila and three of her children came over for what has become an annual tradition: they helped me put up our Christmas tree:

Actually, they did the work after I retrieved the boxes, and I mostly just took photos. I did remember to hang last year's cards, many of which did not arrive until January:

Post seems to be better this year, and we've already received ten cards, which are now displayed on a bookcase. I will keep them along with any more that arrive between now and the end of January, and re-show them next Christmas. If people take the time and trouble to send us cards, I think they deserve a good long display. And they make nice extra decorations hung up like this.

K and H had some discussion about how exactly the nativity people should be displayed:

Eventually the tree was done, and in place. Happily the kittens had stayed upstairs and asleep while we sorted out the lights and hung the tinsel. They were very interested in the tree:

They seemed to consider that we had kindly hung up some nice shiny cat toys. Alex carefully batted as many as he could off the tree and they chased them around the floor while we retrieved as many as we could and hung them back again...

There was a brief diversion while our new sofa (and the re-covered two-seater) arrived and were put in place:

The material is rather different, and felt a bit creased, or crushed... however when Tim arrived later he said it was quite a modern look. So that's all right.

Unfortunately the kittens were not distracted for long. They spent a lot of time pulling yet more things off the tree, and trying to eat the branches. Alex even attempted to suckle on the lights (which we had turned off by that stage) but, thankfully, he gave that up as a bad job.

It didn't take long for the inevitable to happen:

.. and again. And again. Oddly, when it's lying on its side, they leave it alone.

So. This week, I've made my first batch of mince pies and put up the decorations. I've put the tree up several times. I've also finalised and printed our family newsletter and written cards - fewer and fewer each year, as more and more people turn to electronic greetings. I even posted them. I think we've finished all our gift shopping too, the majority of it online.

The best-made plans.... can sometimes be improved upon!

During November I took part in NaNoWriMo. Along with one of my sons and the daughter of a local friend, I succeeded in writing 50,000 words as the first draft of a novel. I did it a couple of years ago too and nothing ever came of it, but it was an interesting exercise - and quite time-consuming towards the end, when, inevitably, I fell behind on word count for a while.

November 30th was Advent Sunday, so I thought I might do as I did last year and allocate one 'task' per day in Christmas preparation. Possibly even two per day for the first two weeks of the month, since the rest of the family will be arriving on December 16th. I jotted down a list this morning: order presents, make mincemeat, write newsletter, post cards, decorate the tree, buy a poinsettia... that kind of thing. Perfectly manageable if I just plan to do one per day, starting now. The only thing I've done so far is to make our Christmas cake: I'm not one of those people who has Christmas sorted by the end of October.

Looking at the list, I thought that making mincemeat would be a simple, relaxing (and quick) job for today. I mentally checked the ingredients off in my mind.. then I realised I had no suet. Oh well, I thought, I'll pop around the corner later this morning and buy some at the local supermarket.

I was about to get out the feather duster and vacuum cleaner to start my usual Monday-morning blitz of the main floor of the house when I remembered... tomorrow morning, a workman is coming to repair some bubbled plaster in the ceiling and also by the stairs, where it got damp (about four years ago, if I recall correctly. We're really not very good at getting things done quickly). Any kind of cleaning right before plaster is being removed seemed like a pointless exercise.

So, the planned cleaning was abandoned, or at least postponed.

Then Richard said that perhaps we should start moving furniture out of the living room. That triggered some decisions we had been pondering for a while. We had talked about buying a futon or similar to go in what was Tim's bedroom. But we couldn't find anything appropriate. I pointed out that we had a perfectly good sofa bed in my study (I think it's only been used on three occasions since we moved here, as we have a separate guest flat downstairs, but it's good to have it just in case). I proposed moving it upstairs and putting one of our two-seat sofas in its place. Richard has been wanting a three-seat sofa and the only way we could fit one in our living room is to get rid of - or move - one of the two-seat sofas.

So we started to move the sofa bed. We got as far as the living room, but it's pretty heavy. No way could I move it up the stairs.

However, moving one of the two-seat sofas into my study was easy enough, and looked much better than the sofa-bed ever did. Joan of Arc approved: 

The problem was that now I had nowhere for the boxes of Lego that were tidily housed underneath the sofa bed. So we moved some other boxes in a study closet to Tim's old room, and the Lego then fit in the closet in the study. 

We moved the other sofa into our dining room, then started moving the (digital) piano. But that was really too heavy for me, too: 

So then Richard moved the television into the dining room, and I took a photo showing the sofa at the far end, the piano half-way, and the TV unit denuded of the TV: 

We did all this gradually, in between other things, and a friend came soon afterwards to help move the piano and the sofa-bed.  

When we were eating lunch, it felt as if we were in a second-hand furniture store that wasn't very well-organised...

After lunch we went into town to the furniture shop where we bought the two-seat sofas, nearly ten years ago. None of the furniture on display looked like the kind we wanted, but when we explained to a helpful assistant what we were looking for, he knew at once what we were describing, and found 'our' style of sofa in an ancient catalogue. They are made locally, he said, and we could certainly have a three-seater, in a covering of our choice. The price was even better than we had expected. 

We couldn't find the same material - since I had taken a photo earlier I could even show him what our sofas look like and he said he remembered the material, but it was no longer available. However, there was another one which was similar, which we liked, and when Richard asked about having one of the sofas re-covered (the cats pretty much destroyed the back of one of them) he gave us a good quote.

So we should have a three-seater sofa delivered in about a week. 

Just as I was thinking that the Christmas day-by-day tasks weren't even going to get started, we walked past a shop with some healthy looking poinsettias outside, at about half the price we would expect to pay elsewhere. 

So we bought one. 

I then remembered that they are supposed to be toxic to cats, and Alex is into everything.. but, happily, Snopes confirmed that poinsettias are fine. Just as well since Alex was indeed very interested: 

Next I decided to go to our local Micro supermarket to buy some veggie suet, and perhaps make mincemeat tomorrow.

There was no suet in the shop. 

Then I received a text from Tim, saying that as we had both completed NaNoWriMo, he would like to treat me - and perhaps Richard too - for ice cream. And when he heard that I was hunting, in vain, for suet, he said he was about to go to Metro supermarket and would get me some there. 

Half an hour later, Tim arrived with some suet.. and we went out, not just for ordinary ice cream, but for Haagen Dazs. Tim and Richard are dairy-free and Tim's extensive research into alternatives has led him to conclude that this company makes the best raspberry sorbet he has ever tried.  

I opted for the wonderful strawberry cheesecake... although I had a couple of tastes of the raspberry sorbet, too, and it was very good indeed. 

To sum up the day: 

• Plans:  cleaning, making mincemeat
• Actuality: moving furniture, ordering a new sofa, buying a poinsettia, eating Haagen Dazs ice cream

I'm not really into spontaneity, but it seems to me that the actuality was a vast improvement on the former...and since we now have a poinsettia, I've even done my first step towards Christmas.