Thursday, January 22, 2009

Ikea - Swedish for "Why am I doing this to myself?"

Yesterday I officially became all grown up. It was my 27th birthday and my Aunt Kathy assured me that "You are really a grown up now."

To prove my independence, I drove to the nearest Ikea last week to pick up my Christmas present from my parents. It took 45 minutes to get there, an hour in the store, and almost half an hour to get the boxes loaded into my car. My new entertainment center came in two very heavy boxes. Spring made a brief appearance in Phoenix, and I sweated through the labor of loading 140 lbs of furniture in 78 degree weather.

Once home, I opened the boxes and carried the pieces individually up to my apartment. I decided to document the entire procedure, having been warned by my father: the challenge is putting anything together from Ikea without a) screwing it up and having to partially redo or 2) cursing or 3) throwing a tool or implement or 4)missing a vital part that should have been enclosed.

If I had only known what lay ahead for my Friday afternoon...

Construction of an Ikea Entertainment Center
as documented and narrated by yours truly:









I also purchased new boxes to hold my dvd collection. I had no idea they would involve construction.




The End.

13 comments:

Stevox said...

I always found putting together Ikea furniture as a tribute to my childhood. Those Ikea instruction books seem identical to the Lego instruction books I constructed from as a child.

My new Ikea entertainment center took 3 hours. Sucka.

Ginger said...

Your center may have only taken 3 hours to put together but it is used to play street fighter...so yeah.

Hannah said...

But it IS quite gorgeous! Congrats on being all adult N such.

Lauren said...

my ikea dresser took two and a half hours with three people... three people!

~lady j said...

congratulations. it looks awesome :)

Unknown said...

i think this is an all around positive thing.
a) the entertainment center is REAL cute.
b) i am sure it built some character.
c) this provides entertainment to the rest of the blogging world.
d) i got to see pics of your apartment and now know a little of what it looks like.

Katie said...

It does look great...but I, too, understand the utter frustration of putting furniture together with insufficient instructions and no clues.

Way to go for persevering!!

Unknown said...

hi! glad to find another texan. :) and i have SO been there with ikea furniture... totally cute and worth it, as long as you can maneuver and climb in and out of the furniture to build it. so far, i've been successful. looks like you have too!

shannonmichaelis said...

the problem is your shirt, not the set of instructions! :-) love the play by play, and yes, ikea furniture does frighten me....

Unknown said...

It's all worth it when you're able to call all of your home furnishings by specific name.
Sitting in Svening you can turn on your Karät and watch the hands on the Förena go by.

Hilary said...

IKEA was my first place to go shopping here in Paris! We took the bus though, so no furniture for us :)

Anonymous said...

You need to have a play by play of your dad the next time he takes on an Ikea project....please, no video.

I agree, the t-shirt caused you mucho problems.

Snuf

Stevox said...

Street Fighter...and fine cinema...in HD...
Sucka.