After finding out how valuable the cabinets of drawers could be for my paints and other studio supplies, I decided to apply the same to my tools which are scattered and disorganized.

Previously, I considered my ‘scattered’ approach to be sensible because if I really want them organized I have drawers out in the garage and if someone wants to break in and risk their lives to attemp to steal them, it would take too long to round them up. Putting them in a  single chest would simply invite trouble, I reasoned.

But I’ve increasingly been reminded that not only am I mortal, I’m actually much closer to the exit door than the entrance. So when I spend most of the time on a repair in search of the correct tool and endure the frustration of it, I begin to think there are better ways to spend time.

So I began my quest for the new tool chest. Costco suddenly stopped carrying them. The ones at Harbor Freight were tempting because they were adequate and relatively inexpensive.

After many months I found one on line and felt that it was the best mix of utility and price and so I ordered.

A week later it showed up on a truck delivered by a FedEx guy who came from Ukraine 14 years ago. Accent not quite gone yet, he said he’d been with the company 9 years and counting. It was never to be a permanent job.

I accepted delivery and hauled the thing in the house, pallet and all. That night I commenced the assembly. There were two cabinets of drawers with handles and wheels. The entire exterior was covered with some sort of protective plastic.

Excitement built until after I’d fastened the handles on the side and screwed the two halves together and discovered that the keys for the top lock didn’t fit the bottom lock. They’d mismatched  them.

Keys took another week to arrive in the mail. Till then I was locked out of the bottom drawers, so progress halted  because it would not make good sense to fill up the drawers until after the wheels had been bolted on the bottom.

Before I got the new keys out of the mail box, I shopped Costco where I discovered that the next best (and much more suitable) model was there for less money than I paid for mine.

I should have taken it back. But I don’t like taking things back.

Back home I tried the new keys and they got me in. The bottom drawer had all the hardware that I required to finish the assembly. Set nicely atop all that were the original keys.

I discovered that one o of the drawers wasn’t tracking straight. The rails are affixed by aluminum rivets and one had either popped off or had never been there in the first place. So I drilled the hole to accept a 3/16″ rivet and installed one of my own.

While I filled it up I pondered on that old dilemna from all generations of time. I wondered how a guy knows when to pull the trigger. If I’d never bought this one, I’d have found that even better one at the store, paid less, and had more space to fill.

After all the long time not finding one, I think I had the “last bus out of town” syndrome.

People have told me more than once that they picked a spouse partly on the belief that this was a last opportunity because “all the good ones are taken”. Some have since found several other ‘good ones’ and concluded that they assessed the situation wrongly.

It can be a tough call. Sometimes it really is the best deal. Sometimes not.  Usually you can only tell later, when it’s compared to what you should have held out for.

Well, it’s done. I’m not taking it back unless there’s another failure or breakage. Sometimes this stuff is a little rough out of the box and needs some correction right off but is just fine from that point on.

That’s the way my oil painting cabinet was. the top drawer would not lock shut. I took it out and found that the mechanism had a manufacturers weld that went too far and had to be ground out where it fused two pieces that should articulate. It too was riveted, but I drilled those out and used threaded fasteners. (in case you find it strange to be put that way, imagine telling someone at the store or tool crib, “I need a screw”. no, ask for a threaded fastener)

Now maybe I can get the house back. It’s been a mess ever since I redid two car dashes and then rebuilt and upholstered some seats.