There should be warning labels on boxes containing unassembled furniture parts: MAY CAUSE HOMICIDAL IDEATION IN OTHERWISE NORMAL PEOPLE.
Good. LORD.
May has muchly been Home Improvement Month at casa del Feve, and after sanding/cleaning/restaining the deck and setting/repairing the awning, I ordered deck furniture. (Woohoo! said I. Look at me being such a fancy adult!)
Well. Said furniture arrived.
And it took over an hour to unbox. (Because, hello airtight crammed-in packing.)
And so far today, it has taken an hour and a half to not-even-half assemble.
Because there really are do-it-yourself put-together items out there WORSE than you find at IKEA.
Note: I am never ordering from Wayfair again. EVER.
Also: I don’t have mm tools. I live in ‘Murrica. It’s inches for me.
So when ordering, I note that the product description says, “all tools needed for assembly included” (and I believed it — mistake number one!), and I don’t stop to wonder whether I’ll have tools of my own to do the trick.
But when the assembly begins…
Turns out the ‘tools’ provided are total crap. And everything is in FUCKING METRIC.
So.
Eventually — like maybe sometime in August? — I will have a deck couch that looks like this:
Meanwhile, *I* look like this:
And I’m taking a break.
When my husband comes home, he can help me. (Or just do it himself. With his tools.)
It may not be the quickest or most efficient of projects, but it’ll get done. Eventually. (Probably with copious and effusive swearing.)
Life in home-improvement land continues to inch along. (Even if it *is* doing so in metric.)
One of my least favorite things to do is… assembling stuff. I often want to commit acts of homicide over the people who thought and said that putting the item together was easy and, yeah, all tools required and how shitty they are, like box wrenches that somewhere between imperial and metric. Like, I know that if I need a 1/2″ inch wrench or socket, a 10mm wrench/socket works and I have a couple of toolboxes with such items and have used them because the supplied stuff… is hopelessly crappy. Wondering how they fitted this shit together and it supposedly went well… and that’s not what’s going on as I often find myself sitting on the floor amidst a bunch of parts that I can’t figure out how they go together and more so when the instructions are… pictures.
I needed to get myself a file cabinet and getting it out of the box was a bitch all by itself. The allegedly supplied screwdriver-like device was… missing. I felt like I was illiterate because the pictures… didn’t make sense and how many times have those pictures made me put the right piece on the wrong side or in the wrong way and… how come they just didn’t deliver the fucker to me already assembled – and like how furnishing used to show up?
My lady says, “We need a new table for the dining room…” and I asked, “Who’s gonna put it together?” But it’s a rhetorical question because while I know that she can do it, that’s my job… and forever one that I’ve never been fond of and… thinking of some interesting tortures for the people who said that putting this shit together is easy…
You should have seen me about to murder someone… just setting up a new printer…
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Hahaha! I’m SO GLAD to know other people grow equally murderous over these things. I could write a monograph on The Evils of Allen Wrenches. And YES, that little box wrench is a heinous and horrible device — literally unfit for anything useful.
Honestly, I normally buy my furniture from a mom & pop store. Their delivery guys assemble everything and it arrives all put together — I just point and say, “Put it there.”
But they don’t sell outdoor furniture. *sigh*
I have a chair coming from Lowe’s that I will also have to assemble. I’m hoping it will be less insanity-inducing than the couch, but I’m not holding my breath!
I just saw this picture on Tumblr and thought about your post:
https://www.tumblr.com/mightymouse-54/717827123004522497?source=share
The caption says: “The local IKEA manager is retired so I sent him a cake”
And yes, setting up a printer is worse than assembling the furniture, just saying…
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Haha haha! 😀
As much as I’d love to commiserate and take your side, I can’t relate this time. Personally I love putting stuff together and even volunteer to assemble stuff for friends and family. It’s like doing a puzzle…..but with a practical reward upon completion,
I have a garage full of tools and advocate various degrees of proper and sensible tool ownership to all people in every living situation. Every living situation has its own “KDP recommended toolbox” and I have started my entire family out this way. Not having one’s own tools and relying on what is sent in a package, is like relying solely on schools to fully educate one’s kids. What do you expect for free…… either educationally or tool-wise? If they sent you top-of-the-line tools with every package, the price would go up accordingly. LOL
The only time I go off on assembled furniture is when the parts (usually metal in these cases) don’t align. Otherwise, I feel I knew what I was getting into when I ordered something from a place that ships. (I mean the item is definitely going to come packaged in a box from Wayfair, Amazon, etc. right?) I am prepared for the worst…..which IF prepared never turns out to be that bad. And metric? Metric has been around (even Murrica) for ages, and most socket sets will have metric right alongside standard, so it’s hardly newfangled alien technology;-). And again, you might live in America, but you’re buying from a country who uses metric, and you’re doing that likely because the item is cheaper than something made in America, so…..you are either going to get metric hardware, or you are going to have to look at the country of origin/manufacture label and make a decision.
It sounds like this might just be an area outside your usual comfort zone, so maybe leave it for Smotch? And you could still write about it….expertly. 😉
He had all the tools we needed. He also had an extra body with two hands. So as a two person job, with the right tools, it got done.
But “easy to assemble” it was not!
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