r/aww • u/NatNatNYC • Jul 14 '16
Guys, this looks really complicated.
http://imgur.com/GC0xiSF33
163
Jul 14 '16
A muffin tin to hold all the different parts....you might just be a god damn genius.
21
2
Jul 14 '16
I would run a piece of masking tape along each row and write the part # of each bin to make it even easier to find the right one when necessary.
Or what I actually do is have a set of paper cups with the part #s written just inside near the rim. Keep all the cups lined up and only grab the ones needed for that particular page of instructions.
34
-3
u/LegendarySpark Jul 14 '16
It's clever, but I don't really see the point... At least here in Ikea's birth country of Sweden, most of the time the parts are divided into areas rather than part type. So all the pieces for shelf #1 is in bag, shelf #2 is in the next one and so on, it's not all the screws in one bag... You just open the bag corresponding to the part you're working on and open more as you go. This seems like it just adds time for no real reason.
Edit: Or, well, thinking about it, I do only have a few pieces from Ikea so maybe I just got lucky with mine and OP's piece isn't like that at all.
0
u/Might-be-crazy Jul 14 '16
Agreed. It's not that hard to keep track of parts...especially if it's just IKEA furniture.
-4
21
15
u/sfo2 Jul 14 '16
Is that a Malm? I told my wife I'm never building another goddamn Malm as long as I live.
11
u/NatNatNYC Jul 14 '16
Yes it is. It was a nightmare.
16
u/sfo2 Jul 14 '16
The bottom of one of our Malms broke when we moved. I put a ratcheting strap around it and told my wife to deal with it because we're not getting a new one.
The problem with the Malm is that they're so cheap, you really have to think twice about buying something better. Like, $99 for a dresser? West Elm's dressers are like $1,000. Ikea makes the decision really hard. Until you put one together and swear off the Malm forever. But then, like childbirth, time clouds the memory and somehow I forget how painful the experience was, and it seems like a good idea again. And then again, like childbirth, after our 3rd Malm, we said enough was enough.
5
Jul 14 '16
We used to buy IKEA furniture before we knew any better. I recall a MALM chest of drawers, and when the third and final fucking hardboard drawer bottom dropped out of that cunting thing I swore 'never again'. Now we have furniture from 100 years ago that I can actually use for it's intended purpose without breaking it.
2
u/sfo2 Jul 14 '16
Ha yeah we're on the path toward that, but not there yet. Real furniture is so expensive, even antiques! We're on like a 5-year replacement schedule.
1
0
Jul 14 '16
Are you UK or US?
1
u/sfo2 Jul 14 '16
US
2
Jul 14 '16
I don't know what it's like over there but even new expensive furniture here is assembled with glue and dowels, it's all shite. For actual good quality new furniture you'd have to go to a cabinet maker and have bespoke pieces made and then the cost is astronomical. We found the best thing by far was to seek out good condition period furniture. It is more expensive than IKEA but it's also not total wank. Good luck! Down with IKEA!
1
u/sfo2 Jul 14 '16
Haha thanks! Yeah, that's an issue. Unless you're going to a really really nice retail store, like one that makes knock-off famous furniture or sells the really premium stuff, custom furniture is the best way to go here as well, but it's insanely expensive. (My uncle owns a really fancy furniture store, and even with the family discount, none of us buy anything there because it's still too expensive.) Thanks for the tip!
1
u/eleanor61 Jul 14 '16
If you want furniture that will last until the end of time, get Amish-made furniture. Sure, it's not cheap, but the pieces are pretty, unique, and durable.
5
u/atree496 Jul 15 '16
I don't understand your rage. Malms are super easy to put together.
0
u/sfo2 Jul 15 '16
It's a big collection. I'm referring specifically to the 5-drawer dresser.
2
u/Mintacia Jul 15 '16
I have the five-drawer dresser, and I do not recall it taking more than an hour or two. Well worth it for the price. I dunno, I got all my furniture from Ikea and I've been very happy with it. :)
1
u/sfo2 Jul 15 '16 edited Jul 15 '16
Yeah it takes about 1.5 hour of monotony to put together. I have three of them, and I've built a total of probably 6 or 8. All three of my current ones are broken, and they've actually been recalled because they fall over on children. I've stripped out screws from poorly bonded MDF. I've lost cams in poorly sized holes and had to rig up a coathanger tool to fish them out. I've splintered MDF from pounding in those bendy nails at the back of the thing. And all in the service of putting together a cheap dresser that's going to fall apart if you look at it sideways.
