It started with something harmless.
Since we’re back from Europe we have Oskar sleeping in the baby room, not anymore with us in the master bed room. That’s a good thing. Now we can have a conversation when we’re going to bed without having to worry about waking up the boy. If we’re not too tired anyway, that is.
So this worked pretty well for us and Oskar. Then we recently talked about maybe moving the cot to the opposite side of his room, because even though the airco is set in a way that he should not get a draft at night where the baby cot stands now, moving the bed would increase our peace of mind.
Okay then: we had a desk and the printer and the dry cabinet with our camera gear standing there. Lamia moved all that yesterday to the guest room. But she could not move the power strip because it is plugged behind that massive IKEA Pax cabinet (see here an older photo of the office).
The only way to move that damn thing was to take out the books and some of the other crap we store in there to make it lighter. We did that and then I moved the cabinet.
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And this is when I saw spots on the back and on the wall behind. Mold! Well, at least I think it was mold: some yellowish stains on much of the surface of the wall that was covered by the cabinet. Ah, damn it! Don’t we ever get rid of that shit?
(Note to self: don’t push a cabinet too close to a wall. There’s not enough ventilation happening.)
Anyway. Naturally we freaked and I decided to get rid of the back panel of the cabinet because it smelled moldy. You know, it’s one of these typical IKEA back panels, made from this soft fiber pap. Not that easy to remove, by the way, if you do this while still having some stuff sitting on the shelf.
Oh: and it’s a bad idea. You know why? Well, would you believe it, but it’s kinda surprising how much the back panel contributes to the integrity of this 236 cm tall hunk of furniture. Shouldn’t the frame be stable enough on its own, you ask? I’d think so, too, but hey: it’s not!
Once the back panel was gone, the whole cabinet reeled like a drunken sailor. This was the moment where I thought we should have maybe removed all the things that are still sitting on the shelves. Uh, damn! Somehow Tess and I managed to remove all of them. And the shelves, too, which after months of carrying too heavy loads look like you can attach a string between the ends and shoot arrows with them.
So okay: I got all the items that were still sitting on top, but one small book fell, missing Tess only by a few inches (funny that in the government training for helpers they teach you not to have your helper clean windows from the outside… but that somebody might get killed by a book while trying to tame a cabinet that is about to collapse – for this to come up with you need a German).
As we now took the whole thing apart, pieces of the cabinet were piling up in our living room.
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The drawers are the only bits which still look very usable after all the action.
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After a few hours of emergency work, we were done. The books and boxes that were now suddenly homeless were stacked up against the wall in Oskar’s room. Looks far less on the floor than what it looked like on the shelves…
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And the little garbage area on our floor got real busy.
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Now, in hindsight, was it really necessary to get rid of the whole cabinet?
Hum. I admit am not so sure anymore. There was no scary, thick mold growth, you know? – just some stains. I guess this could have been cleaned.
Now, once the back panel was gone, the decision was basically made anyway. It did helped psychologically that this was not really the best furniture for us to store things in, so I am not that sad it’s gone (but I do feel bad because it’s a terrible waste).
Well. It’s gone. And I feel another trip to IKEA coming up.
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