The Elephant in the Room

Sometimes you don’t want to blog about something because it isn’t a happy thing.  Sometimes, though, you just have to face the elephant in the room.
What elephant in the room, you may ask?  This one:

A couple of months ago I was really excited to finally have made it to the Brown Elephant resale shop in Andersonville, where I had heard was a great place to find great stuff–especially furniture–and super cheap prices.  That’s when this guy caught my eye.  So I pulled DH over from the vinyl section to see what I was already calling “my cabinet.”  Usually when I show something like this to DH he gives me that “are you crazy?” look.  But not this time.  And after I explained my plans to refinish it and how it would be perfect in our living room because it would hold so much and could be used as a desk area or a TV cabinet or just hold a bunch of toys, he said something like “sure–why not?”

After measuring we were sure it wouldn’t fit in our car, so after we purchased it we paid what I thought was a reasonable sum to have someone move it for us (who was I kidding anyway–there’s no way DH and I were carrying that up to the second floor by ourselves anyway!).  This is when the drama began.  We did NOT do enough measuring.  The movers were great, but this this really just did not fit.  We probably should have just asked them to put it in our storage unit downstairs rather than keep pushing to get it into our condo, but, alas we did not.  One broken screen, lots of sweat, and many scuffs later, this monstrosity had found a new home…in our dining room.

I figured at this point that all I needed to do was re-finish it (which would be easier to do in the dining room) and then we could slip it into the living room.  And then we tried to lift it (nothing).   Then I measured, and there’s a good chance it won’t fit through the hallway because of (doh!) our hallway bookcases:

So…we’ve been tossing around a lot of ideas, but:

1. There’s NO place for it in the dining room, even if we re-arrange in there.  There’s just no corner big enough.
2. According to a contractor we know that agreed to come take a look, there’s no way to disassemble it, cut it in half, or anything like that without basically destroying it.

By sharing my horrible secret I’ve been hiding for much of the summer, I’m hoping someone out there can help us decide what to do with this guy.  We’re open to getting rid of it, but we’re not exactly sure how anyone will move it out of here.  Other than trying to disassemble it and tossing it…any ideas for moving it or altering it?  Anyone??

Cheers,
Gillian