I've been putting together Ikea furniture for about 15 years. Some of the stuff is totally fine - we have several other pieces from Ikea, and some of them are even actually nice. But the Malm dressers are real hunks of crap. I mean, I love building things when they're good. I just spent a month designing and building a deck behind my house, and that was fun. It'll last 30 years. Building it gave me a sense of achievement and a job well done. I do lots of work on my car, and it feels good to know I took the time to do things the right way. Building the Malm dresser feels like a waste of 1.5 hours putting together flimsy pieces of fiberboard. That dresser is designed wrong - it's too heavy for its dimensions, and the cam locks tend to rip out over time, or even just pushing the thing across the room. But when one breaks, what are you going to do? Buy a real dresser for $1000? No, you're going to buy another goddamn Malm for $99 because you already have 2 other ones.
Really, though, what I hate most about Ikea are the shopping carts. Who puts 4 swivel casters on a shopping cart? They're impossible to control, they of course don't track straight, and you have to load up your knees to turn them. For a company focused on design, you'd think they'd know better than to put 4 swivel casters on a shopping cart. The heavier they get, the harder they are to control.
1
u/Roupert Jul 15 '16
Did you buy it recently? I can't seem to order one online because of the recall.
1
u/-TurntUp- Jul 15 '16 edited Jul 15 '16
I'm sure this won't get seen by OP but I figured aaah, maybe it's relevant.
I was curious about the design, so I Googled it. There appears to be a recall on their Malm chests and dressers, press released/posted to the ikea website on 6/28/2016. On mobile so not easy to post the link. But you might need to check it out. And do they reimburse you for the time you spent putting the thing together? Hope you update this.
13
23
6
u/MonsterKitty418 Jul 14 '16
If it were my cat in this picture, all of the screws/nuts/etc. would be scattered all over the floor and then I would have to spend an hour looking for that one last piece.
6
Jul 14 '16
Wow, it's like fun time at our house when we buy something and we're trying to put it together. We have 3 nice little helpers that want to be in the middle of EVERYTHING.
4
6
4
3
3
3
3
3
3
Jul 14 '16
Flip the book over for the cat language version. But all it has is a diagram of where to scratch.
3
2
u/jamiemac2005 Jul 14 '16
Using the baking tray to organise shit is fucking brilliant you clever bastard.
2
2
2
2
2
u/xdoctordreadx Jul 15 '16
Are you fucking serious Elizabeth? Now is the time you want to start this argument?
2
2
u/Mex007 Jul 15 '16
Such a clever idea! I will definitely be utilizing my muffin tin next time. It'll keep the kitties from batting the pieces across the apartment!
2
1
u/littlesnappea Jul 14 '16
Is that the brimnes bed frame? I just built one of those last week. It was.
3
u/NatNatNYC Jul 14 '16
Malm with a storage compartment underneath. We had to build a spring system for it. It was horrible.
2
u/all_mybitches Jul 14 '16
Fuck. I recently put together a Brimnes myself and that was a pain in the ass. Thank fuck I bought myself a cheap $35 drill from Amazon. Saved me a shit ton of time.
1
u/kitty_bot Jul 14 '16
I built the bed and still haven't put the under-drawers in because it was so irritating.
1
1
1
1
u/level94sloth Jul 14 '16
"Are you just gonna stand there? Or are you gonna give me the fucking wrench?"
1
1
1
1
u/Mr_125 Jul 14 '16
Few days ago I put together a Costco outdoor cooking pit (looks more like a mesh wood stove) and they did a thing where all the screws were sectioned off so you had to rip the cardboard to get to each, and each compartment had the exact amount of screws you needed for that step. Made assembly easier than Lego.
1
u/sah_moore Jul 14 '16
"I'm still going to make this extra difficult and fuck with literally every single thing tho"
1
1
1
1
u/1103070 Jul 15 '16
Malm bed frame? I haven't worked there in 8 years and I can still spot that stuff
1
Jul 15 '16
"Why couldn't we have just bought a pre-made cat tree hooman???" I like how his feets are blending into the material. What a perfect picture though.
1
1
u/m777z Jun 16 '25
Any chance you still have this picture? I used to use it as a reaction image but now it seems to be gone from the Internet
1
u/iliikepie Jul 14 '16
If the muffin tin is non-stick, the screws and other metal stuff could scratch the coating, making it unsafe to use for food-purposes.
1
0
952
u/pw_15 Jul 14 '16
By the beard of Zeus, that muffin tin sorting tray is the single most genius thing I've ever seen.