The Czar would never have imagined writing the next sentence. We spent an enjoyable and leisurely evening building furniture yesterday.

Indeed, we even left a slam-bang wonderful pool party in a well-appointed house with home-cooked Mexican and Puerto Rican food in stunning summer weather to go build a desk. Without power tools. Yes, by hand.

Here is what happened. The Царевич is 8 years old, and he needed a desk in his bedroom. A real desk, with a drawer for office supplies, and a box-box-file drawer combination so that he could squirrel away his personal possessions and file away his elaborate Secret Plans for elaborate Minecraft fortresses. We knew the ideal dimensions of the desk as well so that it would fit in a perfectly empty space in his room, as well as these and other features that would make the perfect desk.

And the Царица found one buying school supplies at Office Depot. We scrambled over to the Muscovy location, where the Czar ascertained it was of surprisingly quality: and only $120. The Czar has seen similar desks for double that, and with most of the key features missing, as well as shoddy engineering. This desk had everything.

Best of all, the Царевич loved it and really, really, really wanted it. He has been waiting all summer as we looked through furniture store catalogs, looked at liquidators, and shopped online. All the desks were either expensive, too large, utterly ugly, lacked drawers or filing room, or were made of powder and undersized screws so that a small ferret could topple it over. Not that we have a ferret, as indeed we do not. But you get the idea. Not even an Ikean mälmo or bjögli would come close.

But delightfully, the Office Depot floor model was solid, sturdy, of ideal dimensions, and had every feature (plus a couple more) that we needed. Of course, they were sold out of the desk.

But good news: we could swing up to the next nearest store, about a mile away, where they had a couple in stock. The salesman even had them reserve it under the Царевич’s name, so important a customer was he.

We drove the two minutes to the next nearest Office Depot, and the funny, large, gracious, and persistently helpful floor manager not only rang us up privately—avoiding a long line of back-to-school shoppers at all registers—but cheerfully loaded the massive box into our Nissan Quest and ensured it would not shift or scratch the interior.

The desk was quite heavy, but the Czar dragged it up the stairs with all the skill and experience of someone used to dragging a lot of dead weight by the feet for disposal on the side of the road.

And there the unassembled desk has sat: in the Царевич’s bedroom, mocking him in its boxed, packaged, and unuseable state. “Tell you what,” we said to him on Wednesday, “If we get home from that pool party early enough on Saturday, we can build it.”

Needless to say, he asked every few minutes at the pool party when we would be leaving because, you know, there was that whole desk thing? And we sort of promised?

The party was great, the food indescribable (have you ever had Puerto Rican rice?), and the weather perfect. But the party was getting crowded, the boys starting to shiver having been out of the pool for so long, and the Czar was going on only about three-plus hours of sleep, so yeah—it was time to go.

At 5:30, we unboxed the inexpensive chair we purchased and laid out all its parts. The Царевич knows his way around hand tools, and while we supervised with the directions and cranked the final turns on all bolts for safety, the Царевич built the entire chair himself. He tested its ability to spin 360°, set the up-down height to where he liked it, and even set the degree to which it would tilt because he doesn’t want to fall over backwards in it, don’t you know.

By 5:50, we unpacked all twenty-five pieces of the desk (not counting the 500 screws, nails, and bolts…and certainly not counting the 1,530 pieces of eco-unfriendly styrofoam that every part was triple packed in) and laid the pieces out all over the room.

We showed him how to use cam bolts and cams—something he was aware of but had never actually done. Using only hand tools—the Czar’s power drill was nearby, but frankly those have a tendency to over-torque, and either strip the bolts or skip off the head and scratch the furniture—we got to work.

The Царевич has his own set of tools, newly donated by his grandfathers over time, that are so good that the Czar openly uses them if they are closer than our own set, and the Царевич wipes them off and puts them away in his large bedroom toolbox after using them. The kid loves tools.

Anyway, using his tools, we took the directions step-by-step and he tackled the right side of the desk and we hit the left side of the desk. Within five minutes, the skeleton of a desk was appearing.

We did have one rule: if there was a particularly tricky part that could result in a damaged desk, a broken fitting, or a scratched surface, the Czar would do it. Because if disaster happened, the Czar would be angry only at himself, not at the Царевич. This is a rule the Czar developed after frustrating projects with his own father, who seemed perpetually annoyed centuries ago that our little hands could not master a умпраич or even a cross-bladed запрускник expertly. The Czar does not want the Царевич growing up resenting woodworking or doing stuff like this together.

But it was all academic: the desk was coming together without disaster. We had only the following problems:

1. A cam vanished. We had them all counted out at each step to ensure the quantities were right, and we had to use the final eight on the second-to-last step. We each counted out eight: the Czar to ensure they were there, and the Царевич because he wanted to develop the same habit…so he would also count out every item with us. We had eight. And then, when it came time to install it…eight was gone. We looked everywhere: under the bed, under other furniture, in our pockets. Everywhere. It was gone, and neither he nor the Czar had messed with it. “It will turn up,” the Царевич said. “Probably after it is too late to do any good. Life is like that.”
2. The directions were a little vague on how to position some pieces to ensure that the finished sides were always oriented the right way. Some steps had this carefully called out, but a few did not. No matter: it was easy enough to hold the piece in place while looking at the color photo on the box to determine optimal orientation. Still, could have been clearer.
3. The knobs on the drawers were very loose. The Czar solved this by going down to his own hardware collection and finding longer screws with nuts, and bolting them in. A bomb could hit that desk directly, and no matter how destroy it would be, the drawer knobs will still be attached.

By 8:00, and a few breaks, the desk was in place in its new home. Yes, the Царевич did the final steps all by himself: inserting the hanging file brackets into the wood frame and tightening, inserting the drawers, and so on. He appreciates a sense of ceremonial ritual, and why the hell not.

By 8:15, his bag of office supplies—scissors, glue, rulers, pencils, pens, erasers, clips, note pads, and so on—were moved in. A picture of our family that he keeps was positioned just so to the right. A hand-carved wood Jamaican turtle he got from a neighbor put over here. A Balinese guardian lion in marble put over there. His secret files put into the hanging file folders. The chair was positioned in front of the desk.

No broken pieces. The cam still had not been found, but the Czar cannibalized for that. We borrowed one from one of the box drawers—the drawer does not hold anything heavy, and we took the one from the back where the stress would be least. There were two cams per side anyway, so there is still one cam holding the back of the drawer together, plus other fasteners secured the whole thing. And should we ever find that cam, he can easily remove the drawer, drop in the cam, and crank it 90° to tighten it. He knows what to do: it was his plan.

This is easily the largest piece of kit furniture we ever assembled that had so little wrong with it. All the pieces—except the one we misplaced somehow—were there, and everything went it as planned. Yeah, the knobs were a let-down, but easily repaired.

Hence the irony of the first sentence, way above. This is not our idea of a fun, relaxing evening: a zillion-piece furniture set from China. But by God, it was a fun, relaxing evening. And the speed with which we both worked made it pass by quickly. Not a single curse word nor a drop of sweat had escaped.

The final result, of course? The desk is strong enough even for us to jump up and down on. Not that we tried—but it seriously would resist us. Beautiful black finish with brushed aluminum trim. Drawers open and close silently. Yeah—he’ll be passing this down to his own kids one day.

And, let us hope, a little more than that. If nothing else, may we have taught him how to organize a project, select the right tools, read through the directions, and show patience with smaller hands. May he pass that on, too. That, and how to properly install cam bolts. Boy, he got good at that.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.