COAT RACK CHAOS

The new home needs a coat rack.  Honestly, the old place needed one, too, but there wasn't any room in the old place.  The problem is that I don't actually want a coat rack because the coat racks I've seen are ugly, but I start searching for one, anyway.

Coat racks in the store are knobby.  That's right, I said it.  They're wooden and knobby and homely and just plain old-looking.  I start searching online.  Aha!  Metal coat racks like the medical offices have.  but still ... knobby and ... well ... coat rackish.

Maybe I should give up.  Maybe I should just break down and put up some hooks, make my life easy.  Maybe I should just do what I did at the last place and plop the coats upstairs on a bed or hang them from the backs of kitchen chairs.

Then, I spot it.  It's online.  It's perfect.  This coat rack looks like modern art, like an industrial version of a tree only better.  Price is decent, so I read the reviews, most of which are favorable, but a few say "Difficult to assemble."

Truly?  It's like eight pieces.  How difficult can this be?

I order the coat rack, and it arrives four days ahead of schedule.  Excellent.  I'm having company this weekend, so I'll assemble it Saturday morning.  When it's time, I open the box and separate the pieces, making sure that I have all the parts.  Seems easy enough with eight metal pieces, two plastic pieces, and six screws.  I turn over the paper to read through the directions.

Step 1.

That's it.  No actual directions.  Just a picture that says "Step 1."  Apparently step 1 is to assemble every frigging thing all at the same time.  Logic tells me that parts #4 are the ones to assemble first, and parts #1 are the final pieces.  But, what do I know?  It's just a picture, and I am terrible with technical visuals.

After one mistake and an awful lot of WD40 spray, the struggle ends in victory.  The coat rack is done and looks even better than I thought it would at the beginning of this whole process.  The new coat rack is not knobby, old-looking, nor ugly.

Best of all, it actually holds coats.  What a novel concept, and good thing, too, since that's exactly what I need it to do.