Another IKEA Adventure, Part Deux

 All twenty of the boxes & bags of parts & slabs sat in AJ's garage for almost another week, and then -- miracle of miracles -- AJ got a day off.  (I think this was the first time she didn't work on Christmas day in at least 20 years.)  We tried to coordinate a little via telephone late in the morning and I reassured lil' sis that I'd be there by 3:00, probably sooner.

Well, me being me and my to-do list being my to-do list, I finally got to AJ & Miri's house around 3:40... only to find my sister deep in the throes of an argument with the Costco website, trying to create a "Happy New Year" card with some of her photos.  I'll keep the story short by quoting my sister: "I do this every year, you'd think by now I'd remember how to do this!" -- although in her defense, I have a lot more experience cropping & adjusting photos digitally, so after about half an hour of tweaking, clicking, cussing, and "wutifudothats" she & Miri liked the results, the cards were ordered, and we were finally able to get down to the business of building the Småstad loft bed.

The first order of business was to make sure the old bed -- a beautifully hand-carved, solid wood piece of workmanship gifted to AJ when she was little by a family friend who owned a furniture factory in Chile in he mid-1960s -- was safely disassembled & moved out of harm's way. This led to several cases of, "Oh, so that's where the other shoe went!" as well as our discovering a number of long-forgotten creations of the Pipsqueak's from years gone by... including a "smart phone" she made for herself when she was five or six years old:

After moving a shelf unit back & forth a couple of times (we weren't sure where it would be out of our way while working), taking pictures off the wall, sweeping, and all that good stuff, the room (or at least that side of the room) was emptier than it had been since we took down the Pipsqueak's crib about nine years ago...

The final step before actual construction began was to move the old box spring from the bed (which we would not be using in the loft bed) from the hall where we'd dropped it to... well, it wasn't too obvious to where it should be moved until AJ decided she could live with it up against the back of the living room sofa until she had a chance to take it to her storage unit sometime in the (hopefully very near) future.  Several minutes of huffing and puffing and impolite phrases later, the box spring was safely wedged behind the sofa, held in place by a cat tree to prevent it from falling over (or being accidentally knocked over) onto one of the cats.  Of course, Xuan took one look at all the activity and bolted for a hiding place elsewhere in the house, but Licorice just couldn't contain her curiosity and quickly found her way onto the living room's newest high spot.

Ever since hearing about AJ's plan to purchase a large piece of assemble-it-yourself furniture, I'd been a little worried about whether or not we'd have enough space in the Pipsqueak's bedroom to actually open up all the boxes, sort all the pieces, and assemble it there... and halfway up the steps from the basement to the first floor (curse you, townhouse stairs!) AJ and I came to the simultaneous realization that we would not be struggling up any more stairs than were absotively posilutely necessary with those heavy, bulky, unyielding boxes and elected to open them on the first floor and carry individual pieces up to the second floor.  Even all the additional trips up and down (and up and down and up and down and up) the stairs resulting from that decision were easier to deal with than attempting to get those meshuggah boxes up another flight and then around the three immediate adjacent corners necessary to get them into the bedroom! 

Despite the box box's refusal to actually be opened -- it took a lot of tearing and then sawing with my pocketknife -- we finally exposed the contents and began carting everything upstairs piecemeal a couple of panels at a time until we had several slippery shiny white panels leaning against the wall... at which point we discovered that the first step would require the contents of at least two of the oversize boxes, leading to us both being very happy with our decision about How To Do It.  Eventually we had all the necessary components upstairs and we prepared to actually assemble something.

At this point we had one more major decision to make.  The ladder up to the actual bed is on the side of the unit, and the entire piece can be assembled with the ladder (and shelves and closet) closet to either end -- but which end had to be fixed at the very beginning of assembly because it would determine how almost all the parts of the frames would be put together.  Several months earlier, AJ & Miri had decided it would be most convenient to have the closet section of the bed facing the room's built-in closet, which would put the ladder on the end of the bed closest to the door of the room... and closer to the ceiling fan hanging above.  Mom had quickly begun to worry out loud that this arrangement would put her granddaughter's head much too close to the fan than was prudent, and I'd done some rough measuring of things to reassure her that there would be no such problem.

