I am starting to think flat-pack furniture is actually better than fully assembled furniture you can currently buy.

I have spent much of the past week painting. My bedroom and one of my son’s bedroom have needed a paint job since we moved in almost ten years ago. His room was a special case. Since he had it so full of stuff when I replaced the window, which happened six or seven years ago, I never got around to properly patching the wall.

The window replacement had its own problems, the main one being I bought windows that were wider than the openings. But his room was a lucky break. I discovered, when I removed the old window, that the opening there was actually almost 2 inches wider than the window that was in it, so my new window fit with very little messing around. But I did still need to do some patching, since the drywall around the window was a bit beat up.

Anyway, the main characteristic of that room was the fact that everything was painted the same terrible brownish colour. I do mean everything. The door, all the trim, the electrical outlets and cover plates, the light switch. I think the goal of the previous owner was to make a sensory deprivation tank using just the so-called neutral-tone.

Incidentally, I’m sick of these so-called neutral colours. Who came up with that idea? Someone decided that everything should be painted in various tones of mud. And I see endless houses that end up the same colour on the outside. Entire rows of new houses are essentially beige. Beige brick, beige aluminum soffit and facia. Beige cars in beige garages. Every house looks the same, like a troop of indifferent soldiers in an apathetic platoon standing at ease. Of course, inside, the walls are all beige. The carpet is beige. And everyone wears beige pants. They’re practically invisible.

This house, as I constantly discover, was originally painted in a selection of very bright colours. The living room was a bright orange, the dining room was a bright yellow. The master bedroom was, I was shocked to discover, a very bright red. The house was made in 1970 and I guess people really liked having nightmares or something like that.

Anyway, I’ve veered pretty far away from what I was talking about.

In order to paint my son’s room, his bed needed to be moved. It’s a captain’s bed, with three drawers on one side underneath. It’s a very practical design, of course, since it turns under-utilized space into useful storage. Of course, the drawers are very small. But my son was very small when the bed was bought for him.

At some point, he ran into his room and jumped onto the bed and, even though the mattress was on it, the impact smashed a big hole in the sheet of rather low-density particle board that makes up the platform. Examination shows a distance of about two feet between supports for that sheet of particle board, which is only half an inch thick.

There’s nothing wrong with using particle board, if you assemble it correctly and treat the joints properly. You can make perfectly durable items out of cheap materials, it’s not actually difficult.

But, no. These things are joined with metal clips that bend under any pressure, with screws that will not hold in the particle board. But those clips are only on the top inside corners, to keep the thing from completely falling apart under normal use. Everything else is stapled.

I hate staples. The last thing any guy in a furniture factory should have in his hand is one of those staplers. He can’t fire one staple, he has to shoot so many in the same location it shreds the wood.

At least flat pack furniture doesn’t come with one of those staplers.