Wednesday, June 21, 2006

IKEA...I think I've got it!




This weekend I was staying with my sister while her husband is in Germany on business. One of the projects she had on the list was to assemble a storage unit from IKEA. No problem. I love doing this type of thing. I know, it doesn't seem typical of me, but I become a little obsessed when I have all these parts spread out infront of me with the promise of "building" something. Anyway, I opened the box and pulled the pieces of wood out onto the livingroom floor. Since I was home alone, I decided to turn the TV on to keep me company. As luck would have it, Dirty Dancing was on. It's been a LONG time, so I decided to watch it while I assembled my masterpiece. (incidentally, the first time I saw that movie was at a birthday party when I was about 10...hello? inappropriate!!)

As I slid the first two pieces together with the notch & groove, I thought "sweet, I'm going to have this finished when Jo-Anne gets home and unveil it for her ...hmm, why is this hole not lining up with the screw? Let me try it this way...nope, that's not working either. Let me try another piece. Uh oh...we got a mis-drilled set. This is not good...nothing is fitting. Guess I'll just sit back and watch Patrick Swayze do his thing."

However, seeing the unassembled pieces staring at me from across the room, I had to go back to it. For the life of me, I could not get the pieces to match. I threw down the allen wrench in frustration and finished watching the movie. When Jo-Anne came home, she found me enjoying the final dance number surrounded by IKEA parts. I explained that she got a "bad one" as it doesn't fit right. She assured me that I was just having a "duh" moment and she would get it to work. Mmhmm....let's see...
About half an hour later I was on the IKEA website desperately searching for instructions or help of any kind. I ended up calling IKEA and talking to a guy that thought I just needed to "flip" one of the pieces. I assured him I had tried all possible combinations. He then promised he would e-mail me explicit instructions. (and why do they not include explicit instructions with the unit in the first place?) The e-mail took about 10 minutes to come through and I was sure he had written down my address wrong, but it finally appeared and I was able to print them out. That's when I had my a-ha moment. I DID just have to "flip" one part around. It wasn't long before I had the unit assembled and my Everest for the day had been conquered.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Janice, When I buy Ikea furniture, I just give it to the kids to put together. They do a much better job than I do.

Elvin