Standing alone in the room while AJ & Miri went back downstairs for a last few components, it occurred to me that the proportions of this bed were a little different from the original model, and I swear I could hear Mom once again worrying out loud about the ceiling fan.  I also had the thought (for the first time) that my measurements had located the edge of the bed in relation to the ceiling fan... but that the Pipsqueak would be climbing up and down on the outside of that imaginary box.  With a sudden sense of foreboding, I grabbed my tape measure, figured out where the ladder would be, stood immediately next to that spot on the floor, looked straight up... and saw this directly overhead:

(Oopsie.) As soon as AJ walked back in the room I told her we were building the bed with the ladder on the other end, and when she asked why I told her I was standing exactly where the Pipsqueak would be while climbing up & down the ladder and then silently pointed up.  I think my sister's entire response was, "Yep!"

Now that we knew which part of the bed was supposed to go where, it was time to begin the actual assembly. Flipping back & forth in the instruction book a few times -- and it really was a book, since there were over 30 steps and they all had to be shown four times due to all the optional ways the bed could be assembled -- we slowly figured out what each of the infamous pictograms was trying to tell us and began inserting pegs, banging in dowels, twisting cams, and trying to line up edges for the next couple of hours.  (I periodically stopped to photograph our progress with my phone and sent the pictures to Mom, complete with silly captions, so she could see how things were going.).

At one point, I noticed that we had started one step backwards because neither of us had realized that two otherwise identical panels differed only in their thickness and that this very, very important difference was only shown by an extremely understated difference in the images in the instruction book. Another time, AJ realized that we had one peg for a cam lock sticking out into the otherwise totally vacant closet space for no reason whatsoever despite it being clearly shown as needed in the instructions. Then there was the piece we realized had been put in backwards just seconds before fastening an entire assembly into place on top of it... 

Slowly, sometimes painfully, the various components began to come together and after some time we had a big white box on the floor, taking up almost all the available space in the room.  After a short dinner break we wrestled it upright, rearranged the mess we'd created (we had realized early in the build that it was helpful to keep some of the cardboard "bars" from inside the original shipping boxes under the sections as we built them but now they were underfoot everywhere), and began to figure out how to attach a shelf section to the almost-complete closet section.

Actually putting the shelves into place added some more colorful language to the build -- by this time Miri had simply planted herself on the living room sofa and was watching videos on her iPad, coming to our rescue periodically when called but otherwise just trying to stay safely out of the way -- and then we had to figure out a whole new way of doing things to assemble the single drawer that went into the bottom of the closet.  (Apparently, IKEA has added a few tricks since my days working there, so it took a little experimentation to figure things out.).  Amazingly, the drawer slid effortlessly into place with a satisfying thunk, all the panels were (mostly) parallel or perpendicular as they were supposed to be, and there was no sign of pending collapse when AJ & I stepped back to admire our work.  Since it was now well after 10:00pm, I sent one more celebratory photo to Mom, said goodnight, and headed home to take a couple of Aleve capsules and catch some shuteye so I'd be ready to finish the job the next day.

I'll continue the story of my latest IKEA assembly misadventure in my next post, but just wanted to take a moment now, at the end of my final post of 2020, to thank everyone who's read and/or subscribed, and to wish everyone a happy, healthy new year.  As Governor Hogan says in a current radio commercial, "Wear the damn mask!" and stay safe in these uncertain and unsettling times.  I'll see y'all early in 2021!  Happy new year!

Another IKEA Adventure Begins...(Yikes!)

 Hello again!  It's been a while since I posted, but not due to lack of things happening -- quite the opposite, in fact.  Some things aren't for the blog but I've been more than kinda busy, so apologies for the long silence and let's get caught up a little!

