I have known Billy for some time; we go back a long way. We have known laughter and satisfaction; a few bad moments laced with exasperation; achievement and soul destroying, crushing failure.
Billy has been a part of the household almost from the time that I first lived in Spain. Without Billy my life would be less.
Though I would have more money.
Our relationship is, and has been from the start, based on money.
Billy, as those of you who think cheap Swedish meatballs are adequate compensation for hours of crowded shuffling on a Sunday afternoon will already have guessed, is one of the more recognizable names that the great and the good IKEA has given to a range of shelving.
Although most of my library is still in durance vile in Bluspace confined to Pickfords cardboard boxes, those volumes that have escaped the confines of the storage facility and have a free and easy existence in the flat rest their tails (that’s the right word for the bottom of a book, so there) on the shelves of Billy.
The rather elegant versions of this basic design that I bought for the living room are made of wood veneerish type material (I like to be honest!) with glass doors. They take a pitiful number of my books and I daily miss the Lost Volumes of Bluspace.
The latest purchase of Billy was for the ‘office’ (that purported to be the third bedroom on the advertisement for the flat.) There was no need for the more expensive pretend wood so I was able to get the basic white. Room in the office is somewhat cramped so extra shelf space was essential.
I have constructed or helped construct more that half a dozen examples of Billy so I was quietly confident that the purchase and making of this essentially simple pieces of furniture would be but the casual work of a morning.
There is nothing funny about making IKEA furniture so if you are expecting me to be lightly witty about the nail-scraping-on-blackboard type anguish which accompanied and then destroyed my innocent enthusiasm you can think again.
I find opening the brown cardboard packaging that Billy comes in an almost insuperable challenge! I am sure that there is some corner of the bloody thing which when pulled gently by an expert makes the box open like a beautiful flower – well I am still looking for the Swedish version of ‘Open Sesame!’ I have to resort to ripping, rending and tearing and usually using my skin between my thumb and index finger as a sort of fleshy saw. With the accompaniment of broken nails, torn skin and surprisingly vile language the box eventually opens and the contents are displayed to my jaundiced eyes.
IKEA used to be masters of the ‘bit that you don’t need but it looks just like all the other bits’ approach to flat packed furniture. I am glad to say that they now use expanded polystyrene which it is usually safe to assume is packing material and not an essential component in the finished piece of furniture.
Hard experience has taught me (and to be fair the little blobby man in the instructions agrees) that the outer packing must be used as a safety layer on which to set out the parts of your future bookcase. If you don’t do this then your assembled piece of furniture will look as though it has been attacked by a whole company of cats who have used it to sharpen their nails.
Finding the instructions and the little bag of bits is encouraging. The instructions are usually clear and generally unambiguous. Unambiguous that is to those who lack imagination. To those gifted with that glorious quality there are layers of meaning that can be read into a simple drawing which make consequent construction impossible.
And the bits!
With Nordic naivety and a touching faith in their computer system, IKEA give you exactly what you need. Exactly what you need if you are a trained IKEA constructor; not exactly what you need if you are a real human being who does not put the bits in a dish. Or who sits down too suddenly or throws the hammer down without due thought and all the bits explode into the air like a metallic firework and some (even though you have cleared the space beforehand) are never found again.
I will lightly pass over the loss of a wooden plug thingie; the putting of the wrong (almost identical) piece in place; the smashing of a nail under the shelf it was supposed to pin; the missing out of one piece of the structure altogether and spending twenty minutes trying to deconstruct the thing; the ending up with two faces of chipwood facing outwards because I had assumed that out was in – all of these I will pass over in silence. But one thing was not my fault.
On one end of the upright for the bookcase they had not cut the groove for the plywood back to slide in. I sat down and wept. Not literally you understand, but in some inner recess of my soul my tear ducts were flowing.
The thing that I was trying to make (it was the last of four shelf structures I had constructed so I was a little tense) was a little quarter size Billy. It cost €20. Did I really want to traipse back to Hospitalet, park, queue, explain and then come back again? The answer was no. I was disgruntled, but no!
And in a strange way all my ineptitude seems to have vanished because IKEA made a mistake. Poof! to their computerized systems: they made a mistake. They are professionals in furniture construction; I am a mere neophyte in such things. My mistakes are merely the learning curve of a new skill; their mistakes are a crushing condemnation of a multinational organization.
