Can’t do it. Not possible. Gee, that’s quite a job. Why don’t you… How about…
All phrases we have heard way too many times this week. That and ‘why don’t you get your boyfriends to help you out?’
Now, you would think that a simple task like getting a beautiful custom desk made from a solid piece of timber that floats off the wall and doesn’t have any legs would be an easy request. Apparently not. No, we don’t want it to have ugly generic chrome legs and no we don’t want it to have a join in the middle but yes, we would like it to have a natural non-perfect edge with a satin finish, oh and maybe in a grey or a dark yellow colour tone. I know you’re all thinking it – that’s not too much to ask at all! We agree.
On this particular grey Tuesday, us girls met with a lovely carpenter at our new headquarters to discuss the possibility of this simple job. He had a multitude of ideas and we thought we had found our winner. What we discovered though was that we were going to be the only ones to decide on the perfect piece of timber we wanted him to make this desk out of. Not such a simple task. A) we didn’t know where to even start, short from flashing our inspiration picture around to every man and his dog at Bunnings; and B) we were so not dressed for this.
And so it began. Our first stop was at a timber yard where we couldn’t find the entrance and everyone in a fluro gave us that look like ‘ummm can I help you with finding the exit?” We flashed them the photo and unfortunately asked ‘where can we find a large piece of wood?’ – not our finest choice of words, as the hilarious girl on the desk pointed out. We promptly left after ‘Andrew’ informed us that he doesn’t think timber like that exists and to try going down 2 ramps, in the second door on the left, then turn right and ask any guy in a fluro for some help.
Stop two was slightly more prepared to get off their butts and show us some options, even though the first thing they said was ‘can’t do one piece, you’ll have to use floorboards’. Que the seriously confused look between us as to why the heck we would put floorboards on a desk. But, it did make sense, we were to build a frame and lay the floorboards on top to create that flat timber-like surface we wanted. Although the whole process was filled with interesting comments about us women doing a little DIY project and maybe we should get some boys in to do the hard work – who did he think we were? We know how to call a carpenter mate.
That encounter prompted us to do just that. Call an expert. Kane at KDS Cabinets in Geelong came to our rescue, our knight in shining timber and with one quick call we were in his workshop looking at samples and designing the desk of our dreams. In the end, to fit into our budget, we had to compromise on it being one slab of solid timber without a join in the middle, natural edged, oh and being grey in colour, but other than that, we have totally nailed our dream desk. Either way, we love our desk and we’re not letting you use it.
So, the moral of the story being: call people who actually know what they are doing and stop doing the work they should be doing for you. That’s why you’re paying them. And while it’s all well and good to dream big, maybe set those expectations a little lower next time, okay?