Happily, despite our county having to roll things back to Phase 1 COVID-19 precautions (masks pretty much all the time, no indoor dining at restaurants, serious limitations on occupancy in all businesses, etc.), we have all remained generally healthy. There's been an occasional sniffle here and there -- how can there not be when we jump repeatedly back & forth between mid-winter and early spring temperatures? -- but so far the family is remaining about as healthy as we could hope for.

We also managed to dodge the weather bullet a few times (although we seemed to have solid cloud cover every night that there was supposed to be an interesting celestial event to see, darn it) but finally got our first real snow of the winter...

The holidays crept up on us and were suddenly here... and then Hanukkah was suddenly past.  The five of us lit the candles together for the first couple of nights, and then everyone's schedule got a little too crazy for us to get together and the holiday came to a close.  We figured "what the heck," and got together for a virtual 8th night (hey, we've done 3 seders some years for Passover, so why not 9 or 10 nights of Hanukkah?).  It was good to spend the time, and Miri finally got the answer as to why her mother kept insisting no, she would not buy the full boxed set of Harry Potter movies on DVD when they found it on sale at Target a couple of weeks back. :-)

 

 

 AJ & Miri got a little creative in the kitchen this year, and (despite Yours Truly not being able to find a couple of ingredients for them the last time I went shopping) cobbled together their first-ever gingerbread cookies.  There are still a few left, primarily because I think we're all hoarding them, but we now know what they will be baking at home a lot more often!  They also tried their hand at sufganiot (a type of homemade jelly donut commonly made for Hanukkah, especially in Israel) but, well... it wasn't anything a bit of chocolate frosting couldn't fix, but we're probably not going to be doing that again.

Gingerbread men, dinosaurs, chais, mogen Davids, and menorahs, all yummy!

Now, some of you may remember my (mis)adventures with an IKEA toy chest waaay back in 2015 (detailed here, here, and here).  Believe it or not, that didn't totally cure me of my addiction to ogling oddly-named build-it-yourself furniture (hey, I helped open the College Park store!) and have made several visits to the place since then, even buying a few items. I've even passed my addiction interest on to my sister.

As fate would have it, some time back the Pipsqueak began to periodically mention there wasn't a whole lot of room in her room... so of course an IKEA loft bed quickly came to mind. (That was even the department I worked in, so... yeah, no influence there, nope... LOL.)  After going through the catalog, the website, and (eventually) the actual store, a choice and a promise were made: Miri's 11th birthday present was going to be a new loft bed/desk combination that would nearly double the available living space in her room.

I just had to include this sign; Miri made it back when she was 8 and having a bad day. It's kind of a family joke now, but a reminder that the teen years are not that far away...!

Fast-forward to June, and despite warnings about the pandemic potentially affecting IKEA's supply chain the chosen pieces (Stuva/Fritids combo with 4 drawers and 2 doors along with an adult size Örfjäll chair in purple) are still listed as being in stock.  AJ checks her credit card balances, surfs over to the IKEA website, begins to place her order...

...and the freakin' bed goes out of stock while she is filling in the order sheet.

The chair, too.

Needless to say, everyone was thoroughly bummed out by this, but the Pipsqueak understood that Mommy was really trying, and that she would still get the bed she wanted for her birthday... just not on her birthday.  Cue the daily (and then later on, weekly) checks of the website.  Out of stock in College Park... in Baltimore... in every store within a 150-mile radius... eventually out of stock pretty much everywhere on the planet.  Miri never gave up hope but we were all getting a bit concerned. 

Then, very suddenly, my phone rang around 10:45pm a couple of weeks back.  Fearing the worst as I picked up the call, I was surprised to hear my sister with a big, happy, "The bed is back in stock! At least it looks like the same bed..." Well, it's not quite the same -- the new loft bed & desk combo is the Småstad but it's aaaalmost the same thing (the stupid chair, meanwhile, is still out of stock) so we spend some time trying to place an order only to figure out it's a) available in very limited supply, and b) only available for in-store purchase, no online payments allowed.  In other words, we've got to hope they don't sell out again over the next three days until we can physically get to the store on Saturday.  (Note: If you've never shopped at an IKEA store, do not -- repeat, NOT -- go on a Saturday. Sundays aren't exactly great, either, but unless you like sharing your space with whatever the absolute maximum occupancy allowable by law is for that space, don't go on Saturday!)

