IKEA: Ending Relationships One Bed Frame at a Time

Before you read: Let me make it clear that our relationship did not crumble and die due to assembling IKEA furniture.  It was stretched a bit, and probably made stronger because of our recent experience with the IKEA Brimnes bed frame.  It’s most likely even stronger than the cardboard that holds the bottom of our bed frame drawers together.
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So, you want to add more storage to your life?  And you want it to sit under your bed?  Great!  There’s a solution for that.  It’s called under-bed storage and you can find it at any furniture shop.  But why not IKEA?  It’s inexpensive, relatively good-looking, and did I mention inexpensive?  I’ve purchased many items from IKEA in the past (and am actually fairly in love with my desk), but I’ve never before had the pleasure/pain of putting together something so elaborate it requires 41 steps and multiple bags of screws/washers/nuts/twirl-a-gigs.
But the trouble began even before we opened page one of the manual (which, incidentally shows various drawings of unisex people either smiling because they are doing things correctly, or looking perturbed because they aren’t following the directions or things are going horribly wrong.  A telling start.).  You see, we wanted a black bed frame.  The rest of our furniture is dark and (call us snobs) we wanted it to match.  The problem, however, was that the Brimnes under-bed storage bed frame only came in one color: white.
We sighed and bought it anyway, along with several cans of black spray paint and primer.
The next few months were filled with unpacking the boxes, laying out the parts, figuring out which parts faced the outside and actually needed to be painted, and then getting to town with a painting respirator mask and spray paint (all in the basement, of course, because it is negative insane degrees in Minneapolis now).  When we were nearly finished with the project, we ran into a friend who works at IKEA.  Our conversation went something like this.
“Oh hey.”
“How’s it going?”
“Great. Did you buy that bed frame you two were looking at a few weeks ago?”
“Sure did.  We’re now in the process of painting the entire 8,568 pieces black.”
“Oh.”
“Oh?”
“Well…I don’t know how to tell you this, but…”
The sentence dangled.  We exchanged worried looks.
“…it comes out in black next month.”
“AAARRRRrrrrrrggggg!”
With time and counseling, we overcame our deep depression and finally soldiered ourselves to build the damn thing.
It was all going swimmingly (slowly, but swimmingly), until step 28. You only have to google “Brimnes step 28” to see that we were not the only ones to encounter the man-eating, lava-spewing, hydra-headed beast that is step 28 (and its cousin, step 29).  In this step, the assembler is expected to fit several triangular screws into round holes.  Ready go.
We tried forcing them in manually, we tried screwdrivers, a drill, a pair of pliers.  We tried cursing at them; we tried cursing at the diabolical engineers who designed them.  Eventually, we tried the internet.  There was one consensus: use brute force.  We did and eventually, the screws scraped into their homes.
Only 12 more steps to go.
Eric, looking thoroughly defeated

We looked at the clock.  Four hours had slipped by and our alarms would be sounding in a matter of hours.  We went to bed.  Fortunately, it held up. 

A couple days later (after we regained the will to keep at it), we got around to assembling the drawers.  They were mostly fine, except the cardboard bottoms didn’t fit into a couple of the slats and needed to be shaved down.  We finished attaching drawer slides to drawers and wooden sides to cardboard bottoms and finally, we had drawers!  …with lily-white handles.
We looked at the handles we had forgotten to paint and shrugged.  “Another day…”
Two weeks later, they are still sitting on top of our (IKEA-brand) table in the living room. We’ll get to them eventually, but for now, we are taking in the lessons we learned from our experience, which can be summed up as:
Dobby approves
1. Set aside about 80% more time than you think you need before assembling IKEA furniture
2. Laugh about errors/finger pinches/cuts/shoddy directions/each other’s mistakes
3. Be forgiving to yourself and your fellow assembler
4. Step back from time to time and remind yourself: It’s only furniture.
Thanks IKEA, for the life lessons and extra storage!
-Kate

Author: KateBitters

Kate Bitters is a Minneapolis-based author and freelance writer. She is the author of Elmer Left, Ten Thousand Lines, and He Found Me. One of her proudest/nerdiest moments was when Neil Gaiman read one of her short stories on stage at the Fitzgerald Theater.

13 thoughts on “IKEA: Ending Relationships One Bed Frame at a Time”

  3. Hi there! I enjoyed reading this and had a similar experience a few years back assembling a dresser. It was pure hell, but funny now looking back on it then ; )
    Im considering buying the Brimnes, but one question…is this a platform style bed frame? Can't seem to tell anywhere online! Thanks so much, and hope you're enjoying it.

  4. Hi Lai. Yes…it's always funnier later on! I wouldn't call the bed frame "platform style" because the top isn't a platform, but a series of slats. They are durable though and we haven't had a problem with any of them cracking or shifting in the year + that we've had the bed frame. So far, we like the bed and the storage is wonderful. Hope this helps!

  11. It was a bit of a pain to assemble, but we've been happily using this bed frame for 2 years now and it works just fine. It's sturdy and provides plenty of storage. So, yes, I would recommend it. Just make sure you set aside plenty of time for assembling! And maybe play some classical music while you do it 😉

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