Some Assembly Required

[darkemeralds]

The four hour delivery window stretched into a day and a half, but IKEA's trucking contractor did finally show up this evening, and a couple of cheery fellows brought 445 kg of flatpack furniture and hardware right into the bedroom for me.





Four wardrobes with six doors, a bed, a headboard, and some storage cabinets. *cracks knuckles*

*gets to work*

Comments

[ruric]

Good luck!

[darkemeralds]

Thank you. That, some gloves, some kneepads, a handy sister, and a heavy dose of ibuprofen should see me through this phase of the project!

[ravurian]

I hope you're remembering to take pictures as you go. We want to see the in progress shots too!

[darkemeralds]

I'll do my best. Right now I'm studying the cryptic yet surprisingly accurate IKEA instruction sheets, and girding myself with a pot of coffee.

[bluemeridian]

It's coming together!

(Is it weird I'm excited by the prospect of a pile of furniture to assemble? Even though something's bound to be off kilter or just small bits of hardware missing?)

[darkemeralds]

I sort of enjoy the assembly process myself--at least, I do in principle, till something goes wrong or the instructions get mysterious or I get tired and stupid. I've done a fair amount of IKEA in the past, and (knock on wood) I've never had a box with missing hardware. I put one cabinet together last night and so far, so good!

[ranunculus]

Ikea furniture is --so-- not much my cup of tea. Some times I admire the hardware, even drool over the nifty solutions to connecting things. But the actual furniture is not quite sturdy enough to please me and I hate the bland "look".

Instead I live with a jumble of mis-matched items from a wide range of styles, a few of which I made. Bet you would hate it!

Hopemyou get ever so much stuff put together, and put away!

[darkemeralds]

I don't think I'd hate your interior design--in fact, I imagine I'd enjoy it as representative of who you are. But you're right, it's not what I'd choose for myself. One of the most brilliant things to come out of Dressing Your Truth has been the concept that people are fundamentally what they are, and will tend to express that in everything they're free to express it in--the more, the better. Our living space can really reveal our true nature (depending on how many people had a say in creating it).

For my personality, IKEA cabinetry is just right in almost every respect--the plain lines, the clever engineering, the European sensibility, and the way it works in small spaces--but their chairs and sofas feel pretty chintzy to me and I'd rather spend more elsewhere on those furnishings. There's some DIY in this project too: I've reclaimed a chair that I'll be reupholstering (in purple velvet), and I'm hacking a headboard out of parts from IKEA and elsewhere.

I find an austere interior peaceful. I've been glad not to have to accommodate someone else's style in this bedroom design, because it definitely doesn't accord with many people's notions of comfort. But every time I look into the almost-finished room, I sort of sigh in contentment.

[tehomet]

All that flatpackery would make me nervous, but goodness your room looks amazing already!

[darkemeralds]

After several weeks' respite from IKEA, both the store and the activity, I was called on to go there with my sister the other day and then help her assemble the three-drawer dresser she bought. I'm convinced that the single biggest secret to IKEA-ing is not to work on the floor if you can avoid it. Oof! Hard on the hips and knees!