wow failing at mounting furniture...

before IKEA came to Switzerland it was impossible to find anything with design AND reasonable price...

Here is a website for Ikea Hackers. Pretty cool ideas in there...

Every single time i put Ikea stuff together I get a "wtf" moment. Once I'm past the panic it all goes smoothly

but unfortunately not at the same time

Really? Huh. They didn't give us the choice - it just says in the instructions that you can choose which side you want it on. It's about 75% done and we think that they'll need to replace the end part because it's pretty close to stuffed.

To be quite honest, most of the time I'm with Nils - I don't mind putting together IKEA furniture, but only when it works. It's quite rare that something like this happens. Otherwise we just sail through most of it. We'll have to ring IKEA tomorrow to sort it out, so watch this space.

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Ikea is easy - if you spent a childhood with Lego and Meccano.

We have a Team by Wellis dining table - which despite the way it looks can be dismantled. I consider it to be a PhD in Ikea Studies.

if people are struggling with ikea stuff they should be greatful MFI no longer exists! they would just leave random things out of the box, I remember many an argument between my parents trying to assemble that s**t followed by heated exchanges back at the store asking for the missing screws, shelves, side etc etc

IKEA have got much better over the years but there was a time that you could almost bet on the fact that from every second flatpack there would be at least one screw missing or one hole that wasn't drilled to the correct depth or something like that. Customer service was also pretty miserable back then. If you weren't happy because there was a screw missing for example, they made you bring all the parts back and would give you a new flatpack, rather than replacing that one part. Queues at the service desk were long and any conversation would initially start out with some insame denial revolving around you doing something wrong rather than them having made a mistake.

I used to joke that they must be sponsored by the likes of Pfister to put people off the concept of cheap furniture.

I have been in love with IKEA since 1985, some stuff is ugly, but then we don't all have the same tastes.

I recently bought a new style of IKEA bunk bed: it was obviously made wrongly. So I went to a carpenter and asked him to plane half an inch from a 2 meter piece of wood. he refused and told me IKEA is ALWAYS correct and I should read the instructions again.

Days later I took the bad bed to IKEA and explained the manufactuing error. We looked at 5 more beds and all were bad. In the end I had to buy a different bed.

The quality of the IKEA components is now noticably worse than before.

For example:
Billy backs were 2 piece not 3-piece - and so easier to install
The screw and hold mounts were all metal (both). First the screw became half plastic - and now the hold is fully plastic.

On the flipside the expensive IKEA stuff is good quality - the Varde kitchen stuff is proper hard wearing and well built.

I like IKEA but don't like the fact that everyone else likes IKEA !

I have come to realise, thanks to EF, that every expat living in Switzerland gets their furniture from IKEA. We are all familiar with the stuff and if we end up leaving Switzerland after only a short stay then at least we have not invested significant cash in furniture. That being said, the EF “for sale” thread is like a sister site for IKEA! Just about anything you want from IKEA can be found 2nd hand on EF for half the price, often in good condition …. Happy days !

I would love to see how that goes

I'd turn that around.

IKEA is the shop that sells the same stuff that you can get on the EF, only it costs double the price and you still have to assemble it. And you have to spend about 2 hours having your sense of taste offended while being infusd with artificial Swedish happiness by walking through those endless showrooms. I know what I prefer.

80ies style ? Maybe in case of TopTip, but Conforama is "à jour" . And clearly nicer than IKEA. But, ok, IKEA is Scandinavian, Conforama French, and so there IS a basic difference in style.

before IKEA, there already were MIcasa, Conforama, TopTip and Interio. But before them, prices were horrendous.

As I had no idea about MFI, I checked them out and found THIS update

....
Recently acquired by the Walker Group, the MFI brand is a household name within the UK furniture industry. The new business will continue to offer great choice, value for money and customer service, but is being refreshed to offer a more innovative and design led product range and shopping experience. The brand re launch promises to be one of the most anticipated events in the UK retail calendar...
--......

I cannot resist....

Me too! I would happily put things together for people! Giant jigsaw puzzle... and that feeling at the end that I put that together all by myself!

Interio is nice, so is Avanti (where they now are), Micasa is a good as Migros (furniture food analogy) i.e. boring and tasteless...

Toptip is all german import and Conforama is all french ...

i agree that the quality of Ikea is not really top notch, but personally I have never had any problems mounting their furniture, I was probably lucky

The advantage with Ikea is that you can put your stuff together like you want it and you can have it quite fast. E.g. I went 2 months ago to Dogern möbelmarkt to buy a bed for my son and I am still waiting for the delivery...

I once helped a client assemble an Ikea bed, and I will never do that again.

Last week I helped deliver second hand beds to two clients. They were solid wood, took less than 10 minutes to assemble and each supplied with very sturdy bed slats. I am not saying second hand is for everyone but products like Hasena are excellent quality and worth buying a second hand bed and refinishing it if need be rather than Ikea.

If you are only staying a short time, Ikea makes sense, but I pity that next person who has to rebuild Ikea because it is never as sturdy second time around unless it is a solid wood product.

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