And I’ll buy some white stuff to go over the rough edges!
Billy has been a part of the household almost from the time that I first lived in Spain. Without Billy my life would be less.
Though I would have more money.
Our relationship is, and has been from the start, based on money.
Billy, as those of you who think cheap Swedish meatballs are adequate compensation for hours of crowded shuffling on a Sunday afternoon will already have guessed, is one of the more recognizable names that the great and the good IKEA has given to a range of shelving.
Although most of my library is still in durance vile in Bluspace confined to Pickfords cardboard boxes, those volumes that have escaped the confines of the storage facility and have a free and easy existence in the flat rest their tails (that’s the right word for the bottom of a book, so there) on the shelves of Billy.
The rather elegant versions of this basic design that I bought for the living room are made of wood veneerish type material (I like to be honest!) with glass doors. They take a pitiful number of my books and I daily miss the Lost Volumes of Bluspace.
The latest purchase of Billy was for the ‘office’ (that purported to be the third bedroom on the advertisement for the flat.) There was no need for the more expensive pretend wood so I was able to get the basic white. Room in the office is somewhat cramped so extra shelf space was essential.
I have constructed or helped construct more that half a dozen examples of Billy so I was quietly confident that the purchase and making of this essentially simple pieces of furniture would be but the casual work of a morning.
There is nothing funny about making IKEA furniture so if you are expecting me to be lightly witty about the nail-scraping-on-blackboard type anguish which accompanied and then destroyed my innocent enthusiasm you can think again.
I find opening the brown cardboard packaging that Billy comes in an almost insuperable challenge! I am sure that there is some corner of the bloody thing which when pulled gently by an expert makes the box open like a beautiful flower – well I am still looking for the Swedish version of ‘Open Sesame!’ I have to resort to ripping, rending and tearing and usually using my skin between my thumb and index finger as a sort of fleshy saw. With the accompaniment of broken nails, torn skin and surprisingly vile language the box eventually opens and the contents are displayed to my jaundiced eyes.
IKEA used to be masters of the ‘bit that you don’t need but it looks just like all the other bits’ approach to flat packed furniture. I am glad to say that they now use expanded polystyrene which it is usually safe to assume is packing material and not an essential component in the finished piece of furniture.
Hard experience has taught me (and to be fair the little blobby man in the instructions agrees) that the outer packing must be used as a safety layer on which to set out the parts of your future bookcase. If you don’t do this then your assembled piece of furniture will look as though it has been attacked by a whole company of cats who have used it to sharpen their nails.
Finding the instructions and the little bag of bits is encouraging. The instructions are usually clear and generally unambiguous. Unambiguous that is to those who lack imagination. To those gifted with that glorious quality there are layers of meaning that can be read into a simple drawing which make consequent construction impossible.
And the bits!
With Nordic naivety and a touching faith in their computer system, IKEA give you exactly what you need. Exactly what you need if you are a trained IKEA constructor; not exactly what you need if you are a real human being who does not put the bits in a dish. Or who sits down too suddenly or throws the hammer down without due thought and all the bits explode into the air like a metallic firework and some (even though you have cleared the space beforehand) are never found again.
I will lightly pass over the loss of a wooden plug thingie; the putting of the wrong (almost identical) piece in place; the smashing of a nail under the shelf it was supposed to pin; the missing out of one piece of the structure altogether and spending twenty minutes trying to deconstruct the thing; the ending up with two faces of chipwood facing outwards because I had assumed that out was in – all of these I will pass over in silence. But one thing was not my fault.
On one end of the upright for the bookcase they had not cut the groove for the plywood back to slide in. I sat down and wept. Not literally you understand, but in some inner recess of my soul my tear ducts were flowing.
The thing that I was trying to make (it was the last of four shelf structures I had constructed so I was a little tense) was a little quarter size Billy. It cost €20. Did I really want to traipse back to Hospitalet, park, queue, explain and then come back again? The answer was no. I was disgruntled, but no!
And in a strange way all my ineptitude seems to have vanished because IKEA made a mistake. Poof! to their computerized systems: they made a mistake. They are professionals in furniture construction; I am a mere neophyte in such things. My mistakes are merely the learning curve of a new skill; their mistakes are a crushing condemnation of a multinational organization.
And I’ll buy some white stuff to go over the rough edges!
No comments:
Post a Comment