I’ve put together five Billy bookcases in the last few days, and, I must say, you have to admire the IKEA concept. Designer items, cunningly flat-packed for economical shipping, and each with all the right pieces in all the right quantities for a no-hassle assembly. Well, usually.
After doweling, screwing, and nailing the fifth bookcase together I found this collection of left-over components still in the box.
Not funny IKEA!
What’s going on? Is this some Swedish factory worker’s* idea of a joke? ‘Mmmmwwwwahaha, that’ll keep someone confused for hours!’. Perhaps he /she (I bet it’s a he), randomly pops few extra parts into every 1,313th package?
Even though I was on bookcase number five, and by then could pretty much have assembled a Billy in my sleep, I still felt the need to do a full check on the darn thing. Let’s face it, no-one wants to be responsible for a bookcase collapsing and burying some poor unsuspecting soul in a deluge of literature. For those of you likely to visit and stand about in the vicinity of said bookcase; you can thank me later.
Check in again soon. I’m going to be back with progress pictures of the new bookshelves. And, because this is a real life blog, (1) they are far from finished, and (2) there is rather a lot of untidy house in the background. It’ll make you feel heaps better about your own housekeeping. Promise.
* Actually that was artistic license. IKEA items, like everything else nowadays, are made in China.
“bookcase collapsing and burying some poor unsuspecting soul in a deluge of literature” — but what a way to go, eh?
That’s right. Imagine breathing your last under Lord Peter Whimsy. We’d take that, eh Deborah?
And while we’re on the subject of Lord Peter and furniture, here’s a quote from Dorothy Sayers about her character and his independent means. I just found it on the Wiki page, and I’m really only putting it here for my own reference:
‘Lord Peter’s large income… I deliberately gave him… After all it cost me nothing and at the time I was particularly hard up and it gave me pleasure to spend his fortune for him. When I was dissatisfied with my single unfurnished room I took a luxurious flat for him in Piccadilly. When my cheap rug got a hole in it, I ordered him an Aubusson carpet. When I had no money to pay my bus fare I presented him with a Daimler double-six, upholstered in a style of sober magnificence, and when I felt dull I let him drive it. I can heartily recommend this inexpensive way of furnishing to all who are discontented with their incomes. It relieves the mind and does no harm to anybody.’
Have to read dat book! Sounds veery interesting. Do libraries still have it? Or do we have to build another bookcase to house the series? (I go with the workers’ end of the day theory. Very tidy the Swedish and Chinese!)
Shockingly the Tauranga Libraries have only one in the series: https://ent.kotui.org.nz/client/en_AU/tauranga/search/results?qu=Lord+Peter+Wimsey+mystery. It is possibly the best one of all though, and they are one better off than Whangarei Libraries which has exactly no Dorothy Sayers mysteries in book form – just two books on tape.
Ah yes, the ‘end of day — clear my workspace’ theory. Like it!
You got it. And I will get it – that lonely last Sayers Lord Peter book in Tauranga library when in on Thursday. Looking forward to it Oh IKEA Master! X
xxx
I do sympathise. I have 6 parts of a box thing-a-ma-jig which accompanied me to No.4 some years ago. It’s a beautiful blue & made out of wood: I could put ‘things’ in it, but the instructions for assemblage escaped…Ahh! FOUND in the dressing table drawer: but where are the doz. of screws, nuts, hinges, handles etc.? I could buy
some (probably dearer than the whole item.) My enthusiasm has waned: I don’t need it, so I’ll finish another project……get rid of many ‘things’! GrannieM
Maybe my extra IKEA parts could come in handy after all? I feel your pain, so many projects…