flat packed furniture
As I type this I am sitting on a brand new sofa-bed from IKEA. It’s huge, heavy and blue. (It’s also much comfier than our old sofa.) We have also bought our new dining table and chairs from IKEA. The furniture is pretty good, but this article isn’t an advertisement in praise of IKEA. This article is about the adventures we have had in getting the furniture from IKEA to our house, out of the cardboard boxes and assembled into useable furniture.
First Trip: last week, participants: Mum and Dad.
One Table, dining room size. One dining room chair. The encouraging part of the story is that the table, originally thought to be too big to transport home in our own car, was actually flat packed in a really clever way, and was in fact in a very small package. The discouraging part of the story is that only one chair was available in the colour that matched our other furniture.
We assembled the chair on Saturday, and the table on Tuesday.
Second Trip: Tuesday this week, participants: Dad, my sister and me.
Already in the city, we decided to visit IKEA and see if there were more chairs available. We had also found out about an “Eat your discount” deal, where you could eat at the restaurant and then deduct the price of your food from the cost of your furniture, in effect eating for free. We looked at a sofa-bed that my parents had looked at on their previous trip, and then went and enjoyed a Swedish meatballs meal from the restaurant. Wandering down to the shop floor, we found that the colour of chair we wanted was unavailable. Apparently “yellow brown” is a popular colour! (The colour actually doesn’t look as unappealing as it sounds.) What to do? We had already eaten and it looked like we wouldn’t be taking advantage of the “Eat your discount” deal! We asked at the service desk about the chairs, no go. We then thought about the sofa-bed. Being a large item, we had to pay for it and then pick it up from the warehouse. Unlike the table, the sofa wasn’t as easily compacted into a flat pack, and instead came in two large boxes, plus a smaller box for the cover (purchased separately, so you choose the colour.) After waiting for the sofa to emerge from the warehouse, we took it to the home delivery counter, and took home the smaller box (the cover) ourselves.
The next day, a scorching hot day of around 37 degrees centigrade, the delivery truck arrived, and our sofa was delivered to our living room. It was too hot to assemble anything that afternoon so we rested.
The following morning in the refreshing coolness, we opened up the two large boxes. One was amusingly coffin shaped. As we sorted out the bits and pieces, there appeared to be a part missing- an alan key. However we decided to attempt assembling the sofa bed as we went. It came together pretty easily, until we came to the legs. They needed a long thick alan key to reach through the legs to the bolt into the rest of the sofa, and that alan key was missing. After phoning up IKEA, we decided it was time for another IKEA trip- a quick check of their website revealed that there were some chairs in stock.
Third Trip: Thursday (today) participants: Dad and me.
With a half assembled sofa in our living room, we drove into IKEA. The first thing we did was go straight to the flat pack pick up and grab the four chairs in yellow brown. Heaps in the other colours, but only four of the ones we wanted. Then I waited with our trolley while my Dad went to the returns desk to get the missing alan key. It took a while for them to give him the right part, but eventually he got it. Now, it was close to the middle of the day, and we were starting to think about lunch. But how to get to the restaurant without abandoning the chairs that are so hard to get a hold of? We wheeled the trolley back through the show room to the lift, and went up a level to the restaurant. We enjoyed our lunch and then retraced our steps down the lift and through the show room to the check outs.
Then my Dad pulled out the parking ticket (you get four hours free in the car park if you purchase at least five dollar’s worth from IKEA) for the check out person to process. He had two in his pocket: after the first visit to IKEA there had been so many cars wanting to get out that an employee had opened the boom gates and waved everyone through. He picked one, we thought it was the right one.
Unfortunately, we caused a traffic back up because we picked the wrong ticket- we had picked the old ticket. One dollar and a sprint there and back from the parking paying machine, and we could load up the boot with the four chairs and return home with the alan key.
Once we had the right alan key we were able to bolt the legs on really quickly, and were able to assemble the sofa-bed and test it out. It’s really comfy. We then got really good at assembling the dining room chairs, following the instructions like you follow the instructions for LEGO.
So, over the course of a week, we have one sofa-bed, one dining room table and five dining room chairs, from three trips to IKEA. One chair short.