In addition to the normal chaos that happens around here, we had some unexpected annoyance yesterday.

We’ve decided that the nice new house deserves nice new furniture, so we have been working on that. So far we have bought a rug (ok, not furniture, but part of the whole home-dec theme) and a cabinet.

We interviewed two decorators for this project. One of them (who we didn’t end up hiring) does all-custom work for the furniture and will sometimes buy back pieces from her old clients. I mention this because the cabinet that she recommended had previously been owned by one of the Real Housewives of Orange County (Vicki). I admit that I was intrigued by the possibility of owning a cabinet (well, in this case, a credenza) that had previously been on television.

Using the more conventional decorator means that our cabinet came from one of those furniture stores that you will see in your Facebook ads if you do anything at all that gives your browser cookies a “furniture” sort of vibe. We ordered the cabinet about a week and a half ago, and I got an email last week that it was going to be delivered. I got to pick which delivery option I wanted (I went with the $20 option for having the crew bring the package just inside the front door since it is a 100-pound cabinet). Then I clicked some options for getting texts about the status, clicked something to confirm my delivery time etc., etc.

The cabinet arrived yesterday. The cabinet itself is fine. It is a very nice cabinet.

The issue was with the delivery. This is a major furniture vendor, and this is a fairly large metropolitan area. There is a lot of furniture being delivered each day, so my cabinet was delivered in a very large box truck. In terms of the size, I’m guessing it was roughly equivalent to the largest U-Haul you could rent. This is a substantial truck. It would have a decent amount of momentum. It’s probably only slighly narrower than my driveway. Backing this truck up my (fairly steep) driveway would be very challenging.

Turns out that the driver was not up for the challenge, as he clobbered my gate.

Gate closeup

Gate view

The furniture company pinky-swears that they will coordinate everything for me to file a claim with the delivery contractor’s insurance company. So far I have not yet received the paperwork that they promised to email, so we shall see how this unfolds.