Scavenging

This post has nothing to do with the turkey vultures across the street feasting on some decaying animal. Rather, it chronicles my most serious foray into snatching up free furniture (not including the time I was able to obtain a significant portion of my parents' furniture for our house when they downsized and I got married).

The objects in question were science storage cabinets. Lovely, you think. How 19th century farmhouse. Well, yes, and that was my first thought too. But when opportunity knocks, it behooves one not to knock back, or so I learned. All of the high school science labs are being renovated this summer. All fixtures are going to be replaced, which means the current ones were sort of, kind of up for grabs. As long it was done inconsipicuously, under the cover of dark (seriously!), and you spoke with the groundskeeper in hushed tones about your plans, you too could take whatever fixtures you wanted. I balked at first. Too much trouble. Too heavy. I don't really have space. Too time consuming. I have no truck to transport (yeah, a farmer without a truck; we'll discuss in a different post). But other faculty were coming out of the woodwork the last few days of school, some whom I'm sure have never stepped foot in a science lab before, claiming these sturdy 7ft, 18in deep cabinets. Some even claimed the counter tops (I would have taken one, except they were black), and one luckly soul claimed the beautiful soapstone sink. I realized that if I didn't bite then, I was going to lose out. Similar cabinets would probably go for at least $500, and wouldn't be constructed nearly as well. The realization of how much "stuff" I could place in them thus decluttering my life was appealing to me (anything that helps in decluttering my life is appealing to me). So I called my other half and said something along the lines "Hi, there are cabinets that the science department is getting rid of. Can you borrow a truck and help me move them? And they need to be out of here by Thursday." It was more of a directive than a consultation. My darling husband heeded my words, came by with a screw gun the next morning and we removed the cabinets from the walls. The following day, he had borrowed a truck (without a sideview mirror, which will come into play later), and we loaded them up without incident (hardly worthy of a story).

Unloading them, without the help of a dolly or an extra set of hands (or a sideview mirror to avoid hitting the porch railing and breaking it), was another issue. Plus, the timing was not great as I had to show up at a schmoozy hotel for lunch within the half hour. The glass door cabinet above just barely fit into our low-ceiling living room. The cabinet is 7 feet and we have a false ceiling that must make it only 7 1/2 feet.

I also learned a valuable science lesson. Just because the sliding doors worked on the track in its first home, doesn't mean that is where the track wants to be in the new place. After struggling with the glass-door cabinet for several hours, my darling husband just let the doors hang aplomb and put the track on where the doors wanted it to be. How come it took several hours to think of this common-sense solution, who knows? But, there was absolutely no way I was going to let the cabinet sit there without the glass doors. We decided not to put the doors on the other cabinet in the shed as not nearly as much stuff could fit in there (as you can see). It makes it easier for the 8 year old (and us) to find things as well.