Another Lifetime to go

4th January 2020

Kelli has a long list of places to go, timed to ensure a perfect use of our day.

This was a surprise to me, as she has a very casual attitude to efficiency, and things tend to lurch from crisis to chaos, so I must have some influence after all.

First stop was to pick up some mugs. I had no idea we needed mugs, okay I did criticise some mugs we had, because they didn’t have handles, so you needed a welders mit to hold them.

Anyway she found some mugs with handles.

Next stop was to deliver two dressers, including the custom one to an address in Zeeland.

This was a large chunk of our sales for the week, so was very appreciated.

Next stop was to pick up a dresser and hutch that was free out in darkest Hudsonville. The house was a bit creepy, with a basement even creepier. This was not the finest example, but the drawers were good, and not a lot of repair needed.

On the way, I said to Kelli that I would like to find Max DuPree’s house in Zeeland that had been designed by Charles and Ray Eames, but I didn’t know where it was.

Whilst sitting drinking my latte in Starbucks, whilst Kelli was off on another mission, I searched for it online.

When I found it, I was shocked to see that it was next door to the house we dropped off the two dressers at.

What was even stranger, we had passed it, and Kelli commented that it looked cool. I said that it looked like it was boarded up.

Herman Miller bought the property in 2010 with a plan to refurbish it back to how it looked back in the early 1950s.

On the way back to Holland we had to pick up another dresser. We just managed to fit it in the back with the tailgate tied with bungees.

Once we unloaded those we were back on the road to pick up more things, this time a pair of matching bookshelves. Now we really had a garage full.

3rd January 2020

We had a stream of customers turning up to collect things.

The chopping board/island unit was finished, so that went on to Marketplace straight away.

We were on a deadline to finish the custom job for delivery tomorrow.

I had to put the things together in the right sequence, which amazingly enough went like a dream. Even the plywood box slid into place like it was made for it.

Kelli was in charge of painting. She started on the recessed side panels that were to be black. I could hear some cursing under her breath, and a lot of huffing. Finally she stormed out muttering as she went.

I followed her into the house, and volunteered to trim the panels with masking tape to make it easier to paint.

It was not the easiest of jobs to do as the amount of wood around the panel was only a quarter of an inch wide.

I have learnt, watching a lot of YouTube videos, that you need patience. You also need a tidy shop, well one out of two isn’t bad.

I wanted to work on the bookcase that smelt of piss. I was carefully burning off the paint, I thought that would be a good way of getting rid of the smell.

Kelli’s nostrils twitched at the stench of heated pee reached her. For the sake of staying happy, I stopped working on it and opened the door to air the place.

We moved the custom piece into the sun room, where we could finish painting in the warm.

2nd January 2020

There were a succession of people turning up for the furniture they had bought.

As always it was down to me to greet them and confuse them with my English accent. Kelli would be in the bathroom making herself respectable whilst I would look like some dusty old timer who just stumbled in from the workshop. I had been doing a lot of sanding so I was definitely dusty.

We had one person who failed to turn up, but that is a risk, I don’t understand it when someone says they want it, then don’t collect,

anyway hopefully we can find another buyer.

I managed to finish the chopping board unit, and great progress on the customised dresser.

1st January 2020

We both were working like mad people to get things ready for collection.

We had a dark bench picked up, we didn’t do much to it apart from a bit of stain to hide some worn places, and a waxing all over.

They seemed to like it, so handed over a handful of dollars. It was a heavy beast, so I helped them to load it into their vehicle, all part of the service.

I started on the new dresser that was already sold. The top had been stripped but I had to make an upstanding at the back to hide some screw holes.

I completed a plywood box that would form the shelf and tidy up the inside.

Things were moving along nicely, I even managed to paint the frame for the chopping board unit.

Kelli was finishing off the items to be collected, we even finished off a dresser that we got for free in November. I stripped off the top and Kelli put a dark stain on it. It was not one of my favourites, it was built like a tank, but the design was not great. I had plans to make it look better but Kelli just wanted to get rid of it, so the minimum work needed to get it ready to sell was agreed.

We went out to New Holland Brewery to celebrate our good fortune. Luckily for me it was Stein night, so that was duly ordered.

There is never a discrete way of drinking from one of these, it’s like lifting a bucket to your lips, but I didn’t care. Mistakenly I chose one of the stronger brews, so it didn’t take long for me to feel the effects. This is when Kelli wants to slide under the table, which is exactly how I felt by the time I finished it.

