When my son turned 11, he had outgrown his Lightening McQueen bed. . . honestly I think his feet were hanging over the bed, he had some mix and mash pieces, etc. At that time we didn't have an Ikea here in Indy so we could either drive to Cincinnati or Chicago. . . we chose Cincinnati. Man, sometimes you just luck out. I rented a Chevy Tahoe/Toyota Sequoia sized SUV for the day, went to pick it up, it's sitting there and two or three employees are surrounding it. I walked inside, hoping that was someone else's, it wasn't, it was mine. It had a check engine light and it wasn't running properly.
The guy behind the counter said "I'm really sorry, I can't rent that to you but I have an extended length Sprinter, it's all cleaned up and ready to go. I said "absolutely, let's do that." He said "for being so cool man, I'm going to give you unlimited miles and I'll rent it at the price of an economy car." Done deal. I took it home, I removed a row of removable seats (put it in the garage) and off we drove to Cincinnati. We had never been to Ikea before, I wasn't sure what to expect and thank God we got that van b/c we got him a dresser, two night stands, bed, mattress, desk, glass tops for his furniture, mirrors, tons of kitchen crap, bathroom rugs, etc. Honestly, we completely filled that Sprinter.
So, I really enjoy working with my hands, I don't know how handy I am but I've always enjoyed putting things together. I put part of the dresser together, it took me an hour or 90 minutes and as I'm assembling it I found I put it together incorrectly and I thought "crap, I have to take this apart and redo it." So I had two light bulb moments here.
1.) RTFM - Read The Freaking Manual because I was going by what I thought made sense to me, that was 100% on me.
2.) More importantly than anything - DON'T use those stupid little hex wrenches - it's a big waste of time and terribly frustrating. I got out my cordless drill, popped in a hex key bit, RTFM'd the hell out of the instructions and sailed through the rest of that furniture. There's tight places where you may be forced to use the hex key wrench but by and large the drill with a hex key bit is the way to go.
I will say say this, is Ikea furniture great quality or whatever? Of course not, but for a kids room or college dorm or first apartment, newly weds on a budget, etc. I think it's awesome because you have furniture, it fills the room, you're probably going to move a few times and after a few years you can either toss that stuff, give it away, donate it or at least if it gets damaged in a move, it's not the end of the world. Especially for kids that beat the crap out furniture, I think it's pretty awesome.
