28 weeks

Today marks the beginning of Operation: Hold Those Babies In!*

Only 9 weeks to go... or 12 if you really want, dear! You can do it!






* also coincides with Sub-operation: please don't come out yet babies, I really need to clean the house

Accomplishments

So, Lara managed to shift enough stuff around in the basement room last week that I was able to start the great two-floor clutter shift! Lara was away this weekend, and Kiernan took an hour before finally going to sleep on Saturday, but then it was time to relocate the ancient (IKEA) shelving/desk unit in ten easy steps!

Step one: Take everything off of the lowest shelf under the window. Put it all into an empty box. Disassemble the two shelves and bring them downstairs.

Step two: Take everything off the corner section. Put it all in the area where the low section was, as well as onto the dresser top that was brought upstairs. Realize that the only way to get the CRT monitor out of this corner section is to lift it at an awkward angle straight up over the two shelf supports. Avoid head injuries (that will come later). Bring corner pieces downstairs.

Step three: Take everything off the shelves above the cupboard section, placing them on the floor in the corner. Wish you had more than one empty box. Disassemble the shelves and bring them downstairs, leaving the heavy, and bulky, and cluttered cupboard behind.

Step four: Empty and transport the shelves above the desk. Realize that disassembling the desk section itself will be very noisy and Kiernan will wake up. Luckily the corner section should now be able to be assembled, using the one corner support and the support from the cupboard section. Hurray for IKEA and their interchangeable parts!

Step five: Remember that it always took two people to assemble the corner section.

Step six: Assemble the corner section alone.

Step seven: Stand back and admire assembled corner section!

Step eight: Oh, wait, the middle shelf looks askew. Right, the pegs in the corner support need to be moved up one notch. I'll need to hold this corner section vertical with one hand and move the pegs with the other, so I'll carefully push the shelf up the corner support using my head... now I'll move them up a hole, and lower the shelf back downwaitwhat'sthatslidingnoise?

Step nine: Have top shelf fall on the middle shelf. Extract self and in the process have the middle shelf fall as well, with the side supports falling away.

Step ten: Since no concussion has occurred, repeat steps five through seven then wait until wife gets home on Sunday to continue the assembly.

Before the twins arrive...

Here's our pre-May to-do list, which has obviously been on my mind more than blogging has (I say on my mind, because I've mainly just been pondering the list rather than going through it):

Organize the basement junk craft room. We got rid of the queen sized bed that took up most of this room's space, so that's a start.

Move the contents of the second floor junk room office to the basement craft room. Since getting laptops, this second bedroom has not been getting much use.

Move a chunk of store stock contents to the craft room. What's that? When you close a storefront and return to your online roots you need to store the inventory somewhere? That craft room will surely have room for that stuff...

Purge all unnecessary crap that doesn't fit into that room (tidily). I've been working on that for a while -- some things have actually been thrown out! The bottlecap collection from when I was a child was actually in the wastebasket until I noticed people selling bottlecaps in worse condition on ebay for a dollar each. Also, when you have eight years worth of Official Playstation Magazines you can't just throw that out... you know, in case you need to refer to the out of date previews later... hey, I managed to trash a years worth of magazines that were mostly paid advertising...

Assemble the big boy bed in the old office. This should be easy, it's from IKEA of course. The big issue is getting it set up early enough that Kiernan doesn't associate the relocation of rooms to the appearance of babies... oh, and did I mention he doesn't like sleeping in actual beds?

This'll be fun.

Pay more for faulty technology!

Two years ago, a crackling static began emitting from the smoke detector wired into the ceiling of the upstairs hallway. According to Canadian law, you're supposed to have one smoke detector per level of your house. We had the one upstairs and one downstairs (still working, despite multiple layers of paint implying its age) so I took this opportunity to purchase two new alarms.

The first was installed in the kitchen, of the variety that does not get set off by normal cooking, sold at a reasonable price. The upstairs was a combination smoke and CO2 detector, of which the price gave us pause in the store.

