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While the toughness has steadily escaped my cyclist’s legs, it seems to have migrated to my hands. Nearing 2 weeks of being off the bike means a certain type of atrophy has settled. Instead, my exercises have been structured by the good people of IKEA. Their wordless instructions, while easy to look at, have taken a toll on my hands, giving my palms a soreness and having destroyed one Phillips screwdriver.

Becky & the great puppy, Preston, now reside in Blacksburg, where I am far more capable of spending time with them and also more capable of exposing them to the permeating smells of my fresh-brewed coffee. In the pursuit of a less collegiate-like environment, Becky wished to get lots of furniture which previously wasn’t around. So, who else to turn to but IKEA? Ironically enough, IKEA furniture is the norm around the better-maintained college residences, but it’s at least a far cry from the mix-match of your parent’s furniture. I have to say, the place is looking good, and uniformly covered in birch veneer.

Anyways, I’ve assembled more IKEA furniture in the past 3 days than I care to remember. However, at the moment, I remember it with great clarity and wish to healthily rehabilitate myself from the experience by quickly elaborating on the individual efforts. The list proceeds in my own construction sequence.

MALM queen bed. I’ve done this one before. It was far easier to put this bed together than other, significantly smaller pieces of furniture.

LILLBERG sofa. This was practically assembled for us. Open up one box for the frame and legs and then toss on the cushions with covers. A quick spray of Scotch Gard seals the deal. Despite being the cheapest sofa on IKEA’s line-up, it is remarkably sturdy, comfortable, and appealing.

JOKKMOKK dining set. Do you have 15 minutes in your spare eveningtime? Great. Then, go watch an episode of something on adultswim or play a dozen rounds of Snood, because there’s no possible way to assemble the JOKKMOKK dining set on your own in anything less than 60 minutes. Yes, the table is a piece of cake to put together, but your hands will not relish the number of dowels you must hand-hammer in place nor will they appreciate the inordinate number of screws to be screwed for the set of chairs. Luckily, the final result is a solid set of furniture and the chairs can withstand the force of me pounding the seat, which is probably a few thousand psi, judging from my past performances at carnival sledgehammer game attempts.

EXPEDIT huge bookcase. Two people are almost certainly necessary in constructing this enormous bookshelf. It’s so monotonous that you’ll forget that you missed two meals assembling it. A sincere recommendation—secure this to the wall, otherwise it will attack in your sleep.

MALM annoying-large dresser. The screws, dowels, attachments, and various small metallic pieces come in a bag large enough to contain a loaf of bread. It’s disheartening, yes, but a challenge for someone hoping to build character. If you’re not into making your sons or daughters mow the lawn to enrich their character, then, in order to make up for that lost potential, lock them in a room and tell them their freedom comes at the price of assembling this beast. Two weeks later, you’ll have either a.) a teenager ready to tackle the world & a nice-quality dresser in tip-top shape or b.) an embittered corpse and a self-fashioned coffin from the dresser components.

MALM bedside table. Take the torture of assembling the MALM annoying-large dresser and only digest 30% of it. Pretty much the same effect.

VIKA GRUVEN desk. This almost seemed like a joke to put together in comparison. After 9 screws the tabletop is done. After a few patient minutes, the legs are ready to go. The product is one handsome shadowbox desk with some shelf room on the legs.

BILLY bookshelf. The theme of this piece is: so much solid wood that all other IKEA pieces appear to be veneered chipboard. Take a minute to pencil the center line for the backboard nails, otherwise you’ll punch through the board or harm the shelf on the other side. IKEA, unfortunately, does not provide any method for doing this in their own instructions, so it must be on your own initiative. But, if you forget, hopefully, the books will hide the errors you sowed and your own Becky will forgive you the mishap.

BEKVÄM kitchen cart. Continuing the theme of solid wood, the tabletop alone could resist the punches of a thousand samurai. My Phillips head screwdriver met its greatest nemesis here and was buried respectfully in the village dumpster. The kitchen cart was eventually completed and now serves as a proud levy for when the kitchen plumbing bursts.

LACK coffee table. I have 4 regular, square LACK tables myself, one which I modified for my own LACK-table-purposes. Even though they are ridiculously cheap and made of fair-to-poor material, the birch veneer looks really nice and clean. Plus, these tables can really hold some weight. My own LACK tables can take me standing on them to replace a lightbulb, so I have equal hopes for the coffee table. Who says you have to pay the big bucks for quality furniture? Schwels and Grand Piano do, but not IKEA. Thankfully.

BOLLO outdoor table. Take it out of the box. And why does this thing come with instructions? No, that’s not an acceptable reason.

Somewhere in there was also a RIGGA clothing rack and a small bathroom shelf from Target whose instructions used numbers and arrows and all sorts of confusion. IKEA instructions are notoriously simplified so as to provide attractive furniture at low cost to even the most illiterate of our society.

The move continues, yes, but the excitement of seeing a living space come together as furniture is assembled and set in place, well, that excitement is worth the sore hands and dead tools. Even more dramatic, I, Ryan Harne, am actually becoming a “dog person”. That’s a story in itself, so hang tight for further developments. In the meantime, I’m going to go watch some DVD-tv with a puppy.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 6th, 2008 at 8:01 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.