The one (rather weird) silver lining was that with all the COVID-19 precautions in place, we had a better than fighting chance to actually get our paws on the bed. On all TWENTY packages comprising the version we wanted, ranging from small 14-ounce plastic bags with hinges in them to 62-pound boxes more than 6 feet long and a couple of feet across.... some of them "pick it yourself" in the warehouse and some of them requiring a special "pick order" for the guys driving forklifts in the "no public allowed" regions of the building.

Saturday rolls around and the entire family gets to the store.  There's a bit of confusion as we try to enter through the entrance because it had been closed as a pandemic precaution (but not labeled as such), leaving other customers exiting to point us to the correct spot through which we could actually enter the building. With me as navigator, we went straight to the Kids department to see the bed in the flesh, only to discover there were none out for display... but there was still an example of the now-extinct Stuva model with almost identical measurements and Miri decided it was tall enough for the desk to work for her, so (me navigating again) we went straight to the service desk in the warehouse.  Several nervous minutes of waiting in a socially-distanced line later, we snagged the absolute last one in stock. 

Holding onto the order confirmation printout like our lives depended on it, we headed back upstairs to the restaurant for lunch -- Swedish meatballs, of course! -- and then checked out a few other things we'd been interested in.  First, Mom was interested in replacing an old couch with a couple of recliners, but when she sat in the chair on display that we liked she fit in it like a toddler on a sofa so it was back to the drawing board for that.  Then AJ began looking for a small cabinet she could store all her scrubs in to keep them separate from the rest of her clothes, and eventually found one among the living room furniture. (Note: The still-unassembled piece is stacked with all the stuff for Miri's bed.)  I needed to replace my old dishes (the set I'm using was a housewarming gift back in 1988 and it shows), so AJ turned the set I chose into my Hanukkah gift and then I got the text message saying our "pick" items were ready and we returned to the warehouse.

At the entrance, I went to grab a flatbed cart only to discover the cart conveyor had jammed. Having had an appreciable amount of practice un-jamming it years earlier as an employee, I stretched the "no public access" rule as far as I dared and managed to get several carts free for us and the small group of other waiting customers, and we began hunting down the smaller components we needed.  We had already asked one of the IKEA workers on the display floor about the "kit" (since I had forgotten to print out the list I'd oh-so-carefully downloaded the night before) and he had me use my phone to take pictures of the parts list on his phone, so we knew exactly where to go to find each needed piece.

Except that several key items were not in the aisle & bin they were supposed to be in.

I went back to the service desk -- now three-quarters of the way across the warehouse -- and used one of the public terminals to look up possible alternate locations for what we needed, but everything matched the original information so it was back on line, and then back to the same (friendly & helpful) young woman who's put our order into the system a short while earlier.  She was as baffled as me (and did the exact same searches I did!), finally coming out from behind the desk and walking with me back to where the boxes were supposed to be located... and then found them, one shelf down from their official location, with no signage. (The boxes were very narrow so the printed-on labels were nearly illegible.)

With everything now copacetic and flatbed cart fully loaded, we checked out, found the big stack of heavy boxes we needed to pick up, figured out who had to do what (due to the weight of the boxes, we were not allowed to load them into AJ's van ourselves but had to let one of the staff do it for us), retrieved AJ's van and my SUV from the parking garage, and figured out how to fit everything into one or another vehicle.  Forty-odd minutes later, AJ and I somehow managed to get everything out of the vehicles and into her garage and stacked it all by the back wall, hoping the weather would remain good enough for a few days for AJ to not need to fit her van into the garage.  I "borrowed" a couple of Advil caplets, we all said goodnight, and I took Mom & Dad back to their house before heading back to mine & collapsing into bed.

Next: The build begins!