"That's pretty expensive." my wife noted.
"Well, it's got both features, plus blah blah blah reading the box blah blah and I as you well know am über paranoid, especially with a baby on the way." So we bought it.

Then, suddenly, three piercing chirps filled the air after a night of cooking spicy Indian food.

What's this yellow light mean? Why is it labeled SERVICE? I'll check First Alert's website.

This Means...		You Should...
1.	The device is not working properly, and needs to be replaced.	1.	Units under warranty should be returned to manufacturer for replacement. See "Limited Warranty" in your user's manual for details.

Okay, so let me get this straight. Elsewhere on the site, you say alarms should be replaced every ten years, but now should my higher end alarm suddenly conk out a year out of warranty, your advice is "Give us more money"?

No thanks, I'll be buying a sensor without the yellow "random vindaloo malfunction" light.

Blogger versus IKEA cabinet: CONCLUSION

Yep, that's the spot we thought it would fit PERFECTLY in...

Who steals a garbage can?

I opened our shed to find the big wheeled garbage can missing. Last week I was in a rush, so bypassed the shed completely, leaving just the garbage bag on the curb, so it's likely that the thing's been gone for two weeks. Did I forget to bring it in? Did they think that because it was on the curb that it WAS garbage? Did someone happen to be walking by thinking "Man, $17 is pretty steep for a garba-waheyyyyyy look at THAT slick beauty!" Did our neighbours always have the same bin as us?

Blogger versus IKEA cabinet: DAY 4

Okay, so upon looking at the next step, the nailing of the back boards.

Eighty six nails? Really? My first instinct was to determine mathematically the proper distribution of nails.

"Haha, that would make a funny blog post!" I thought, "Or... a really lame one."

You know, now that I think about it, it would be something like, right off the top of my head 2x + 4y = 86. Counting the number of nails used along the bottom in the diagram would mean x was 10, therefore y would be 16 and a half nails.

Which explains why, since I just started hammering away, I ran out of nails and had to dig into my personal stash.

So the backboard went on (only two nails missing the wood underneath, and two other nails causing the birch laminate to buckle at the sides - maybe that's why they included the glue in the bag o parts?), the feet were nailed in, and the cupboard was stood up.

But IKEA had to ruin our plans of a crazy-kitchen setup with this image:

Fine. But when my kid crawls into the cupboard and isn't immediately ejected, I'm calling their support line to complain.

Okay, rewind to IKEA Ottawa, when we first bought the cabinets. I didn't have my cellphone. Lara's was dead. I needed to do some quick math to see if the 145 cm wide cabinet would fit diagonally in the 120x100cm space. Of course, it does, when you draw a triangle and calculate with good old Pythagoras'... but of course, that just measures the triangle made by the back of the cabinet... it's the depth of the cabinet that sticks out and, you know, blocks doorways.

Sooooo it'll be going in the rec room downstairs... and we'll have to figure out what other IKEA fits in the basement hallway - more storage than we wished for... I guess...

Blogger versus IKEA cabinet: DAYS 2 and 3

Day 2:

Step 1 of the KULLEN has you assembling the middle, top and bottom boards into an I shape. The diagram is drawn at an angle, so it looks like the vertical board is halfway between what will become the two cupboards. In actuality, one side is narrower than the other. There was also a slight difference in the two boards (the top had two holes, the bottom had four), and it took some lining up and figuring out which OTHER holes were meant for the clothing bar... but in the end, I had an I lying on the floor.

The area in which it will end up is at the bottom of the basement stairs, so that is where it is being assembled. Of course, it turns out that was barely going to be 5 inches of working room around the edges. This meant *thunder crashes* I couldn't use the cordless drill *ominous chord*

Looking back, the first thing that went wrong was that I noticed two of the holes on the middle board weren't drilled all the way through. This happened while assembling the TROFAST toy shelves, so I was able to use the cordless drill to punch all the way through.

