Saturday, November 21, 2015

Do-It-Yourself, Teenage Daughter Edition

Today Precocious Daughter and I descended on our local IKEA and bought as much stuff as we could cram into a Ford Focus hatchback.

My sweet Benedict Cumberhatch.
Our haul included some kitchen items, some bathroom stuff, and - most importantly - a dining table and two chairs.

Yes, only two chairs. Our apartment is small, and we'll figure out where to seat guests when we actually have some. We're new at the whole Outfitting an Apartment and Not Worrying About Starving to Death While You Do It thing.

We plan to go back for a media stand and a sofa. Which may require rental of a U-Haul for the afternoon, because Bene is roomy, but he's not a freaking TARDIS.

Bigger on the inside doesn't apply to American compact cars,
I'm afraid.
Anyway, we got our haul home, and carried it from the parking garage to the apartment (thank you, helpful neighbors who are willing to hold doors for aggrieved-looking females hauling boxes). I was perfectly content to let everything sit until tomorrow at that point. But PDaughter declared she felt "handy" and unboxed one of the chairs to see what made it tick.

At that point I joined her, because everyone knows the First Commandment of assembling IKEA furniture is: "Thou shalt not even attempt to put this shit together with only one person." God may have made us in His image, but that doesn't include possessing the four arms and six hands necessary to successfully assemble a piece from IKEA's "simple" instructions.

So together we looked over the parts (surprisingly few) and instructions (seemingly simple) to put together a Henriksdahl dining chair. And we got going on that.

At which point we were confronted with the Second Commandment of assembling IKEA furniture, which is: "Thou shalt not assume the simple printed instructions actually convey the level of difficulty involved." 

And shortly after that, with the Third Commandment: "Thou shalt not text thy boyfriend every 30 seconds while thy mother needs your help holding parts together so she can apply the Allen wrench to that shit."

PDaughter broke that commandment several times. I finally set down the hand tools and announced that I was done with the IKEA Chair Project because she wouldn't stop texting.

I very rarely get angry with my child. She's a good kid, and I'm a pretty lenient mom, and it typically isn't necessary to get worked up over her behavior.

But I was PISSED that she was the one who started to work on the chair assembly and then abdicated her effort in favor of her smartphone.

So now I'm in my room, and she's in her room, and the room in between contains the dismembered body of an IKEA chair. Maybe we'll finish it tomorrow.

Or maybe not. We've gone six weeks without a table or chairs. Apparently we can do everything. Except assemble a simple piece of furniture together. Grr.

Any suggestions? Alternatively, anyone who wants to help put together a few IKEA pieces is welcome to volunteer. Otherwise, I'll be eating dinner off a stack of cardboard boxes for the foreseeable future.

As the Swedish Chef might say, hernga dernga verschmurst.

I couldn't agree more.

6 comments:

  1. Sounds like an IKEA party is needed.

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  3. Or, you know, stick the half assembled furniture together any old how, festoon it with carboard boxes, call it modern art, sell or for a fortune, and buy some pre assembled furniture.


    (Deleted previous comment for editing purposes)

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  4. Annoying Your Mother is on the list of teenage girl rituals. Isn't it?

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  5. I have a table and chairs, but they only get used when the kids are here.

    Of course, the table and chairs are castaways from my grandparents. IKEA... that's something for people with money.

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  6. My suggestion would be taking away PDaughter's phone until the furniture was assembled, but that's too cruel to even really be considered.

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