Alexandria Gerson is craftier than your average Jane. That’s why, instead of shelling out for a new side table from somewhere pricy like Crate & Barrel or West Elm, she decided to make one herself. Her dream table includes ample storage, where she elects to stow away her old, unsightly crap.
Gerson studied hours’ worth of YouTube instructional videos to acquire the necessary skills to build a side table from scratch. In total, the project took four months. In that time, she learned how to join wood, discovered her favorite brand of bar clamp, and sampled about twenty different types of sandpaper (she loves each grit in its own special way). But not once in that four months did Gerson come into possession of anything nice enough that would warrant being housed in such a beautiful piece of custom furniture.
“I guess I’ll just put a few loose bandaids in the top drawer,” shrugged Gerson when asked how she planned to put her furniture to use. “I think I have a few combs? They’re all broken but if you hold them together in a fan shape, they sort of constitute one full comb.”
“Alex is super all-or-nothing,” explained Gerson’s boyfriend, Corey Douglas. “When she wants to do something right, she pulls out all the stops. She just has to want it. And for now, I guess she’s totally content to live among cracked snow globes and random piles of loose Soviet change.”
Gerson, who has been using the same disposable coasters that she stole from a bar in college, defends the contents of her home by explaining the relative merits of reusing items instead of buying new ones. “Sure, I could buy a new set of glasses for my kitchen, but I already have four plastic tumblers with the logo of a defunct insurance firm on them. And you know what? They work just fine.”
“I’m not materialistic,” she went on. “Money can’t buy happiness.” Gerson estimates that, in total, she spent over $1,500 in supplies to complete her woodworking passion project.
With the money Gerson used on building herself a table the slow and inefficient way, experts estimate she could have purchased a professionally-made one, and still had money left over for other borderline-necessary life upgrades, like a clean pair of shoes, or a microwave that actually turns on.
For now, though, she will have to make do with one lone nice thing in her apartment.
