Built

It's been a busy week and I haven't had much time to write. Our furniture is all built now. We've gone from an empty house to a fully-furnished one in about six days. Over that time I have assembled or otherwise unpacked and prepared:

• 2 sofas
• 10 bookshelves
• 5 bookshelf extensions
• 2 bed frames
• 3 dressers
• 2 bedside tables
• 2 end tables
• 1 coffee table
• 1 media table
• 4 CD shelves
• 3 desks
• 4 kitchen chairs
• 3 office chairs
• 1 lounge chair and footstool

We have a thick stack of assembly manuals with names like markör and hemnes and poäng. I must say, I have a newfound respect for IKEA engineering. Not only do they design the furniture, they must also design the boxes and their packing schemes, they must ensure there is clearance for tools at all fastenings, and the joins usually offer a single affordance, so it is impossible to join pieces incorrectly. The wordless manuals are brilliant: the illustrations show how pieces should be positioned, and the steps ensure that the progression of assembly is smooth - with little exception, each piece of furniture can be assembled by one person, in a fairly contained space, with no additional supports or tools needed.

You wouldn't believe how much cardboard we were left with. We also had big bags full of recyclable plastic (mostly type 2, some type 4). There was some paper to recycle, and some cardboard as waste.

Today, after a morning interview, I met up with a guy with a van I'd found on Craigslist, and he and I moved our stuff from the vacation rental to our new home. We arrived in Vancouver with our luggage, we had about a dozen boxes shipped from England, but when Margo's new clothes and Sarah's new books and toys were added to the load, we had a completely full van.

After unloading at the new house, we loaded the cardboard and plastic bags, and once again the van was completely full. We went to the Burnaby recycling centre and unloaded into the appropriate containers. The cardboard went into the back of a garbage truck, and we'd filled it so high that an aide came out to run the crusher at the back. He had to run it about three times before we could resume filling it.

So now we have a furnished house. We could live here if we had dishes. Tomorrow we go to Portland to visit, and on Monday we bring up the rest of our stuff - some more clothes, our dishes, books and music, and art.