“We saw the lights on so we figured someone was up,” announced a remarkably cheerful delivery driver at 6:30 AM. Luckily—for everyone involved—I wasn’t padding around the kitchen in my pyjamas. He and his colleague quietly hauled three monstrously heavy flat-pack boxes into the hall before slipping out of the driveway as silently as they had arrived.
“That’s my day sorted then,” I muttered, eyeing the cardboard monoliths taking over the corridor.
“No, it was you coming back from the gym that made the dogs bark,” Karen mumbled, barely visible beneath a mountain of duvet.
“Seriously, the wardrobe has just been delivered,” I replied. She rolled over, pulled the duvet higher, and re-settled.
“Let’s just stack the boxes in the hall until after Ros leaves, and then we’ll have all afternoon to build it,” I suggested rationally. Ros, our architect, was due to drop in shortly for a guided tour of the completed build. The priority was getting the bungalow presentable for inspection.
“I’d prefer to get it built before she arrives,” came the reply.
As if by magic, within space of three minutes, Karen had arisen, dressed, transformed into a picture of wide-awake efficiency, and was raring to begin construction. I stared in disbelief, wondering what on earth had been in her morning coffee to transform her from Sleeping Beauty into a Gladiator ready to tackle the Travelator.
“It’s going to take at least four hours to build this,” I warned, panicked by the impending deadline. From painful past experience, I knew the rules of flat-pack furniture: the instructions would be translated from a foreign language via bad software; half the vital fixings would be missing; one critical panel would arrive pre-dented; and I would reach 99% completion before realising Piece No. 1 was upside down.
“Where’s your appetite for a challenge this morning?” Karen chirped.
“I guess you’ll be paying another visit to your friends at the recycling centre soon,” came a voice from beneath a mountain of cardboard, bubble wrap, and static-charged foam.
“Oh no, not Puncture-Gate again,” I said from inside the frame of a half-assembled base unit. My appetite for visiting the tip was non-existent, despite the undeniable reality that packaging had now overrun the hall, living room, and hundreds of tiny polystyrene beads were actively migrating into the bedroom.
“Are you sure you’ve got those doors on the right way round?” Karen enquired, fully aware that instruction manuals are not my primary strength.
“Yes, they can only go one way,” I declared confidently, deducing this entirely from the position of the pre-drilled fixing holes. Secretly, I welcomed her quality control. I am a visual learner—take Puncture-Gate, for instance: I deduced I had a flat tyre simply by looking at the screw embedded in the tread. I didn’t need a manual for that either.
I slotted the final hanging rail into position just as my phone’s 30-minute early-warning alarm chimed for Ros’s arrival.
“There! I told you we’d get it built before Ros got here,” I announced triumphantly. Karen flashed me a half-smile as she sprinted past with an armful of clothes destined for their new home.
Ros arrived bang on schedule. “Hi Ros, it’s brilliant to see you!” we greeted her at the door.
“I hope I haven’t put you to any trouble calling in at this hour,” she remarked softly.
“Not at all!” I lied smoothly, using my sock to calmly slide three stray polystyrene beads under the doormat out of sight. Little did she know we had been conducting a high-stakes, two-hour flat-pack build challenge ready for her arrival.
Later, sitting out on the deck with a fresh coffee in the warm late-September sun, we reflected on how far we had come. Six months ago, living out of a caravan in the drive, we could never have imagined sitting here today.
Ros’s ability to translate our initial, vague vision into reality—and Graham’s skill in building it—has been nothing short of extraordinary. Ros thoroughly approved of the finished house. In fact, she thought it was wonderful.
And high praise from your architect is worth every single stray polystyrene bead in Wiltshire.
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