Making a Home with Cheap Swedish Furniture

On August 8th, the Mrs. and I returned from our honeymoon and moved into our brand new apartment. Unfortunately, on August 8th our new apartment consisted of the following: a bed, a card table, two chairs, two juice glasses and two coffee mugs. At this point it wasn't much of a home as much as it was 1,000 square feet of emptiness. Over the next 3 weeks, we set out to make this apartment our home with a little help from some Swedish imports

IKEA is a crazy place. Where else can you shop for furniture and sit down for a meal of Swedish meatballs? In fact, it led one of the best exchanges between me and the Mrs. when I told her that I got the Swedish meatballs and she asked if I ate all 15 followed by her complete disgust when I responded with the inevitable "yes". We took a trip out, participated in the scavenger hunt that makes up an IKEA experience and purchased a number of items including a table, bookshelf and wardrobe. Now it was time for me to test my handyman skills and put these things together. While I will admit that I am talented in some areas, being handy is not one of them. The purchase of a home brought this issue to the forefront and it was now time to face it head on.

The Table

First up was the entry way table seen above. Overall it was not that difficult and I was able to complete it with relative ease; then I went to screw the doors on and realized I had a problem. It turned out that I had put the middle piece (marked as "A" in picture below) in backwards which mean the holes to screw the doors on were conveniently located inside the table. Well luckily my mother-in-law had given me a drill so I found the local hardware store, bought some drill bits, drilled new holes for the doors and screwed them right on. (I would have had to take the whole thing apart to flip that piece hence the drilling.) Sure, I needed to drill four holes and probably drilled six but that's not the point. The point is I saw a problem, improvised, fixed it AND it worked! You can also say that I'm an idiot for putting the piece in backwards but I was choosing to be positive as I moved on to the next piece: the bookshelf.

Exhibit A of my stupidity (note the uneven hinges)

The Bookshelf

The bookshelf appeared to be pretty straightforward. It had no doors and few pieces so I felt pretty confident. I put it together, stood it up and realized I had a problem. In order to protect our floors from scratches, I had put blankets down when putting these items together. Unfortunately, when I had the bookshelf standing up, I noticed that a piece fo the blanket had gotten stuck between two pieces of the bookshelf (see picture below)

Check out the bottom right corner.....Boooooooooo

Have you ever had the thought "I suck!" race through your mind? That was all that I could think of when I saw what I had done. Unfortunately it's still there as I still haven't figured out what to do with it. So far, I've come up with two options: 1)take the bookshelf apart and remove the piece or 2)try to match the color of the wood with a marker and make it blend.

The Wardrobe

The wardrobe was the last to be assembled and with good reason as well. The wardbrobe was big. The wardrobe was complicated. The instructions for the wardrobe included 57 steps as compared with the 25-35 for the table or bookshelf. After having my clothes piled on the floor for a week and a half I decided it was time to give it a try. I'm proud to say that I learned from my mistakes and put the wardrobe together without any major incidents. In fact I'm so proud that I've sadly included not one, but two pictures to show off my work.

Last week our couch was delivered, (a VERY important piece for us due to our love for laying on the couch) and we picked up more furniture from Stratford and the Manor. That was when it became official: we had a HOME. There's still more to do but our place is really coming together. What was once an empty apartment became a home for the McCaughey's and all it took was some cheap Swedish furniture (and 15 Swedish meatballs.)