More Adventures in Furniture

[kevin_standlee]

We were at IKEA when the doors opened, and we headed straight to the stacks, where we could not find the items we wanted. Despite the signs touting the existence of the larger pieces, the staff said they couldn't find any, so, rather than take our chances driving to Emeryville, we decided to take what they had. Besides, the desks we bought yesterday are too large to fit in my van and will have to be delivered, so we needed to get as much into a single delivery as possible.

After spending around 45 minutes waiting for the staff on the warehouse floor to tell us that they couldn't find the large items (and standing guard over one of the few mediums available to prevent someone else from snagging it) and another 45 minutes waiting through the queue to order delivery, we were finally done. After securing a couple of smaller pieces we'd also purchased in my van, I said to cherylmorgan "We need a reward for surviving the IKEA experience. Coffee and cinnamon rolls in the Bistro!"

Today we must start assembling some of the pieces we brought home yesterday (and getting rid of the older stuff we aren't keeping), along with boxing up loose stuff (mostly books) to get them out of the way long enough to make room to do the assembly and so forth. The next few days are going to be very busy, particularly, I think, when we have to disassemble the entire computer room and remove all of the machines from it so we can get the existing folding desk and shelves out of it and install the pair of desks we just bought.

Comments

[n5red.livejournal.com]

You're getting rid of BOOKS? Heretic!

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

No, for the most part we are not getting rid of books. That's why we had to go to IKEA. We have some small shelves, but we're getting rid of them in favor of very tall shelves, in order to fit all of the books. In some cases, we donate books to BASFA. In other cases (rarely), we sell some of them to Half Price Books. And those that still don't fit have to go into the storage locker in Yuba City.

As it stands now, we've got piles and piles of books on the floor. We need the floor space to assemble the furniture. So the books have to go into boxes; the boxes get moved around into what space is available, like on beds and sofas and the like; we assemble the bookshelves and wrestle them into place; then we can take the books out of the boxes and put them on the shelves.

[cherylmorgan.livejournal.com]

Believe me, I hate getting rid of books. But towards the end of Emerald City we were getting more than a dozen books a week in the mail. Most of them were fat fantasy (book 7 of a trilogy), sex-n-vampires books, or books written specifically for young teenagers, most of which we'd never review. We are trying to make sure they go to good homes, which is why we auction them at BASFA. But the "muscle-thewed hero hacks his way through 50 gazillion orcs" type books and the "Princess Daisy's adventures with the pirates" type books have to go to Half Price.

[drhaggis.livejournal.com]

My traditional reward for a successful IKEA trip is the meatballs and lingonberries.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I did consider a trip upstairs for lunch -- it was the right time of day -- but we were expecting a visit by a Dell tech support person, and therefore couldn't spare the time for more than coffee and rolls. Besides, the bistro is on the edge of the store, near the exits, whereas the full restaurant is upstairs. At that point we had no stomach for being tempted to buy anything else.

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

Good luck with the assembly work. I've never been to an Ikea (they have been slow to make inroads into New England, and the first in Massachusetts is a bit far from here), but their furniture looks to have nice, clean lines.

Here's hoping the directions are sensible...and not the "okay, now I need another espresso" type. :-)

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I think the directions are pretty sensible, although you need to be really careful about things that can be assembled in two orientations, only one of which has the finish in the correct direction. It's all done in drawings without written instructions (that way they don't have to publish instructions in multiple languages), and I admire how cleverly the product is packaged and how the connectors work.

I agree that the designs are nice and clean -- something I admire, although I haven't always been able to live with it myself because so much of my furniture has been other people's cast-offs.

We're actually approaching the point where the living/dining area and the work room each have their own separate color scheme and a unified design. The entertainment center still won't match the rest of the shelving in the living room, but that's because we don't plan on replacing it until such time as we decide to jump to a HDTV unit.