The French Wardrobe Saga

The summary - I bought a french wardrobe (with a matching dressing table, stool and bed-side table) off of ebay recently for the spare room. Mike turned the key the wrong way in the lock and locked us out of our new wardrobe, which had been delivered not even 15mins earlier!

All this ... for a wardrobe...

Here it is, with its top off...

We tried in vain to pick that lock... NOTHING. There was so way in but to take off the back board and with our house (still) upside down , we couldn't find a flat screw driver - anywhere! SO butter knives it was...!

We unscrewed the back off, fixed the lock and then realised there was so way to carry the thing upstairs.

It just had flat sides and flat doors and nowhere at all to grip. SO we decided to unscrew the doors off too, then the top moulding, and the foot moulding.

There where a LOT of screws.

YES those are piano hinges... 40 screws a side... at least...

YES... Im using a butter knife...

While Mike was very gracious about the whole thing, I was definitely more excited, dont you think?

Left with just a shell (after two hours of hacking away at the wardrobe armed with our butter knives) we decided it was time to get that baby upstairs. After wiggling, bending, grunting and removing paster from both the wall and ceiling, we realised there was no way but unscrew the last bit.

Before the footed base came off...

After removing the final screw (now nearly two and a half hours after Mike "broke" the lock) we realised that the finaly four joins were, indeed, glued. Not soft sticky peely glue. NO no - glued together like the very life of its contents depended upon it surviving a hurricane. Really really glued. And it wasnt going to fit. At this point Mike was not loving this wardrobe anymore...

Its currently sitting in my windowless dining/storeroom. FAIL. I cant do upstairs without it...

SO given it will fit the space upstairs SO well, im getting a friend who is a carpenter to REBUILD the cube frame thingy (gosh im so technical!) from pine that we can dismantle to move when necessary- we get to put shelves in YAY! - then we are going to put the footed base onto it, the moulded top and the doors on and then finally we will paint it - and then, maybe, the saga can wind to and end.

Remember the matching dressing table - well, that obviously wont match anymore, so it will need painting too. And the side table *SIGH*. Oh yeah, the stool too... SO much drama, over a wardrobe. SIGH.

SO there is progress. Just not the kinda progress we were hoping for by this point.

T minus 6 weeks until the rooms occupant arrives. Watch this space!