After exhausting all my jokes and smutty innuendos we got home, I set my self down in the big chair and promptly fell asleep, for Kelli it was probably perfect, a bit of peace and quiet.

31st December 2019

Holland is not the centre of the universe when it comes to new year celebrations, unlike the rest of the civilisation the only explosion heard around here is a truck back firing.

We set off to see the new year in with our British friends Mike and Lesley. We had our bottle of wine and veggie nibbles at the ready, for an evening of fun.

Earlier we had driven to the store to collect our Christmas pieces that hadn’t sold. There were other things that Kelli had decided to remove, and possibly repaint. We are at the point of taking everything out of the place as our success rate on Marketplace was far better.

However we needed to break the spell of bad sales, I can only do so much with regards to getting product ready, Kelli is the merchandise mastermind.

She is amazing under pressure, within hours of bringing the pieces back, they were repainted, listed, and sold. From zero, she hit over three hundred dollars, including a master stroke of getting a buyer lined up on the dresser she had repainted, plus selling another one that we had yet to start.

This one was to be customised by taking away the top two drawers and replacing them with a shelf. This was more fun for me, it would allow me to chop, hack, and make something more interesting.

By the end of the evening we were nearly at half our monthly target.

This made the end of 2019 a little better. It had been a mixture of good and bad things, literally a year of two halves.

That was all forgotten as we toasted the start of 2020.

The only hat that would fit me was a tiara, the cone didn’t look right, it wasn’t until I saw the pictures that I realised what a dick I looked.

We blew our blowers fanatically, Mike’s sounded like a strangled cat, which had us in hysterics, although the champers had a lot to do with that.

30th December 2019

I worked on the large dresser trying to remove a ring that marked the top. Whatever caused it, marked the lacquer right through and could not be repaired. My only option was to strip the whole top back to bare veneer.

Kelli was off doing her errands, so I knuckled down to getting the top sanded.

It had snowed overnight, I could tell because of the groaning noise that Kelli made when she looked out the window. The dogs didn’t want to stay out very long, soon they were begging to be let in. In snowy weather they both poop on the move, like they are laying a pipe.

We still had a lot of furniture in the garage and nothing sold, December was set to be the worst month of the year.

There was a dresser that had been languishing in the garage for the last month.

It had been in the store for a while, when it sold, there was great rejoicing, but it was returned it was because the buyer didn’t like the hole that was in the top.

Previously it must have been used to support a TV, and they made a hole for the plug to go through. Kelli listed it as a Dresser/TV cabinet, so the hole was explained, but obviously not to all.

I had filled in the hole soon after I got back, but the cabinet had a particular paint finish that I thought would be difficult to match, but that was until Kelli was inspired. She managed to match the finish so well I could even see where I had filled the hole, amazing.

29th December 2019

In a galaxy far, far away there was a place called Goodwill. There resided strange items that humans had donated for other to rummage and fight over.

Kelli landed her rocket ship, and we ventured inside.

Earlier we had traveled to Hudsonville to collect a portable chopping board that was offered free on Marketplace. There was trepidation as to its condition, but what could not be fixed?

Well, when we saw what was awaiting up outside the guy’s garage there was a sharp intake of breath. It had seen better days, parts were loose, but I was confident that with a little work it could be a cute piece.

The racks inside Goodwill were bursting with stuff, people of all shape and genders were moving like zombies. Kelli peeled off as she usually does looking at things that are really low on my level of interest.

I should have known that her attention was drawn to some highly decorative fabric. She tore it of the rack like a magician revealing a rabbit. I wandered around the furniture and miscellaneous items looking for anything interesting. I passed the God books and CD’s by artists that I never heard of, inspecting a table for three dollars,that could be stripped and brought back to life. However our success rate for tables is not good, so I moved on.

Kelli, holding her multi coloured garment had taken some interest in a long dresser that was priced at forty five dollars, much too high for us to make decent money on. She seemed set on trying to get a deal on it, and went to “talk” to one of the friendly staff on the register. Next thing I knew, we were trying to carry it out the front door. The thing was so heavy, Kelli was struggling, I was struggling. Then a friendly guy offered to help, Kelli accepted immediately, now he and I were struggling to carry it to the truck. The man’s face was bright red, I thought he was going to die in front of Goodwill, what kind of advert would that be?

When we got to the truck we had to remove the chopping block unit and try to load this monster into the back. We were then joined by the guys mate who took over and loaded it with one mighty shove.

Then they lifted the chopping board unit on to the roof and attached it with bungees.

