Embittered Mutterings

Recent communication with IKEA after a purchase of a sofa -

I recently got a delivery of an IKEA KIVIK with a chaise lounge. I have to first of all put this in context - every purchase I’ve made with you has often ended with some slight taint of woe and despair.

The lovely full-length mirror I bought not long ago to compliment our hallway had incorrect dimensions for drilling holes in my walls, so the mirror couldn’t actually be supported without recalculating the drilling myself and re-supporting the mirror.

The largest picture frames you have - the RIBBA - turns out that they can’t actually support their own weight. I bought two for the bedroom, and within a week one of them had destroyed itself and fell off the wall with broken shards of sharp plastic and picture frame. I had to buy a shelf to support the weight of the other one. A shelf for a picture frame. Nice.

So this lovely KIVIK sofa. Me and the wife were in love with it and we went to several places before coming back. The KIVIK had been reduced - lovely. A sale on the sofa we wanted! Sweet! So we bought it there and then. The delivery process was pretty painless, but as always with IKEA, the assembly was full of issues.

Firstly, using a cover for the large main frame of the sofa. I had already put the covers on the two arms, and marvelled at the way that there were strips of velcro to hold the cover in place. What a smart move. Unfortunately, the main frame of the sofa didn’t feature any of these strips of velcro - totally at odds with the instructions, which clearly showed them.

So like I was building the sofa even more, I had to nail down the covers to the frame. Why did I even get a spare set of covers if replacing them would be a destructive process? Frustrating, but we made do.

Next moment of pain also involved the covers. Some very intelligent Swedish designer thought it would be a good idea to make it actually impossible to fit the backrest covers onto the backrest cushions. The larger cushions - no problem. The instructions showed how it could be done - squash the cushions and push them into the cover. Sadly the backrest cushions had a hard wooden support inside them, making this process unaccomplishable.

So, again, we made do. I had to take a pair of scissors and make some incisions on the end of the zipper so we could get the things on the cushions in the first place. Did I mention how much I paid for this sofa yet? It was a lot. Obviously not as much as it could have been due to the sale, but still. Maybe that’s why it was on sale? I have attached a photo to show you what happens when we have to make do.

The recent pain in the ass is when I unboxed my chaise lounge to find there were no instructions. Imagine it, right? That never happens at all. No instructions. I had to scrounge about the internet until I found them on the US IKEA site, and even then I couldn’t save them locally. Thank god I have a printer, right?

I haven’t unboxed the armchair yet, but I fear there may be some horrible surprise in there too.

Maybe it’s the meatballs, I’m not sure. Maybe that’s why I keep coming back.Please give me a good reason to come back this time.

Love,
Steve