Ikea, I saw, I conquered

When we first moved to Denver, we were in need of some bedroom furniture. A quick trip to Ikea, and we had a few inexpensive but decent dressers. I spent the better part of a Sunday assembling them. It was arduous, but necessary work to assemble them, lest I succumb to the unmanly and expensive assembly service.

I have had a hand-me-down cube on wheels thing for years. It holds up my printer and scanner and stores some paper. It’s ugly but it works insofar as it holds up the equipment and paper goes into it. It’s not good for much else. It’s ugly. It doesn’t’ go with “the decor”. It’s time for it to go

We decided to replace it with an Ikea Alex drawer unit. This meant a trip to Ikea (meatballs for dinner!) and some assembly.

The trip took place last Friday night (meataballs and decaf!).

Assembly was today.

I am happy to report that the Alex went together in just under 90 minutes. I’ll be putting it into place in a little bit and retiring “the cube” to a place near the dumpster. Despite the effort necessary to put the furniture together, I always get a strange sense of satisfaction when doing this. I’m not the only one. It’s called The Ikea Effect and it’s been studied.

After reading that I realized:

Ikea furniture is just like LEGOs for adults with a couple of exceptions:

  1. You get furniture when done instead of reusable toys
  2. Spare parts at the end of construction are far more an item of concern with Ikea than LEGO

I really wish I knew where that one spare screw goes. For my own sanity, it’s going in the trash. My Alex seems solid enough.

9 Comments

  1. Vince Adornato on February 3, 2013 at 12:33 pm

    Two thumbs up on that one! The learning curve is bitch!

  2. Neil Gilfillan Neil Gilfillan on June 9, 2019 at 11:05 am

    Glad you weren’t screwed.

  3. Neil Gilfillan Neil Gilfillan on June 9, 2019 at 11:05 am

    Glad you weren’t screwed.

  4. Hal Holbrook Hal Holbrook on June 10, 2019 at 6:47 am

    And, as Tom & Ray Magliozzi always said, if you need another one, just take that one apart a few times and put it back together again and you’ll have enough parts left over to make the second one.

  5. Hal Holbrook Hal Holbrook on June 10, 2019 at 6:47 am

    And, as Tom & Ray Magliozzi always said, if you need another one, just take that one apart a few times and put it back together again and you’ll have enough parts left over to make the second one.

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