Some Assembly Required

Since it got up to 91 degrees in Elgin yesterday I am wishing we were back in Colorado!!  So I'll go back to one of the last tasks that we completed while at Alamosa/Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuges.

It started out with the simplest of requests from the Administrative Technician, LeeAnn.  "Do you think that you could put my new desk together before you leave??"  Well putting stuff together is one of my favorite things, so I told her that I was sure we could do that.

Have you ever assembled one of those cabinets or home entertainment systems from Walmart that comes in a flat box and weighs about 100 pounds?  Particle board and a big bag of screws??  Imagine my surprise when LeeAnn pointed to NINE of these boxes leaning against the walls.  Not just a desk, but a complete office suite!!

The picture below shows the contents of Box #1.  Hard to believe that stack of "wood" weighed about 50 pounds and would become a pedestal with two drawers.

But I am getting ahead of myself. LeeAnn was sitting in a raised area near the front door of the office, but planned  to locate her new desk down in a different area.  So we needed to relocate the office file cabinets from the lower level to the raised level.  The picture below is the current location of LeeAnn's office. Kind of cramped.

This office is an old house, and there was a 250 gallon, built-in aquarium occupying the space where the file cabinets needed to go. So first I had to remove this aquarium and get it outside.  I broke out the surrounding cabinetry so get the aquarium free, but couldn't budge it.  Turns out that it weighed 650 pounds, empty!!  Luckily the staff meeting was the next day, so before we adjourned I gathered up the six biggest guys at the refuge and we barely managed to wrestle that thing out of the house and onto the front porch.  It is very likely still out there on the porch!!

With the aquarium out, Teri and Suzanne (the Refuge Manager) unloaded the file cabinets. I moved them up to where the aquarium had been, and they reloaded them. We also moved a big gray flat file up to the raised area.

Check back later and I'll share pictures of the assembly of the Super-Deluxe Office Suite!!

Mark