Slow & Steady Wins the Race

January 12, 2025

Today I put together a lighted vanity that we ordered for my mother-in-law’s bedroom.

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This would be a much needed space for her to get ready at and house her makeup and associated beauty supplies.

It took some time to get here, when I eventually was ready to put it together, excitement turned to disappointment – the lighted mirror was damaged, no destroyed during shipping. Ugg.

Thankfully it was on the very top of what looked to be an intricately packaged box, so I taped it back up and prepared to have a new box sent my way.

As it would turn out, the company said they would send a replacement mirror. So rather than wait, we decided to put as much of the vanity together that we could while we waited for the mirror.

This would turn out to be about 99% of the build much to out excitement. I thought I would record some of my observations regarding the build process.

Avoid Overheating

I started the build in a pair of heavy jeans and a flannel shirt. A perfect combo on this thirty-two degree day for an earlier outing to grocery shop. Terrible for building a vanity.

I quickly started to over heat and it was out with the flannel and jeans and in with a t-shirt and shorts. Ahhh.. Much, much better. Builds can be challenging enough, don’t make them worse by sweating your ass off.

Banish the Cat Assistant

Our one year old, and intensely curious cat Mr. Whiskers wanted to assist with the build. There was so much for him to check out, smell and assist with that the build times kept going up.

And less than twenty minutes into the build, I had to send him out to help Mom with Dinner prep.

Organize Your Thoughts & Materials

What everyone quickly learns with complicated kit builds is to sort your materials into easily identified piles.

The little time it takes really makes finding what you need so much simpler when you really start to get entrenched in the build manual. In my case it also allowed me to get rid of the giant box the vanity shipped in.

Having space to do the build it critical, the more you are encumbered by the environment, the harder the build will be. In this build we went a step further and took down the bed down to the frame to give additional room for the building process.

Slow Down, Take it Step by Strep

Earlier today I put together a new office chair, it had five steps in total. It was easy to push through the build fairly quickly because the steps were so minimal.

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With the vanity there were over sixty steps. This was the kind of build that I knew would only be possible if it was approached using a slow and steady wins the race pace.

So that’s what I did. And over the course of the next five plus hours the vanity slowly took shape. Each step fell into a simple process of evaluating the diagram, identifying the parts, prepping the parts and finally assembling the parts.

Step by step the vanity started to take shape. As I settled into the process I found myself mentally relaxing while my toll on my body got more intense. Who would have thought putting a piece of furniture together could make me feel so sore!

In the end the vanity was completed, with two annoying mistakes. Can you spot them in the photo? Rest assured the next day it was partially taken apart to flip the pieces around to the have the correct finished ends displayed.