The coffee bench

Holy cow! That wasn't a blog; it was a novel! OK, seriously, I am going to try to be shorter-winded when I write. After that first entry, I fear I may have lost any readers.
Yesterday, T and I went shopping for a coffee table. We knew we wanted something relatively small and something we could prop our feet upon or eat at while watching telly. After scouring the Sunday Oregonian for ads, we drove to Cost Plus World Imports at NW 23rd Ave. I used to think Cost Plus was the place for fun and fancy Indonesian pieces. I did not remember that it apparently is also the place for rickety scratched gnarly-looking pieces that literally fall apart when you touch them. After we almost broke a small table (actually, we may have broken it), we took off to check out the fun and fancy furniture store on NW 13th. As unique as their pieces were, nothing reached out and grabbed us enough to spend the $1200 for it.
Almost as an afterthought, we stopped in at West Elm where I had opened my first Portland credit card four weeks ago on my first evening here when I discovered I had no shower curtain. West Elm is more pricey than IKEA or Target, but their stuff is also a lot prettier. We found a darling little storage bench that most people would probably use at the foot of their bed or in their entry way; but it looked perfect as a coffee table for our living room. When the sales clerk told us it requires assembly, I should have just run away. I usually am smart enough to avoid such obvious catastrophes, but in this case I was optimistic since I loved the piece and it was so small. How hard could it be!?
It turns out it can be very hard when you only have one size of screwdriver which is too small for the screws, the screws provided are too big for the holes that have been pre-drilled (or pre-tapped as it were), and the instructions are in the most basic of English as written by the Indonesians providing the materials. After much struggling to figure out what goes where and not being able to get a proper grip on the fasteners, we called our friend Rick to seek guidance. Our first misstep was asking if he had a power tool. The conversation only went downhill from there with obvious setups like "it's too big for the hole," "we just can't get it in," etc. That was fruitless...ironically.
Anywho, we ended up having to go back to the hardware store we had already visited earlier and picking up a new screwdriver. Voila! It fit perfectly, and we got all the screws and cam locks tightened. Then, as we moved the coffee bench into place, I lifted the lid to see the inside storage area and the first thing I noticed was the sticker on the bottom panel that says "Bottom." Hmm. You know, I think that is the BOTTOM of the bottom panel. But look at that. It's on the top.
T, at the peak of frustration, wanted to tear the whole thing apart and re-do it, but I protested. I said "Babe, leave it. I want to see that sticker every time I open that lid." I mean, it is pretty funny. I want to celebrate our ineptitude and always remember that furniture requiring assembly is from the devil. Also, I like the sticker inside the bench that says "do not let children play inside storage area". The storage area is six inches deep and about a foot wide. There should never be a child that small in our apartment.