Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The Biggest Shelf in the Smallest Room in our House


As I said last week:

So we now have the biggest desk we could get into the smallest room in our house!

Next, another overly large IKEA shelving piece to hold all the crap we still have to keep! And so the time came to act!

We purchased the IKEA Expidit shelf/room divider in the 6 foot square model, which comes in three boxes, each about 75 pounds. Not too bad, although they are each 6 feet long and one is unusually cumbersome as it is larger than the others. With the help of an IKEA guy we put them in the car, and later, with my neighbors help, we got them in the garage. We figured we’d build them on Sunday.

First, I had to maneuver them down the stairs to the basement, one at a time, by sliding them down the steps very carefully. Then, I had to move the very heavy steel table, still sitting in the room, out of the way so the rest of the stuff could get inside.

Now, we were able to open the boxes and stand the big pieces up and place the smaller pieces on to the big desk. We have seen the Youtube video on assembling this piece so we thought we completely understood; we didn’t! The first few pieces showed us we were wrong and it took a bit of fixing to make the thing work.

All the videos show everyone making the piece flat on the ground. A great idea if you have at least a 6' x6' area and some room around it. Even with the largest desk IKEA makes removed from the room (not possible) we still wouldn't have a 6’ x 6’ space to work in. We had to build it vertically, and that made the last screw a difficult one as I had to hold the piece up on an angle, all 207 pounds of it, so they (my wife and daughter) could complete the last one. However, where there is a will there is a way!

After some initial screaming, banging and breaking of vital parts, we got off to a smooth start. It quickly went together and not until the end did we realize it was backwards in the room. The parts that connect to the wall were on the front side so we had to turn Moby Dick around!

With careful sliding further out of the steel table into the store room, and sliding the unit out into the hall, and sliding it back and forward into the playroom with me squished into the wall, we were able to maneuver the unit around and get it back into the office the right way!

We were home free! I had to get a couple of hollow wall anchors to secure the unit to the back wall and today we have the largest IKEA desk with an IKEA 6’ square shelving unit in the smallest room in my house.

These items will be sold with the house when the time comes, because there is no way anyone can ever move this stuff out without completely separating all parts and carrying them up the stairs to be reassembled somewhere else!

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