the new desk

It took a few hours because I'm heavy and slow and wish I had a work table, but I got the new desk assembled and placed properly. That's one New Year's resolution down!

The old desk with all the crap still on it:

The new desk, still in its box (I had to haul it up from the lobby... lazy delivery people):

Crap now on my bed, old desk partly disassembled:

An empty space where a desk used to be:

The new desk, assembled:

The new desk, in place, and with all the crap now on it:

There's a lot that you're not seeing, of course. Disassembling the old desk was a pain. Luckily, I had my trusty Phillips screwdriver and was able to break the desk down into its component pieces. I ended up laying the rectangles of the old desk on a flat space outside my apartment; I'll take the desk down, bit by bit, over the next couple of days. As I worked, I had to keep cleaning up all the little flecks of styrofoam and other bits of filth that spread everywhere across the floor and onto my bed (I have a lint roller but no vacuum). Putting together the new desk was easy enough thanks to the instructions, although one corner of the desk proved hard to assemble when I couldn't align the screw with a hidden hole (get your mind out of the gutter). I had to use a metal chopstick to figure out the alignment, and then I was able to proceed by feel (get your mind out of the gutter). 

The new desk makes no noise at all, and even though the bottom of the desk has a long, shallow crack across it, I'm not going to complain: the crack seems to be only as deep as the surface, and no one can see it. I did feel bad, though, when I saw the "Made in China" tag. I'm not in a mood to fund that country, but we've allowed China to make everything for us.

The new desk is essentially a table that has about the same dimensions as the desk it's replacing, so it fits perfectly in the same spot. For now, at least, I'm a happy camper.