The second thing that went wrong was that I attached the shelves according to the diagram, then realized I was assembling the pieces so that the back of the cabinet was against the floor. This would not do, as I would need to nail on the back of the cupboard. So, with great effort, I managed to flip the whole unit over. Now the shelves were on the wrong sides according to the diagram. So that hole I drilled all the way through? Didn't need that. In fact, I had the shelves in the wrong place, and now there will be patching to do when we're through.

At the end of the evening I had assembled the nine pieces of wood into a sturdy frame. Huzzah! All set for the nailing of the back boards, to be done at a later date...

Day 3:

Fuckmonkeys.

So. The next step showed the biggest back board fitting exactly on the back above where the drawers would be. This back board was as wide as the narrower half of the closet. During the flipping and switching of boards, I'd lost track of the top (two holes) and bottom (four holes) boards in step 1. Plus it seemed that the shelves has been in the right place, the top and bottom just needed to be flipped 180 degrees. Maybe if I unscrew just the parts I need to switch around and...

Well. There we go, 9 boards and 20 screws now lay, separately, on the floor. At least the reconstruction only took a quarter of the time as it did last night, but at the end of the night, I nailed on the big back board and realized if I nailed the other back pieces on as well I would suddenly be without space to walk. Day 4 will involve some careful balancing.

Blogger versus IKEA cabinet: DAY 1

We have much that is IKEA in this house.

I have assembled three BILLY bookcases and three MARKOR bookcases (We read. A lot. And we only wish we had room for more). Big wicker BASTANT baskets store toys and other baby stuff on the bottom shelves of the latter three.

Two POÄNGs, both with footstools, plus two mini-POÄNGS for Kiernan to sit on, stand on yelling "GET DOWWWN!" or pee on. Dammit. But I digress.

Both the crib and change table upstairs are DIKTAD, and in the living room there's a TROFAST toy sorter in the corner, just calling out to Kiernan, "Psst! Hey, kid! Look at me, I'm a big stairway to Funville (population: BOOM!) - too bad I'm not turned around so you can reach the mantle! But hey, that's only one well-timed jump away!"

I organized our kitchen pantry with IKEA boxes, baskets, and sliding basket drawers of which were a quarter of an inch narrower than said pantry - yet I managed to make it work despite my lack of mad carpentry skillz.

As well: Various lamps, cutlery, tweezer-like cooking tongs, TV stands, hanging closet sorters, magnetic knife racks (for the magnetic spice jars - it is truly a thing of beauty), and baby clothes hangers which I won't be searching the IKEA names of because really, it doesn't impress you that much, y'know?

All this to say we have lots of IKEA, 75% of which I have assembled. I've also been called in to assemble the IKEA of friends, so I'm pretty damn good with an Allen key - so good in fact that the first thing I do is throw the keys away so I can tighten the screws with my bare hand (held cordless drill).

And so. Enter the KULLEN.

This thing is going in the basement to help us stuff even more storage space into our packrat lifestyle. Because really, if our house was like my childhood hamster, and our stuff was carrot sticks... well, let me just show you (note: not my hamster):



Only without the jazz music.

Anyway, the KULLEN came to us in the form of two long brown packages which have sat in our living room for the past 24 hours.

Staring at me. Calling out to me to be assembled. Assembled before they tip over from where they are leaning.

Eagerly, I ripped at the cardboard with my bare hands, attempting to get past the evil flesh cutting cardboard coating to reveal the birch beneath.

Sifting through the contents, I realize - THE INSTRUCTIONS ARE IN THE OTHER BOX! You know, the one marked "Box 1"

Again I tear in, pulling out one... two.. three bags of fixtures... and... glue? IKEA has glue!

At last the paper booklet was in my grasp. I turned past the iconic first page (blah blah do not assemble alone blah blah) to find... um... two pages listing all the hardware. Wow. This thing really is big. And I'm the type of person to inventory the hardware first thing, so...

So!

Right.

So I carried everything to the basement, to get a move on all that tomorrow night.