Stupid Ikea instructions

Ok, so we made it out of Ikea alive, sane and in one piece. That was more than could be said of the wardrobes that we bought.

The stupid Ikea delivery people showed up on Monday morning. They carted in some long boxes and some short boxes. After they had left, we inspected the boxes and found that they had delivered what appeared to be a wardrobe and a shelving unit. We were so annoyed at what had happened in the shop the other night that we said we'd keep mum and hang onto the shelving unit unless they discovered their boo-boo and asked for it back.

Useless pricks.

As it turned out, the dopey bastards had delivered half a shelving unit and half a wardrobe. If we had started assembly, we would have been rooted. Thankfully, the useless pricks rang before we ripped anything apart to tell us that they would be back to collect the shelving unit and give us the rest of our wardrobe.

Under what fetid toadstools do they recruit such brainless nematodes?

The most important part about assembling our wardrobe was to invite a very tall person over to hold the top bits whilst I bashed away with a hammer or wrench or whatever else came to hand. I recruited Ian, our estwhile neighbour, as he stands well over 6 foot in his socks. Ian and I decided that the instructions were stupid, so we invented our own way of putting the wardrobe together.

Dumb idea.

Ikea furniture is the timber version of a kite. It's lightweight and relies on cross bracing to retain any structural integrity. If you don't put it together properly, it collapses like a souffle. Which is what ours did. The cunning little Swedes that designed the screws and dowels had done a very nifty design job. However, they were still working with chipboard covered in veneer. Chipboard is crap. We went to lift up the wardrobe in order to nail the back on and all the cunning fittings and screws tore out of the chipboard and the thing collapsed like a pack of cards, scattering gobbets of ripped chipboard from one end of the bedroom to the other. It was starting to look like a $750 assembly error, when we noticed that we could simply turn all the bits upside down and re-assemble it again as we had a whole new set of screw holes to work with. If that didn't work, I guess we would have tried liquid nails.

The thing is, the Ikea way of assembly is impossible without a handy Ian to hold up the top bit. Maybe the average height in Sweden is 6 foot 4 inches and they don't have a short person problem. Over here, it is a bit different. Stupid Ikea designers need to think about how dwarfs will put these things together.

The other thing I discovered is that it helps if you put the doors on before you install shelves etc. All the shelves and slidy baskets and things use the same screw holes as the door hinges. It was either a case of remove and shift the fittings for 4 wire baskets, or leave a hinge out. I couldn't be shagged - we now have two spare hinges.

The sad sods didn't drill holes in the doors either for the door handles, so the only way to open the bastard doors is to hook your big toe under the bottom lip of the door and pull outwards. Thankfully, the doors are paper thin and the hinges are not too sticky, so you can do it without risk of ripping your toenails off.

Ikea. Swedish for toe rags.