Stewart Priest

My Bad (Ikea experience)

// April 2nd, 2010 // DIY, Twitter

After a slight bedroom mishap on Sunday, I had the need for a replacement bed. Not the mattress, just the bed. Jen and I hunted around and looked at a number of different places, but we decided on Ikea. I’d coped with a half-broken bed for four nights now, and it was time to bite the bullet and buy the bed. So off to Ikea Braehead.

We wandered around the upstairs one-way system for a while before we found the bedroom section. They’ve changed the layout, don’t you know? We had a look at a few different beds, toyed with the idea of getting at mattress too, but eventually picked the bed we wanted. We picked the Heimdal bed frame. We really liked the look of this bed, and we REALLY liked the look of the price. £55 for the full kit. I took a note of the aisles and locations of the various components of the kit and proceeded to collect everything. It turns out that Ikea sometimes don’t put things where they tell you. The slats for this bed, specifically. However, I eventually found them and moved on to the checkout. Ikea are more efficient and taking your money than they are at putting things in the right place, it would seem. Now, off to the car park.

Rather than trying to get the (very large) trolley over to the car, I left Jen at the pickup point with everything until I went to fetch the car. No problem. The car’s all parked up, the back seats are folder down and the boot is open. Now, in with the kit. Oh. Wait. Hang on, I need to tweet about this:

Shit. Do I await the advice of the Twitterverse, or do I come up with a plan of my own? Well, knowing some of the people I follow (Alan Ogden), I’m expecting less than helpful replies, so I need to come up with my own solution to this. It’s time to phone my sister. Her fiance Robert has a bigger car than me, and access to a van if required. Great. He’s on his way. While I wait for him to arrive, I get the smaller stuff in the car and check what delights Twitter has offered up in reply to my problem:

Great. Alan’s replied. In a fashion which was expected. Not to worry though, the cavalry has arrived. Robert’s here! We get the oversized bed part into the back of the car and head home. That reminds me, I’d better get Robert some beer for digging me out of this hole. We manage to unload everything into the house and Robert heads home.

After that, it was just a simple case of chucking out the old bed and building the new one. A relatively simple process, and one which didn’t take too long! We had the bed built and ready for use in half an hour! Buying the bed and getting it home took longer than actually putting it together.

Maybe Ikea should consider giving the measurements of the packaging as well as the items within. It could save a lot of heartache in the long run.