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A new bed. Err… Pile of wood.

This past week the bed frame Brady and I had been using finally broke. It was one of those plain metal kinds on wheels. Not very sturdy to begin with, but the wheel literally snapped off, and we were left with a bed on a slope. I was joking with him that I was having dreams about falling, sliding, slipping, etc.

Saturday Brady and I went to Walmart. I should note here that I've never shopped at Walmart for myself and never intend on doing so. I feel embarrassed for human society when I go there, and feel like disciplining other peoples' children. After hearing me complain for the first 10 minutes, and not finding a bedframe at all, Brady decided we would take the adventure 45 minutes away from Delaware, to the nearest Ikea.

I've never been to Ikea. I was expecting a store on par with Target, Best Buy, or something similar. But no, this was like the Please-Touch-Museum. Or an Art museum. There was actual organization here, which was a relief in comparison to Walmart. They even had a food court. The food seemed really cheap, but was not Vegan, and I did not partake.

Finding an appropriate bedframe was the difficult part. We didn't actually get to the section we needed until the end. All the bedframes seemed to be either size Queen or Twin. We have a Full sized bed. We contemplated a few that were no better than simply having the mattress on the ground itself. We wanted storage, but all the ones with storage were in the $300 range.

Then, we decided to go into the kids section, and we found it. A nice sturdy wooden loft bed with space for "activities" (Step Brothers reference). It was $199 on sale from $399. We would be able to bring Brady's couch back upstairs from the basement, and have our own living quarters under the bed. I have to say, however, that the idea of a loft bed makes me very nervous, but the sign at Ikea said it'd hold 400 lbs weight, and we probably weigh 281 lbs combined. I hope we'll be okay. I've never seen a loft bed collapse except for in Step Brothers

The other concern I had was that we drove to Ikea in my 2-door Volkswagen Rabbit. It's been known to haul a good bit of stuff, but I wasn't sure if it would fit an entire loft bed. Luckily the entire bed was packed away neatly in two separate boxes that had no problem fitting into my car (surprise!) and we were able to get the bed home.

That was the easy part.

I understand the need for instructions to be easy to understand for any language, but I don't even think the Swedish could understand the instructions. It's all up to interpretation, and involved a lot of staring at tiny details in the pictures. Brady and I work tech support for a living so are used to figuring out problems and understanding the mechanics of things. So what I didn't understand was how do other people figure out how to build these damn things? Do they all call the Ikea people to come to their house and build these things? And how do those people handle their job? There must be some sort of high-suicide rate. I can't imagine having to build shit from Ikea all day every day. I would probably cry.

Despite a bashed up thumb, red and near-bleeding hands, scared cats, and probably angry neighbours, we were able to assemble the bed within 8 hours. I don't love the bed, but I love the extra space. I've never assembled anything from Ikea, and I will never be assembling anything from Ikea ever again. Next time we go to Ikea, we're buying plates instead. They don't require assembly (or at least I don't think they do!)

And so now, I understand this comic.