making a silk purse out of ikea furniture....

Dan Noren

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this all started out when the wife wanted me to make a chest of drawers for under the desk she uses for her laptop:D. i suggested we make a day of it, and look around some:thumb:. we went to target, walmart, even costco, but we couldn't find something quite right:dunno:. that was when i made my mistake:doh:, i suggested we go to ikea and see what they have:rolleyes:. we looked all over, not seeing much (no surprise there), then she saw what has become the bane of my existance, IVAR:eek:! needless to say, she fell in love with it:drool: and had to buy it. she was so happy when she bought it :bliss:, probably because she knew that i was the one stuck putting it together. one word of warning, ikea uses the smallest amount of packaging possible, and i almost hurt myself finding that out. small boxes that usually weigh a ton. well, we finally got this monstrosity home, and unloaded from the car. my beloved better half :blah: set it down on her own foot, and that was the end of her finishing IVAR (if you didn't know, ikea gives all their furniture stupid swedish names). IVAR is a monstrosity made up of a set of 3 drawers below, and a set of shelves with doors above. after unpacking the evil parts of the set of drawers, i started applying the shellac. this wood was so dry, it sucked up the first 3 coats, same with the shelving unit. it took 8 coats to finally get this thing looking at least presentable. if you've ever assembled anything from ikea, i'll spare you the gory details, but i will say that the instruction manual (don't know if i can say it here, but think golf balls through a garden hose, and you get my point). now that both parts are assembled, it only needs to be attached to the framework, and tipped up on it's feet (think final assembly of darth vader), and shove it into place. i have sworn a holy oath, never to buy anything other than those little glass tealight holders and candles, from ikea, ever. they're worse than the spinny vortex, even if they do have swedish meatballs....
 

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I don't know what to say I may have to report this post to the mods for review, it is pure porn and shouldn't be allowed of a family site...:eek:

Dan I am suprised and also ashamed that a fellow woodworker would resort to buying anything from that place. Sham Sham Sham on you.:(:(:(
 
don, that's the nice part about the whole thing! i didn't pick it out, and i didn't buy it, my wife did both. i'm just the poor shlemazl that has to assemble it. besides, i got to give ikea all holy you know what about their indecipherable instructions. trust me don, if i designed this, the way it is now, i would hand you the weapon to shoot me with. on a bad day, with one eye shut, parked in stateroom h, i could have designed this better. but, she wanted it, and she bought it. when she gets like that, i know better than to argue and risk discontinuation of cooked food, and clean clothes....:D:thumb:

this post was edited to replace one word with something even worse....:rofl::rofl::rofl:
 
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I can see Dan that ya just don't have her trained yet, now LOML would say" I would like something like that but you can make it much better" and leave it to me to put it high on my list of priorities to build before she got tired of waiting and went out and bought it.
 
Don Baer said:
Dan I am suprised and also ashamed that a fellow woodworker would resort to buying anything from that place. Sham Sham Sham on you.:(:(:(

There are some things that Ikea sells for less than the materials would cost. The black shelves in my show display are from Ikea, and they were less than the S4S lumber to build them would have cost... and a lot faster to build.

But I feel Dan's pain. Ikea instructions leave a lot to be desired. ;)
 
There are some things that Ikea sells for less than the materials would cost. The black shelves in my show display are from Ikea, and they were less than the S4S lumber to build them would have cost... and a lot faster to build.

But I feel Dan's pain. Ikea instructions leave a lot to be desired. ;)

What, you don't like line art?

At least thats what they seemed like to me, line art icons used instead of words or real pictures....

But I do like some of their stuff and the prices can be right....

Garry
 
Sorry to disagree guys, but in order to understand IKEA instructions one has to leave behind any previous experience that one has and follow them blindly, and in its true order.
I have several IKEA pieces, I'm not ashamed to say, and after my first one, I found out that that was the best way to assemble them. Pretend that I didn't even know what a screwdriver was and follow the instructions step by step.

Don't get me wrong, I do agree that they can be improved, but they are not that bad.

On the other hand I would challenge any of you trying to write a set of assembly instructions for a piece of furniture without words so that they are understandable by most people of different countries and specially for people who are not woodworkers. We all tend to give too many things for granted when we face any piece that needs to be assembled, and I'm not talking about IKEA furniture here.

It is common practice not to read any instruction manual of any tool, machine, video, DVD or whatsoever until we have to give up and go back to the manual.

Vaughn, I agree with you, I'd rather buy an IKEA piece for far less than the wood to build it so I can devote my time to build things that I like when what I need at this moment is just a place to store my nails, bits and pieces or similar.:)

Maybe it is just because I'm closer to Sweden that I don't find their instructions that difficult.:D:;)
 
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I had 2 pieces of ikea furniture. a glass doored box for TV stand, and a coffee table. Easy peezy to put together, and stayed looking nice till the day I gave both pieces away. I put them on craigslist for free, and the coffee table was spoken for in 6 minutes, and the tv cabinet my sil ended up taking the same night I put the ad in for her bedroom.
Ikea has a place in todays market. They make affordable clean looking furniture.
I find nothing wrong with their pieces.Id just rather have one of my cruddy solid wood pieces instead.
 
I ahve put together perhaps a dozen pieces of furniture, all from Wal-Mart. Do no know brand. But, one is well advised to lay out the pieces and follow directions exactly. One goof and you have a mess, sometimes not fixable. For the price stuff is good, albiet, very heavy.
 
Sorry to hear of your pain Dan, but my entire home office is ex IKEA. Its nice orange birch color. I have only one complaint with their stuff and that is that they dont keep the ranges for too long before they change em up. So if one thinks mmmm i will add on later, it better be sooner than later or you wont be adding on the same. Also the veneer is so thin that just the surface of your skin in contact with it all the time can start the veneer cracking and lifting. But that was before i had a shop. :D

Flatpacks have their place. Like Vaughn said some of their stuff you cannot buy the wood at their price.
 
with the job getting in the way, haven't had too much time for IVAR. today with the help of the neighbor, we got the top cabinet in the building, and by the door. i'll bring it in some time later tonight when no one is looking....
 

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yayyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!!:woot::bliss: IVAR is finally assembled and in place!!:highfive: here is a pic of it in place, along with my beloved wife who got me another 500 years off my sentence in purgatory (i guess she doesn't want to be seen with IVAR:rofl:)
 

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