At first, we planned to avoid Ikea entirely.
Then, we found some things that looked nice, were cheap, and were solid *in the store*.
I thought building Ikea furniture would be fun.
It is not. It has been incredibly stressful. I have traced the source of this stress in an effort to let it go:
I've been hypersensitive to the noise I'm making because our irrational downstairs neighbor complained about the noise of us moving boxes into the apartment. As a result, I only constructed the furniture to the extent that could be done quietly, which meant that I did not put the backing on any of the Ikea furniture we made. This decision was made because I had not yet realized that the backing is essential to stabilize Ikea furniture.
I put together our media center, and put the TV on before the backing. Last night, Sue and I started to fasten the media center's backing with nails, and found that it didn't line up on all four corners. We *thought* this was because the backing was not cut properly. We were wrong. The backing was not lining up because the weight of the TV - without the backing - had caused the media center to buckle in the middle. Of course, I didn't realize this until after I had put about 15 nails into the unit. I'm now going to need to take all the nails out, take the TV off, and redo the whole thing OR just try to live with the bent media center and attempt to reinforce it. The latter may result in an eventual collapse and destruction of my TV and other media stuff.
I'm sick of building furniture and this is, as previously stated, causing me stress.
So: hypervigilance about noise led me to unwittingly build the furniture incorrectly which caused damage to the furniture that I must either attempt to repair or live with and simply *hope* that it does not collapse and destroy all my media equipment.
At some point, this will get easier, right?
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1) Moving is noisy. Your neighbors should have given you a day -- or two -- grace period, but really not much more than that.
ReplyDelete2) GET RUGS ASAP! Cover those floors. Shut down the construction work by 9 p.m. the latest. Be a good neighbor.
3) Living in an apartment takes getting used to.
4) All things being equal, which mostly they are not, buy less furniture, but buy it already put together, and then have it delivered.
I was gonna post that also. You're moving in. Your neighbors need to deal with 1 weekend of pain but also don't work into the night.
ReplyDeleteMy gay building-mate below us first asked if we needed help. Then, when he saw us carrying a couch up the stairs, ran away like a scared girl and shut his door.
I don't give a $h1t how much noise I make now, as long as its not too much for my delicate roomate to deal with.
It wasn't unreasonable for us to think Ikea had screwed up in constructing that back. They are, after all, the people who neglected to give us any back at all for our dresser, and an absolutely necessary structural support screw for our kitchen table. Blaming Ikea first is totally ok.
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