Several hundred bad words later, I have a new dresser.
July 29, 2007, 10:14 PM
First of all, let me preface this story by telling you that Mom came up to visit this weekend, and we went to Ikea in College Park. I’ve finally just about figured the place out, and so it’s no longer as intimidating as that first trip was back in May. Mom wanted to get some more silverware and various other odds and ends. In the end, we came out with a dresser for me, since I’d mentioned I needed to look at dressers since my present one was too small.
In the bedroom department, they had dressers coming out of dressers. Mom and I found a dresser that matched my bed – the “Hemnes” style. Very dark wood. And this dresser was really big, too. So after perusing the “marketplace” where Mom got more silverware and various other stuff, we went into their big warehouse and fished out the two boxes that the dresser came in, checked out, and brought it home in the Sable.
By the way, it’s a real you-know-what to carry that stuff up three flights of stairs. Just thought you ought to know that.
So today, I put this monster together. As is standard form for Ikea, the directions contain no words – all pictures. So as a result, I found myself looking at the whole thing to see what was going on, and reading ahead and such to see if I understood what these little pictograms were telling me. And as is typical form for me when I’m assembling furniture, if I drop something, if I hit or pinch myself, or, even worse, if I make a substantial mistake, I swear. My favorite bad word in these situations is the “S” word. I think with this dresser I managed to capture it all. I dropped stuff, I hit my finger with a hammer, I got a finger pinched in a spot, and I put a piece in the wrong spot, and had to reverse a few steps to get the errant piece out and put the right one in. It was two identical pieces, but one was finished and the other wasn’t. The pictograms don’t indicate finished or non-finished, and I grabbed the wrong one. But we have a dresser, and we have confirmed that I know how to swear.
Now I just have to move out of my old dresser and into the new one. I’ve had my old one forever. My parents got it for me when I was born, and changed my diapers on the top of it when I was a baby. Now, though, it has lost that soft-as-a-baby’s-behind look, the drawers don’t roll right, and stuff can get pinched in the bottom. It’s been from New Jersey to Arkansas to Virginia and finally to Maryland. And now it has one last trip to make – down the stairs and into the dumpster. Mom asked me how I was going to get it down the stairs by myself. I’m like, no problem. Going up, you’re working against gravity, and so you need two people to go up. But going down, you have gravity on your side. All you have to do going down is to put a hand on it to keep it from going down too fast and taking someone or something out. Especially if this piece of furniture is destined for that big bedroom set in the sky.
Now, though, I just have to clean up. I need to switch dressers so I can get rid of the old one, then I need to vacuum up all the little bits of debris from the furniture assembly, chuck the boxes, and then put away the part of my laundry that goes in the dresser. My clean laundry is still in the living room in baskets awaiting placement in the new dresser. It made little sense to me to put away the laundry just to have to move it again within a day.
Still, I love Ikea furniture, but it’s a real b—- to put together.
Web site: The Smurfs!
Song: Theme to You Can't Do That On Television - I found some clips on YouTube that I was watching while doing the furniture thing. All the while, putting the furniture together, I was constantly finding myself saying "I don't know". (*slimed*)
Quote: "That is David Robison's picture!" - After Mom suggested at Ikea that I should get a certain picture to hang in my office. I turned down the suggestion, as a coworker already has the exact same picture in his office.
Categories: College Park, Family, Furniture, IKEA