Cool design. Cheap construction. The Ikea formula.
I just bought some shelving units from Ikea for my kid’s bedroom. He has a bunch of toys and we need to get them organized. As neatly laid out and aesthetically pleasing Ikea is, there are some things I’ve realized after building these things:
- Although they look all cool and modern and euro, Ikea’s shelves are simply just compressed wood shavings cleverly wrapped in nice veneer. While unpacking and lifting the shelves, I got reminded of stage props. Wow, they look real…but they’re not!
- After realizing this, my better half and I both agreed that we should be paying less than half of what we really spent on these things.
- Nevertheless, we, like many others, flock and feed from a company who’s managed to market themselves in such a way that one can nearly overlook or forgive the cheap construction in favor of the artsy, minimal-modern euro styling and exotic euro brand names that add to the illusion of quality, durable goods.
- Ikea should really include a hammer or rubber mallet (to avoid damaging the cleverly wrapped wood chips) in their instruction manual when listing tools needed to build.
- A hammer really comes in handy to tap in the wooden dowels to even lengths, and even more so to force feed the frequently stubborn allen bolts used to finish the shelves.
- One should use caution when building these units, as the clever clumps of composite material appear to be solid, but actually get easily chipped and dented—the protective veneer is paper thin.
