Slow Dance has a wonderful settee in her salon (living room)
that can seat eight with ease. It wraps
around a beautiful cherry table which, when the hinged side leaves are folded
inward on top, serves as a "coffee table" of one and a half by three
and a half feet. When the leaves are lifted
and deployed, it becomes a much larger dining table.
There is a small one-inch stain on the underside of one
segment which is visible when the table "wings" are folded together
in the coffee table configuration. I
noticed this blemish shortly after purchase, and made a note to try to remove
it ASAP because I liked the appearance of the table so much. But soon I faced a dilemma.
I found I was keeping one, even two, laptops on the table. Soon power cords, cables to the printer, cables
to the exterior WiFi antenna, and wires to other "appliances", were
strewn across the settee, blocking easy access to the table. Worse, when I wanted to stretch out on the
settee to take a nap or watch a DVD movie on my flat screen TV, the cables were
always in the way. What could I do?
One of my personas soon concluded there was only one
solution: run the cables down through
the center of the table. The other
howled, "What?! That would mean cutting a HOLE in it –- unthinkable!!" Well, I knew that necessity could be the
mother of invention, but now was forced to consider that it might have to also
be the mother of... disfigurement.
Yikes! I sure didn't want to cut
a hole in that table. But after a few
more days of crawling under, or stepping over, those darn wires, which seemed
to grow in number almost daily, I did the unthinkable and reluctantly drilled an
inch-and-a-half aperture in that beautiful wood.
I had truly opened a Pandora's box as I now had to somehow
route the offending cables down through the table base. The base resembles a
filing case, with two large drawers which originally contained wooden frames to
hold wine glasses. I had removed the frames
and now stored my tool box in one drawer and purse (!) in the other, two items
I needed to access frequently. To
execute this alteration, I pulled the drawers out, cut holes in the bottom of
the base and deck (floor) below it, and the drawer supports. I then routed five cables along the inside
walls, using wire ties to restrain them from inhibiting the open and closing of the drawers.
Now I needed to route the cables under the deck, then under
the settee, to their appropriate destinations.
Guess what I found weeks before when I lifted the removable segments of
the deck on both sides of the table?
Wooden framework to hold three dozen wine bottles, lying on their sides
in cushioned splendor! I had a veritable
floating wine celler -- sans the vin!
I initially was so struck with the brilliant use of this
eight inch deep "celler", and the fine carpentry, that, as with the
salon table itself, I was reluctant to alter it. But now, emboldened with my defacement of the
table, I set out to literally destroy the framework on both sides of the
table. But, as with the rest of this
Canadian-built PDQ, it was solidly constructed.
When a regular weight claw hammer didn't serve, I was forced to turn to
my tool of last resort, what I fondly term my "friendly persuader" -–
a three pound sledge hammer. And even
then, it took many blows and a pry bar to complete the job. Now, with the aid
of a hole saw to drill through a couple of partitions, I was able to complete the routing of those pesky cables.
I have no regrets. Up on the table top, where previous
owners probably had a fine floral arrangement, I now have a many-limbed cable
"octopus" as a centerpiece. But I can move about the settee with ease. Perhaps if I were a party person, or overly fond of libations, I would
not have destroyed those frames in the table's drawers designed to hold fine
crystal, nor the "wine celler". But I changed things to suit my needs. With such actions, I am making Slow Dance my
partner of choice.
