Months ago we decided we needed a new Unit in the back room. We quite fancied a Welsh dresser from John Lewis but was talked out of paying a grand and a half. We looked at IKEA but £60 didn't seem right, and we knew it would almost certainly be crap.
We spotted something on Debenhams and decided that it was mid-priced and seemed to be just the job. I googled to see if it was available direct from the manufacturers; it wasn't but instead, using the Google Product tab sourced from Marshall Ward for about 10% cheaper. I know what you're thinking, Marshall Ward, never-never catalogue for the uncreditable. And I started thinking that even though my original logic was: Debenhams sell it, so it's like we're getting it from Debenhams but cheaper. Jimmy said it would come flat-packed and we'd have to build it. I thought it would be chip board and ugly.
Well, it arrived. In four pieces, well 2x2 pieces, we decided to get two units. "That says glass handle with care this way up" as I said as 'thud' went the package Jimmy had thoughtfully inverted. Fortunately no harm done other than a broken lightbulb.
It didn't take much assembling - so I'm told, I buggered off to the hairdressers - just the top and bottom needed screwing together with 2x2 screws. And door and drawer handles needed reverting, and glass shelves attached. I spent the evening re-filling it with stuff from the old unit. I decided we were short of glasses, so Jimmy produced six crystal wine glasses, five crystal whiskey glasses,four stem cocktail glasses and a partridge ina pear tree. I lied about the pear tree, and the partridge.
It's twice the depth, almost 1.5 the width and about 120% the height of the old unit,and fits perfectly between the doors to the hall and the under-the-stairs cupboard. It holds so much more than before, not least my embarrassingly impressive collection of blank notebooks...
I originally decided that we would ask a charity placeto take it away. Jimmy decided that he would break it up, smash it under the hammer. I did suggest he invited furniture abuse fetishists around for the experience. But in the end, he decided it would go nicely in the shed. In place of the white two tier shelves which started life in my Streatham flat, then spent some time in the bathroom in Gert Cottage, and has subsequently migrated to the shed.
What this exercise has shown us is how much booze we have indoors eg seven bottles of vodka (four of them fancy Polish vodka), six bottles of rum, and, unbelievably, two bottles of cherry brandy. I am slowly drinking my way through sherry and port, but despite having 33 bottles of spirits, liqueurs etc, we have no Sloe Gin nor any Scotch whisky. Nor any Warninks Advocaat...
Send Sloe Gin now!
