It's the stupid f*cking pink thought that counts

It was April 2010 when Isobel first started staying with us. That was when I changed jobs and Matt and I moved into a two-bedroom flat in the beautiful city that's now home.

I soon realised the spare room, aka depository for all our junk including the Moses basket we never got the chance to use, needed sorting out and more suitable furniture was required. We had a number of lovely little outfits Auntie Jenny had bought Isobel that hung on tiny hangers, lost on the adult-sized clothing rail.

So I set about finding a baby wardrobe, something I soon learnt didn’t exist. And have since learnt why.

I can be quite stubborn and the harder it was to find, the more I wanted a wardrobe. Not a box or a chest of drawers, why not a bloody wardrobe? Surely someone does them in miniature. It happens that they do not.

So I went second hand shopping and found a number of items that surely could be transformed into a miniature wardrobe. I found the perfect thing, it seemed.

A television cabinet for a big fat old fashioned CRT television and a separate section for a VCR was what took my fancy. Or as I saw it, a spacious cupboard with wide opening doors and a compartment beneath for shoes.

Feeling very pleased with myself for having such a great idea, I arranged to pick the cabinet up the next day and two large men hoiked it into the back of my car for me.

I was working a late shift Thursday and Matt would be late back Friday after picking Isobel up. I would put the cabinet in the bike shed and get it ready to present on Saturday morning.

I don't quite now how I managed to manoeuvre the ten-tonne cabinet out of the boot and shimmy it the few feet from my car into the shed.

I then painted the elegant varnished mahogany wood a claggy pink Dulux called “Babe”.

I had a firm idea in my mind of what the baby wardrobe would look like, painted pink with Disney princesses and with a ribbon tied into the top to hold the coat hangers.

Come Friday it was a long way off. But I could get away with hiding it in the spare room - Isobel still slept in our room - and I could gradually add the detail.

It took me about 45 minutes to drag the cabinet the 20 ft across the car park to the front door. I was making sticky fingerprints in the pink paint where I tried to manhandle the load.

I got it to the building and took a deep determined breath. I had two storeys of stairs to get up.

I had pink paint all over my jeans, the top I didn’t think id need to change, the cabinet being shorter than hip height and all, and streaked across one eye where I had had a moment of despair about 30 minutes across the car park. The sticky fingerprints were now deep ridges but I couldn’t go back.

This was war. All I wanted to do was make a miniature wardrobe for a miniature person’s miniature clothes. To hang them on miniature coat hangers. How can something so miniature be so f*cking heavy?!

It was four hours later that Matt arrived home. I had just shut myself in the living room.

“Phew it stinks out there!” he called through the door as I collapsed in an exhausted heap on the floor and hid my head between my knees.

It smelt of white spirit, he explained, and there was pink paint all over the carpets. The fumes have even seeped in here, he said.

I thought I had just managed to hide the evidence. Dragging the cabinet on the doormat along to the spare room and closing the door, scraping my hands with white spirit and and stuffing all other evidence in a plastic carrier bag out of sight.

The red eyes, manic snarl and mop head almost gave me away, but it was the “what's that pink stuff on your shoulder... and elbow...and cheek...hang on,” that confirmed I had been busted.

What my above described appearance did do, however, was prevent further questions when my shaking voice growled. “I’m not talking about this tonight.”

Since that day the cabinet, aka “that stupid f*cking pink thing”, has tried to serve its purpose. Its flaccid ribbon has held some clothes and it has kept toys, nappies and medicines in a central place.

A few weeks ago Matt went on (yes another) boys' weekend. Feeling productive in his absence I tackled some storage issues that had been bugging me for some time. A table next to the sofa, a bedside table, some door hooks and an Ottoman chest. Then I came to that stupid f*cking pink thing. Not only was it ugly but it had become a joke of Matt's, his family and some close friends I confided in about my complete and utter incompetence.

Matt calls it endearing. I call that patronising and think presenting him and Isobel with a beautiful little baby wardrobe - the only one in the world by the way - would have been much more endearing.

I dragged it out of the spare room. When Matt gets back he can help me dispose of this piece of crap, I think.

“No way! We can't get rid of that f*cking pink thing! It has sentimental value.”

Which sentiments exactly he wanted to savour I was unsure. Maybe it was an excuse he pulled so he didn’t have to lift it.

“Mum said she might have a go at it for you anyway,” he said.

Oh no. Did I just hear that correctly? That’s really not fair. As much as it was a failed project it was my project failed project. I can't stand the look of it ugly, but worse would be having to look at it as someone else's success.

Two weeks and four tins of paint stripper later, it's quite similar to how it started. I have bunions on my hands from scraping and sanding and lungs full of fumes and dust.

That f*cking stupid pink thing has cost me well over £100 over the past year, and that doesn’t include the alcohol used to douse the mental flames ignited by the trauma.

I now need to prime it, one face at a time, paint it blue and green (not f*cking pink that's for sure), hook up a proper pole to hang clothes, glue up a mirror on the inside of the door and decorate with images of teddy bears' picnics, The Hungry Caterpillar and maybe even Sponge Bob.

She may have grown out of little clothes on little hangers by the time it's finished, but it's the thought that counts apparently.