Nothing's ever easy

Ok, this is going to be a whiny one (if you couldn't tell by the title). If you're not interested in hearing me whinge, feel free to talk amongst yourselves.

This is a story of a bookshelf.

The background is that I've had a really really lot of books in storage in Tassie, far more than my current storage capacity could possibly allow for, and I managed to get a stack of them back with me upon returning from the recent trip back there.

I tried to prepare for this eventuality well ahead of time. Really, I did. The bookshelf was the plan of what Mum & Dad were going to give me for Christmas. I've been shopping around for ages.

Everything I saw was basically prohibitively expensive, or not what I wanted.

On Saturday, I literally gave up. I decided to go and get a flat-pack Ikea special to use in the interim until the fantasy bookshelf could be located.

Of course, nothing surer than, with the pressure off, walking into the furniture store next door to Ikea (actually it was Freedom, because Ikea's moved since last time I was in that shopping centre, but you get the picture), since they had a sale on, and being confronted with said Fantasy Bookshelf. At a bargain price.

On Sunday it was Sandy's birthday lunch. Armed with the-person-we're-not-calling-the-boy and his van, I thought it would only take a few minutes to duck to the warehouse (literally around the corner from my house), pick up the bookshelf, get the thing from the car to the lift and straight through the door. All leaving ample time for me to get to Sandy's lunch on time.

You can see where this is going, can't you?

Well, all went perfectly according to plan...until the bit about ducking up in the lift.

Of course the bloody thing was about 3 inches too big to fit in, no matter how many angles and different ways we tried. So, sweating, cranky and running late, the bookshelf was stowed back into the van.

Later that night there was some serious furniture wrestling (I don't mean that in the euphemistic sense).

Up the fire escape stairs.

To my apartment on the 4th floor.

Around all the pipes and turn-y thing-ys whose purpose I don't understand beyond getting in the way of my lovely bookshelf.

Thanks to Ronene who jumped in and helped along the way.

We did finally get there...but you've got to admit, that these things are seriously never as easy as they're supposed to be.