OK, so I bought an IKEA wardrobe cupboard (kinda like the top left one, only in a corner setup) a few weeks ago. It was delivered to my humble abode last Friday. I’m pretty hung over from a party last night, so what better time to do some old fashioned labour, eh?
I’ve spent the last hour and a half unpacking all the freaking boxes. I’m exhausted from that alone. Three hundred and fourteen kilos of wood! My apartment is now cluttered with various very similar looking, yet subtly different boards of wood, twenty million wooden connection thingies, twelve different types of hinges, two glass doors, drawers, you name it.
Of course, the drawers are in the wrong colour (metallic/aluminum or something. I ordered a light wood colour), and one of the cupboards is lacking a Dutch or English manual, so I guess my Swedish skills shall be put to the test. I have my doubts about two darker coloured boards, but they may be on the inside, in which case I don’t care.
I’ll report as work progresses. I expect a lot of sweating, swearing, and general feelings of homicide against anything and anyone Swedish.
I’m going to sweat in the bedroom now, for all the wrong reasons.
Ah, the joys of prefab furniture. I find it entirely helpful, most times, to use the instructions as a burnt offering to the great old god, Dyzan, and for his greater glory, and our mutual plea…
Sorry. Skip that bit.
It’s usually a case of following the diagrams, which often show parts that don’t exist with the model they come with, or are rendered by an illiterate, near-sighted, terminal cranial-rectoscopy patient on crank, coming down off a three day robitussin binge. So, pretty much, no instructions isn’t much of a handicap, really.
[sub]Sorry 'bout that hangover, though, mate. That’ll at least help you empathize with the guy who wrote the instructions.[/sub]
I have this image of Coldie caught underneath a half-built mutant wardrobe, flayling wildly and swearing in a wide variety of languages, cursing everything Swedish, from Abba to meatballs. And for some reason, I find this image enormously amusing.
Good luck, pal. If it makes you feel any better, I’m sure that if any of us ever need help assembling furniture in Swedish, you’re our pointman.
Whew. The toughest part over. Did anyone ever tell you it’s damn hard uprighting a 2.36 meter cupboard wall in a room with a width of 2.45 meters, especially with the bottom of the cupboard already attached? DAMN you Pythagoras, and the equation you rode in on.
Royally fucked up the door though. When attaching the outside handle, do not drill from the inside, kids. Especially when using a metal drill 'cause you’re fresh out of wood drills. What the hell was I thinking? Luckily, nothing a little glue and wood debris won’t fix.
Put up the errr, the metal tubes you hang suits and shirts from. Whatchamacall those?
Now I’m off to install the tie racks, and the four shelves, and then, Phase One is complete! Wa-hey!
I’ll do the rest tomorrow night, as it’s 22:40 here, a little late for hammering and drilling.
At least you didn’t try to bring it home on the subway…
(Yes, they just opened a new subway line in Toronto that goes within hailing distance of the Ikea on the other side of town. Unfortunately, the Ikea is halfway between two stations.)
Hell, this shit didn’t even fit into my car! Granted, it’s no SUV or anything, but still.
Yeah, yeah, six hours of work, but I got interrupted a lot. Plus, you need to stop and look at your work of art a lot, too. And after my upstairs neighbour helped me right the cupboard, we had a few beers.
After which the aforementioned drilling incident occured, of course. :eek:
RTF, feel free to use that as a sig, sure.
Oh, and the drawers were the right colour after all. Turns out the drawers are aluminum-colour, but the FRONT (which is, of course, in a separate box ) is the right colour. Whew.
Ah, lookie here, a nice cold can of Grolsch on my desk! I’ve earned it.
You can tell Coldie’s been working too hard, There are four different smilies in the above post
But that’s a feat and a half to put up those shelves. Nice one.
Although for some reason, I have a mental image of you constructing them, and then leaning nonchalently against them… only to have them collapse under your mighty Dutch frame. Damn those Swedes.
I can commiserate totally. I’ve been redoing my place and a few weeks ago, I got my Ikea WALL O’PAIN home and put it together. I am not a strapping lad like yourself and 320 lbs of inertia just about did me in. Plenty of Finn swear words.
All the pieces were there (yay!) and they were fairly easy to put together (double yay!!) and I also had plenty of room to stand them up.
Hmmm, I usually have lots of fun putting my IKEA stuff together. The only time I had a problem was when I got the wrong instructions. Then, I just went to the store, looked at the model on the floor, and figured it out. Sorry you’re having such a hard time, Coldie.
Hey, I’m doing OK, considering this is a fairly complex construction, as far as prefab stuff goes. Just added one of the side cupboards to the corner construction. Drilling holes through the metal door for the handle was a bitch, though. Of course, the drill skipped, and I put a nice scratch on the door, above the handle, naturally. At least this one’s not crooked like the other one.
Only need to do the shelves for this one, and tomorrow night, I’ll do the last cupboard. The one with the drawers. New challenges await me!
So, the **Cold One ** goes into his bedroom with a woodie…errr…to find he suddenly has a lot of wood…(nudge nudge)
Sorry, Coldie, couldn’t resist. We just installed $2400 worth of IKEA stuff in our house. When I say we, I mean Mr. Ujest. You are more than welcome to bring over the excess packaging to our burn pile to dispose of it all. (Big ass fire that night too.)
) is the right colour. Whew.