the dresser that 'stine built.

So anyone out there that has known me for a significant amount of time will know this to be true: I am very, very bad at putting furniture together.

I'm not sure where this comes from. It could be genetic, though I've never actually watched my mother put furniture together, and my father strikes me as at least somewhat adept at that sort of thing. Nor do I know whether or not my brother fails as awesomely as I do, but he's told me recently that he's about to find out. To David I say: Good luck, sir. Here's hoping it's just some funky wiring gone wrong in my brain. And IKEA furniture? Okay, first of all, I'm fairly certain that all the Swedes got together and said: all right guys, how can we really fuck all the people in the world who need cheap furniture?

And thus, IKEA was born. The sneaky thing about IKEA furniture is that it looks so simple. It looks like: okay, frame, drawers, put them all together and voila: dresser. But then you open the instructions and the naked guy is there telling you not to light yourself on fire and you're like: what the hell have I gotten myself into? Never mind the fact that there are no WORDS in IKEA instructions. Just dumbass pictures that don't make sense until you turn the instructions upside down. I mean, seriously! Words like left and right, even, would be helpful!

So the last time I tried to put a piece of IKEA furniture together, I put it on upside down. You can imagine how unexcited I was to try and build my dresser when the time came. I have long-since made a habit of paying other people to build my furniture -- typically, with beer. Unfortunately, I'm somewhat on my own out here. I suppose perhaps it was time that I grew up, forged my own path, picked up the screwdriver and screamed and cursed my way through building the first piece of my own furniture ever.

I have documented the journey below. Many thanks to Emily for seeing me through the terrifying first leg (or legs, as the case may be).


Here she is, enjoying the show, from the comfort of my turquoise couch.



We begin with the instructions, which are quick to inform me not to try to walk up my dresser like it's a set of stairs. Thank you, IKEA. Disaster narrowly averted.


Of course I had my box of tools, because I try to be prepared for all fly-by-furniture-building.


And, naturally, the entirely daunting amount of pieces.



But eventually I got it to look like this!



A word about the heat here in Singapore. There is no A/C in the living room of my apartment, largely because there are so many damned windows, all of which open wide, and in general there's enough of a breeze going about the place that the A/C is not needed. However, any small amount of physical exertion quickly makes the atmosphere somewhat thicker, and the result is a truly preposterous amount of sweat.

So as I was climbing around inside the half-made dresser and hefting the pieces to fit into other pieces and screwing (oh, ha ha. screwdriving) with all the elbow grease I could muster, I was also getting positively disgusting. So that was fun. Good thing I had beer.

So I had the thing looking like those pictures up there by about 21:00, and that's when I called it quits last night because one ought not to hammer past 21:00 on a schoolnight, just to be polite.

I woke up around noon today, stumbled out into the living room and saw the disaster that was my attempt at this dresser, and resolved that I would not do anything else today until the damned thing was finished, and my clothes were in it.

Okay, so I got coffee first, but the sentiment was there.

Then I sat down with my tools and what was left of my dignity, and had at it. Music and willpower will actually take me a long way when it comes to this sort of thing. A few people suggested that I ask so-and-so or whatever-his-name-is for help, which only served to fuel my stubborn determination to actually build the thing on my own. I mean, what does it say about a girl who'll move 10,000 miles away from home, but can't build her own effing IKEA dresser? Nothing good, I tell you that.

So coffee and a chocolate Mr. Bean later, I set to. Several hours after that, sweaty and dirty and hungry and just generally in disarray, I am happy to say that Aneboda looked like this:


And I call that a success, ladies and gentelmen. The moral of this story? Necessity and desperation, combined with stubbornness and beer, equals success. Make of that little nugget of wisdom what you will.