The Reward-Eligible ME! Excercises in IKEA Furniture Assembly

This forenoon I assembled two pieces of IKEA furniture that we bought for our son's room. First, a short dresser which went totogether easily and flawlessly and second, an upright bookshelf. The bookshelf assembly however required a re-do. Twice.

You see, there are these 'locking screws' which connect two upright board together to create the actual height and there are four of these, two sets per side. I managed to get two of them (one on each side) incorrectly assembled. The locking-screws are supposed to face inwards, towards the books. -Or outwards, away from the books. One or the other but I managed to get one facing in and one facing out on both sides. Swapping these pieces does not solve the puzzle either, as there are 'front' and back' upright boards to consider as well. Not very attractive the way it was albeit, easily dismissible. Still, I needed to change this.

I disassembled the long boards and with some swapping around, got it correct finally. IKEA makes some really attractive simple, bare-bones essentials and the price is right but sometimes their non-textual sketch-images-only depictions are less than intuitive. Factually correct, but these can be interpreted incorrectly.

It is untypical however for an IKEA furniture to be assembled incorrectly and not be obtusely noticeable early-on. This particular piece however, assembled incorrectly with ease.

IKEA Dresser & Bookshelf Assembled By Me

(modeled by my son)

 

Anyway, it is done and I was left feeling quite reward-eligible. Ice cream and Coca-Cola tonight!

The bookshelf is a laminate and does not require any finishing, but the dresser is naked white pine and tomorrow I intend to give it a clear spray urethane coat for durability and shine. My son is ecstatic with joy over having new furniture for his room, more places for 'his stuff.'

I also got to work some more on that end table for my wife. I was able to remove some rusty and broke-off wood screws that were embedded into critical joints, and got the spindles cut for replacing the painted ones.

I'm getting rather excited to see this reassembled and finished. I will have to fine-sand it again to remove hand and fingerprints, scuffs and etc. and likely, use steel wool tp really get it smoothed-out.

This is going to look really nice.