Krister is a very affordable piece of IKEA furniture that holds computers.
I bought Krister yesterday, and I'd like to tell you how to put him together just in case you should want to have a Krister of your own. For the record, I have had the pleasure of assisting in the assembly of other fine IKEA furnishings, and this pretty much applies to all of them, not just Krister.
Without further ado, here's how to assemble Krister:
- Contemplate going to IKEA, which is a tedious project all in itself.
- Get in friend's car (friend drives and goes with for IKEA moral support), go to IKEA. Sit in parking lot getting nervous and debate going to thrift store instead.
- Realize it's been 6 years now and no thrift stores have anything I'm looking for
- Get out of car, walk by $20 IKEA Christmas trees.
- Enter IKEA complex, ride escalator up past walls that look like bacon up to main floor.
- Walk through complex maze that is IKEA past things like heart shaped pillows and lamps that look like soft serve ice cream, trying to keep eye on arrows pasted to the floor so I don't get lost.
- Try to resist sudden uncontrollable urge that I need a rug I don't even like, just because it's cheap.
- Try to resist sudden uncontrollable urge that I need to stand in a line to get $3.99 worth of meatballs.
- Meet Krister in the desk area.
- Read Krister's sign that says "I come unassembled!" and that you have to go downstairs to get a box containing all of Krister's parts.
- Begin 3 mile journey through rest of IKEA to get to the box of Krister.
- Get to the store level which houses Krister boxes, see mirage on warehouse floor
- Find box of Krister in section 29-7 of the warehouse
- Pay for Krister, bring Krister home.
- Open tiny box that Krister somehow fits into. Remove and unwrap all of Krister's various screws and appendages.
- Tell cat to please go away
- Read instructions carefully. Laugh at instructions because they have no words, only illustrations that look funny.
- Spend 45 minutes attempting to hold and screw pieces together, hoping that gravity works in my favor. Be sure to do this on a hard floor so you can hear the complimentary allen wrench clanking loud and clear when you drop it 300 times while trying to hold desk parts together and tighten bolts.
- Once everything is nice and tight, it's time to put the last piece on. Let out a sigh of relief.
- Stop and look at desk while holding last piece and realize something isn't right here. There's holes for the last piece, but they're on the wrong sides. Hm.
- Curse up a storm after coming to the conclusion that the first two parts taken out and put together, the two parts that everything is now tightly fastened to, are on the wrong sides.
- Curse up a storm after coming to the conclusion that the only way to fix this is to take everything apart and start over.
- Inhale in the good air, exhale the bad air.
- Reverse step #18.
- Stand disoriented in a sea of Krister body parts.
- Repeat step 18.
- Put last piece on and be thankful it's the last piece, as fingers have become raw from unscrewing cheap bolts.
- Apprehensively put big heavy computer monitor and tower on Krister, let out sigh of relief that Krister didn't collapse.
- Say "NEVER AGAIN!" in regards to putting IKEA furniture together, until the next time comes that you need something quick and inexpensive.
That's about it in a nutshell. The joys of assembling IKEA furniture are exciting and fruitful, especially when someone comes over and you can say "See that? It was only $30!" while in your head, you're thinking "yeah, and I put about $200 of painstaking labor into the f*&king thing.
