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I am no longer gormless

Yesterday I followed a time-honoured tradition, something done by countless millions on the Easter Monday holiday, right across the western world.

I returned stuff to Ikea.

As many did, I had gone along on Saturday, full of good intentions and a cashed-up wallet, ready to splurge on something new and exciting to spend time building on Sunday.

In my case, it was shelving, for the back room. My back room is full of crap. Crap in boxes, loose crap, assorted crap, all sorts of crap. The shelving is an attempt to get the crap into some sort of order, so the crap is confined to just part of the room.

My chosen shelves? Ikea’s Gorm range. Some might say it’s just a bunch of bits of wood, chucked loosely together, and it looks little better than the traditional student’s “bricks plus planks” shelves, and they might be right, but I thought it would be perfect for the space.

Alas, I didn’t quite get the right combination of bits, and so Isaac, Jeremy and I had to go back to exchange some of it. It’s a bit like what I imagine a visit to the emergency ward of a hospital might be like. You go in, take a ticket, and sit in a waiting room, ignoring the TV, and watching the number sign as you wait for your turn, your sick furniture waiting by your side.

We actually ran into a former work colleague of mine, Carlson, who was also returning sick furniture. Carlson is one of nicest and scrupulously honest people you could ever hope to meet (or at least, he gives a good impression of it). Sometimes it makes me wonder how he is so successful.

We swapped notes.

“What have you got? I got the wrong thing.”

“Mine was chipped when I got it out of the box.”

Thankfully the wait wasn’t too long, the transplant was painless, and now we have the right shelves to fill the space… even if it’ll have to wait a day or two until I have time to assemble it all.

(We did start off taking pictures for another desk-style assembly animation, but I don’t know if I can be bothered doing it all this time round.)

By Daniel Bowen

Transport blogger / campaigner and spokesperson for the Public Transport Users Association / professional geek.
Bunurong land, Melbourne, Australia.
Opinions on this blog are all mine.

4 replies on “I am no longer gormless”

[…] It’s funny that Daniel should mention emergency wards in his post this morning, ’cause that’s exactly where I ended up last night. I mentioned in my previous post that I had been having troubles with my foot. Taking the day off on Sunday seemed to do it good and by Monday afternoon it was feeling positively fine so I decided to walk a whole block to send of an invoice. All was going well until I took one step too many and I felt something go pop-pop-pop under my heel. I hobbled home, a two minute stroll took about ten minutes and plonked myself down on the couch. […]

I won’t bore you with the full story but my condensed Ikea return story involves stainless steel plate racks, massive amount of excess drilled holes in an effort to get them up on a kitchen wall, racks finally installed and loathed, racks removed and 27 (count them 27!) unnecessary holes puttied up and sanded, entire kitchen repainted over a weekend to disguise all the damage, unloved and unwanted stainless steel plate racks returned to Ikea. I really should do a Bunnings “handy-woman” course one of these days.

I love returned Ikea stuff, they sell it again super cheap. Our baby change table is based on a large, solid $300 desk that was marked down to $130 (a nasty chunk was taken out of one of the edges – which is now against the wall) – and will be returned to being a desk when the kids are out of nappies. Horray!

Lol @ Lyn!! 27 holes indicates a dogged determination that has passed all rational thought!

Well done!

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