Ikea, I kill ya

I have a love/hate relationship with Ikea. Well maybe a like/hate, I can't say I actually LOVE anything there. But for the often lazy (yes that's me) they do make household necessities affordable and accessible.
Do you think I can assemble the furniture though?
Ahem.
I've always considered myself a reasonably intelligent, competent human being, but those instruction leaflets just do my head in.

Ikea tally to date:
success - 1 x chair, 1 x sofa
FAIL - 2 x chairs, 1 x TV locker. And a glass lampshade that cracked on me.

Oh dear. The TV locker is one of these, a single door model, and in my infinite wisdom, I put the lid on back to front, and now I can't get the damn thing off! You may think not a big problem, but to put the door on, you need a hole in each right corner for the door pins to go in. Oh noes. So here's the cabinet as it looks at the moment, waiting for someone strong and burly to put it to rights. And someone who can be bothered...both the Fella and Dad decided it looked better without a door anyway.

Now I also bought chairs called "Harry" from Ikea a few weeks back, and tried to assemble them. Oh dear. (!) I ended up ringing the Fella in despair, who told me to go and have a cuppa and leave it till he came over next. So I did. My spare room was beginning to become a testament to my Ikea failures, for it now held the locker door, one partially assembled Harry, one Harry still in it's box and a side table that I hadn't bothered with, as I'd grabbed the wrong one and didn't realise at the time. Sigh.

Last weekend, the Fella was over, and set to put my chair disaster to rights. He couldn't get it to work either, until he realised that I'd put one of the seat braces around the wrong way "Look Steph, it fits easily when you put it in the right holes." ...because my main problem with Harry chair was that I couldn't get the dowel pins to sit right in the holes. So as usual, I had everything arse about. Oh the shame! I'm an Ikea failure. The Fella looked around the room and said "Don't worry Steph, you're good at decorating, and knitting" in an attempt to console me. Sigh.

So now, you'd think I'd have learnt my lesson and should avoid Ikea. Or at least don't unpack anything that needs assembling when I'm on my own. But the thing is, I need a queen size bed, as the double I have is a bit patethic really... so I'm currently coveting this one:

[Pic source]

Of course it has a complicated headboard/shelving combination, I think I'm a bit of a masochist sometimes.

And I'm also considering one of these as a home for some rather gorgeous coffee cups that I op-shopped yesterday. (Or this one.) Me, Ikea, and glass shelving?! Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

to be continued...