Step Fourteen

He considered that a good start until he spoke to a mortgage adviser. After the meeting, €20,000 became an amount that was nearly enough.

He needed another source of income.

Ronan knew how to assemble flat-pack furniture.

Most people did not consider this a particular talent. That changed when two identical side panels, four different types of screw and an instruction booklet appeared on the floor. The booklet usually showed a faceless person joining everything together with one hand.

Ronan knew the difference between left and right drawer runners. He never hammered wooden dowels into place before checking them. He could spot an upside-down panel because two holes sat six millimetres lower than the others.

His friends rang him regularly.

— Are you busy on Saturday?

— What did you buy?

— A wardrobe.

— How many boxes?

There was usually a pause after that.

— Probably four.

When Ronan arrived, there would be nine.

One was in the hall, two were beside the stairs and the rest had somehow been distributed between several rooms. The instruction booklet had disappeared. The bag of fittings had already been opened because the owner only wanted to have a look.

Ronan never started assembling anything immediately.

First, he found every box. Then he arranged the panels by size, separated the fittings and checked the part numbers.

It looked as though he was wasting time.

An hour later, it became clear that this was why he would finish before anyone else.

Ronan decided to start charging for the work.

He made a simple list:

• wardrobes;
• beds;
• chests of drawers;
• tables;
• garden furniture;
• anything else after he had seen a photograph.

His first paying job came from a colleague. He needed a wardrobe and a chest of drawers assembled.

Ronan quoted €120.

His colleague agreed too quickly.

On Saturday, Ronan discovered that the wardrobe was a corner unit, the chest contained eight drawers and the small bedside cabinet mentioned in passing was another box that nobody had previously discussed.

He finished at half nine that evening.

The owner was delighted.

Ronan was considerably less so.

After fuel, new drill bits and a sandwich bought on the way, he had €83 left.

If he worked every Saturday, he might save the missing deposit by the time the house needed a new roof.

He did not simply need more work.

He needed a way to see what was waiting for him before he arrived.

Ronan built a small website.

The homepage did not contain a long speech about quality, reliability or his passion for properly tightened screws.

It said:

Flat-pack furniture assembly in Meath.

Below that:

Send a product link or a photograph of the boxes. I will give you a price before I arrive.

He added photographs of wardrobes, beds and chests of drawers he had assembled. One wardrobe was shown with the door open, proving that the shelves were actually level.

At the bottom of the page, Ronan added:

Please keep the instructions and do not open the bag of fittings.

He considered this the most important line on the website.

The first enquiry arrived on Monday.

A woman in Navan sent a photograph of three boxes.

I need one wardrobe assembled.

Ronan enlarged the photograph.

Two more boxes were visible at the edge of the frame.

He asked her to photograph the entire room.

Another picture arrived.

There were seven boxes.

Is that everything? Ronan wrote.

A few minutes later, she sent a photograph of another box standing in the hall.

That is everything now.

The wardrobe was large but straightforward. Ronan gave her a price, and she agreed.

The job took four hours. It ended without any additional furniture suddenly being discovered in the next room.

For Ronan, that already counted as success.

Next came an order for two beds.

Then a table, six chairs and a chest of drawers.

One man sent a photograph of a closed car boot and asked whether it was enough to calculate the price.

Ronan told him it was not.

The man opened the boot and photographed twelve identical boxes.

He had bought a garage storage system without checking whether it would fit between the boiler and the freezer.

It did not.

Ronan assembled it along another wall and earned an additional fee for removing the old shelves that the owner had installed himself.

The website gradually began saving more time than it spent generating enquiries.

Customers knew what information to send. Ronan could see the amount of work involved. The price was agreed before he arrived. He no longer discovered a third bed on Saturday afternoon that nobody had thought to mention.

The exception was a woman from Kells.

She wrote:

I need a small amount of furniture assembled after moving house.

The message included a photograph of her sitting room.

There were thirty-two boxes.

Ronan counted them several times before ringing her.

— What exactly is in those boxes?

— Nearly everything.

— Nearly all the furniture?

— Nearly the entire house.

She had moved with two children. The delivery had arrived that morning, and the boxes had been left wherever there was still space.

There were three beds, two wardrobes, a table, chairs, several chests of drawers and a collection of smaller items described by the seller as easy to assemble.

Ronan gave her a price for two full days.

The woman paused.

— Can you really assemble all of it in one weekend?

— If every box is in that photograph and the fittings are still inside.

— I haven’t opened anything.

— Then I can.

Ronan arrived first on Saturday morning.

His cousin arrived second. This was the same cousin who had previously been unable to find a single free Saturday. The possibility of being paid properly had made a remarkable improvement to his diary.

They started with the beds.

By lunchtime, the children were choosing who would sleep beside the window. By evening, the wardrobes were standing. On Sunday, the table stopped being a box, the chairs took their places around it and the clothes disappeared from the floor.

The final item was a small bathroom cabinet.

At step fourteen, the instructions told them to turn it over and attach the back panel.

Ronan’s cousin had already lifted the hammer.

— Wait.

Ronan looked at the diagram and then at the cabinet.

The side panels were the wrong way round.

The mistake was almost invisible. If they attached the back now, the doors would not line up with their fittings later.

They went back to step six.

— Do you always notice that? the owner asked.

— Usually before it is too late.

— That’s what I’m paying you for.

By Sunday evening, there was not a single unopened box left in the sitting room.

The woman paid Ronan and added a little extra.

A week later, she sent his website to the manager of a small company that prepared rental properties for new tenants.

The company regularly needed beds, tables and wardrobes assembled. Sometimes it was one item. Sometimes it was an entire house.

The manager was not looking for a large company.

He needed someone who arrived on time, agreed the price in advance and did not leave behind a wardrobe with doors that opened inwards.

Ronan began working two or three evenings each week.

His Saturdays were full as well.

He stopped treating every payment as another piece of the house deposit. The total grew too slowly when he looked at it that way.

Instead, he opened a separate account and named it Step Fourteen.

Everything left after expenses and tax went into it.

A year later, the account held more than the amount missing after his first meeting with the mortgage adviser.

The house from the original advert had long since been sold.

Ronan found another one. It was smaller, further from the town centre and had a kitchen that would need replacing eventually, but not immediately.

The bank approved the mortgage.

On moving day, they placed a sofa, a table and six flat boxes containing bookcases in the sitting room.

A friend offered to help.

— I’ve assembled these before. They’re easy.

He opened the first box, emptied the fittings onto the floor and picked up two identical panels.

— I think we start with this one.

Ronan took off his jacket and placed it over a chair.

— First, we find the instructions.