Friday, June 26, 2009

A Bigger Puzzle

I think most of people have heard of or even seen IKEA furniture. Since IKEA is originally Swedish and makes furniture suitable for the Finnish eye, I have used lots of their products. Until last year we had to travel about 150 km to the nearest store but now we have one of our own, just on the other side of Turku.

The interesting part of IKEA furniture is that it is like you had bought a huge wooden puzzle with all these pieces:



What makes the puzzle a lot easier is that it comes with a booklet with the illustrated instructions. If you follow the instructions step by step, you can't mess up with anything.


I have heard these booklets criticised about chauvinism; somebody had noted that all the figures in the pictures are male (as if there were men who read instructions ! ). Who cares, because in my family the absolutely best handyman is my daughter who loves assembling these puzzles.


Here is what I bought this time. One piece is missing above the TV, but it was out of stock for the moment.



The main reason I love IKEA: with a very reasonable price compared to others I can get exactly what I want. Believe me, about 3 years ago I visited every store selling furniture in the Turku area and I found bookshelves which were a) made for something else than books b) were totally unsuitable by their measures to my house c) did not have adjustable shelves which means you can have only standard sized books! d) were too expensive e) too massive (heavy) f) too dark (birch is my choise). Sadly enough the ones I found met approximately two of my six criteria.

From IKEA I got all this; just custom-made gor me, glass doors to prevent dust and lots of space. Assembling it was a lot of work, but also fun!



Now there is a slight colour difference between the old and the new one, but it does not take much time when the sun corrects the situation.

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