So begins my latest adventure : assembling IKEA furniture. Now, this seems simple enough, right? I mean, after all, that's what these pieces are designed for is do-it-yourself assembly. Seems reasonable enough that a college graduate with a brief background in Physics would be able to figure these things out, right? Well, eventually I will, but here's the rub: for those of you who are not familiar with IKEA, I will tell you where the problem comes in. Most things that are assembled at home include instructions like our old favorite "Insert Tab A into Slot B" complete with illustrations to show you exactly where Tab A and Slot B are in relation to the rest of the disassembled pile of stuff you have sitting before you. Not IKEA. IKEA instructions have nothing BUT illustrations. That's right - no words at all, just weird looking people with no necks & smiley faces pointing to little screws that are all different, but only subtly so that it is highly challenging to determine if you are inserting Tab A into Slot B, or if what you are actually doing is sticking Post X into Hole Y. To make things even more fun, it seems that when you finally do identify the correct piece that is depicted in the illustration and perform the prescribed operation upon it, in the illustration immediately following, it is facing a completely different way. This leads you to either flipping and turning oddly shaped, partially assembled pieces awkwardly, hoping that they stay together in the process, or doing a strange tribal looking rain dance, hopping around your furniture-piece-to-be like a shaman.
I got the center piece and the sort of "skeleton" of the drawers put together last night after leaving work at 6pm, coming home to feed, bathe, and put 2 small children to bed, helping my 16-year-old niece with her homework, running to the store to gas up my car and buy a loaf of bread, getting 16-year-old to help me unload all this heavy stuff from IKEA and haul it upstairs, moving the stuff that previously occupied the spot that the new dresser would now reside, sorting through the hardware & unpacking all the pieces. By the time I began actually assembling something, it was 9:30. I was quite proud of how much of it I did get accomplished in one day.
My husband's query when I spoke to him this morning: "So did you get the dresser piece built last night?"
I may kill him when he returns from Mexico.