After thanking them for their help we headed off to our next adventure, to see the last Star Wars movie. Driving into the car park looking like the “Beverly Hillbillies” with furniture tied to the roof, we parked, and made our way to the movie theatre.

Cameron was waiting for us, so we all went to get our tickets. Unfortunately the only three seats available were in the front row, usually not a good place to sit unless your eyesight was bad, and you enjoyed looking up. So we decided to wait until the next showing, and went off to get something to eat.

We got back to the theatre taking our seats in the second row.

These seats were amazing, they adjusted in every way possible, including a massage, which Kelli found by accident.

Once the movie started we all felt the force, of the sound system. It was so loud that even the loudest rustle of the crisp packets did not disturb anyone.

After two hours we emerged, ears ringing, hair all disheveled, brains mashed, with far more questions than answers, but that’s typically what happens in movies made today.

At the end of the film when the credits roll, everyone runs for the door, but not here, the rest of the audience were still sitting in their seats, we were the only ones standing. Maybe the seats were more comfortable than the ones they had at home, and they decided to stay the night.

Once back home Kelli was trying to find out the make of tablecloth from Goodwill. The whole weight of the internet was engaged in researching the origin of the cloth.

Finally she found it, it was originally sold by Anthropology for over sixty dollars, so her one dollar find was truly triumphant.

28th December 2019

Following our encounter with the local police,

the first job was to fix the offending lights on the truck. I had to remove the plastic covers on the number plate lights. Naturally it was not an easy job, the screw heads were badly worn so no screwdriver would fit. After trying every implement in the tool box, I succumbed to using the battery driver to drill out the screws heads.

This took a while, but eventually I managed to get the covers off, so step one was complete.

Then we took the dogs to the beach. The lake was so calm and the temperature was unusually mild, making the walk really pleasant.

27th December 2019

We tried to find a place for the new television to fit. I didn’t want to mount it to the wall because they are plasterboard and would require a lot of strengthening to make it work.

It was not possible to sit it on the top of the red cabinet where the current TV is because the feet are too wide apart. We had to resign ourselves to the fact that it was too large for our room. Short of attaching it to the ceiling we didn’t have enough walls left.

The next difficult task was to tell Greer and Dylan that we could not make it work for us.

The husband of the lady who wanted the Mexican style dresser turned up, and like most men wanted to inspect every element of the piece. He checked every drawer, many times, tapped the top and sides. He may have been looking for hidden compartments, but there were none, I made sure of that.

In the evening we went to a party hosted by Steve Kubica and his wife Jackie. They had just returned from their other home in Arizona to have Christmas in Saugatuck. It was a casual affair with fabulous food, plenty of wine and a bartender.

We mingled with Saugatuck’s finest and a few others that were down in the gutter with us.

I met up with the legendary Rog Bush, the guy who ran the seating development group at Herman Miller, in the 80’s and 90’s. He had retired twenty years ago, but in his hay day he was one of the engineers that developed Action Office. Although in his eighties, was still sharp with his recollections.

Hearing his stories, talking about the famous Designers, the long hours working, the excitement of developing something revolutionary, I could see the pride in his eyes.

It reminded me of my early days with Miller when you put the hours necessary to finish the job.

I was accosted by several older ladies fascinated by my accent, I sharpened my vowels and made several English jokes, but Kelli was on hand to make sure they didn’t get too familiar. We told them the story of how we got together, which is always fun seeing their expressions.

We heard about their plans to spend three months in Florida. It’s no wonder that Saugatuck is so dead in winter, everybody is in Florida.

On the way back we were stopped by the cops.

The blue and red lights flashing, we pulled over and waited.

A long shadow was cast over the road, as the officer walked up to Kelli’s window. We knew we weren’t speeding, and she was not driving erratically, so we waited for the officer to tell us.

The reason was, we had two number plate lights out.

Kelli was calm, she didn’t have her usual attitude to cops, and showed genuine shock when told about the lights. A quick check on the licence, and insurance, and we were let go.

26th December 2019

I had found a dresser on Marketplace a couple of days ago that I thought looked interesting. I made contact, we agreed that kelli and I would pick it up today.

I sent a message to get an address, but saw that the post had been deleted. For the rest of the afternoon I checked to see if the message had been read, but it hadn’t. By the end of the afternoon I resigned myself that the seller had sold it to someone else, and didn’t have the decency to let me know.

In our anger we went to Goodwill and found a Mexican style dresser.

We took some pictures, did a quick repair to the base, and fix the bottom drawer. Kelli listed it on Marketplace, and Boom! It was sold.

The only other thing I did was to wax it all over, I like these furniture flips.