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Comment by PakG1 | Hacker News Reader

There are people who don't care to build their own Ikea furniture? How strange! I've always enjoyed building my own Ikea furniture! :)

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Agreed. I'm not sure where the misconception of their furniture being difficult to build comes from. In my experience their instructions are unambiguous and well-designed.

I can't agree more, for the furniture I have bought, Ikea's instructions are pretty exemplary.

Without any written words, the instructions are very clear on how to assemble the furniture.

If you pay attention when reading them, it is not possible to make a mistake.

On the other hand, I have also bought from other RDA furnitures and have encountered some obscure instructions.

> If you pay attention when reading them

Ah, that's the problem. We all know that users never read the manual. :)

There's a difference between building "your one desk" and assembling 10 of them for the new company office. It gets old after a few hours :P

Ikea furniture and instructions are Lego of the furniture world. Anyone with half a brain and some patience can assemble it.

I also like that you don't need to be a literate person to assemble their furniture (wordless instructions).

They are. The times I've been caught were clearly my mistake. Those times and various close calls have been cases of almost symmetry. I've also done things like building two identical units in series or parallel and watched myself learn. I can imagine a great speed up with practice. An apartment's worth of furniture could take me a day, and I can well imagine paying someone $100 for an hour instead.

From 30 years ago.

Seriously, at that time the instructions came in gibberish with extremely weird illustrations and you were usually wondering why you had surplus screws.

The design of IKEA furniture at that time was, let's just say, a lot more rustic too.

I put together a couple of wardrobes for a friend which was fine, but she still had to get a genuinely useful person in to drill them together and attach to wall etc as I lacked the tools.

It's not particularly difficult but nor is it particularly fun. I certainly don't plan to assemble the furniture for my next apartment myself.

But is that because you'll pay someone to assemble similar furniture, or because you'll buy better furniture that isn't just IKEA flat-packs?

I came to the same conclusion as morgante, next time I'd rather pay for assembly instead of doing it for myself for a whole weekend.

It reads like you plan to get entirely new furniture when you move. What’s wrong with the furniture you already own?

I don't currently own any furniture. For the past few years, I've been moving every month or two and never acquired any furniture.

Ah, ok. That makes more sense!

Reminds me of a funny story. I'd give up smoking and was on day 3. It took me several hours and I had a desk but almost looked inside out by the time I'd finished.

Otherwise, it's quite relaxing. I find it enjoyable. The times I see people struggle is when they eschew the instructions.

Yes, but they're sometimes also heavy, or would benefit from more than one person working on it at a time.

I wouldn't go so far as to say enjoy.

Unless you get one of the few pieces that are all steel (eg their kitchen wall shelves are quite good) or the even rarer solid timber pieces, its not really that great, it's just cheap (by western standards)

However I also find it weird that there are people who can't put together IKEA furniture. Then again, in Thailand everything that needs assembly will get you a "would you like that assembled (for free)?", usually in-store. This goes for furniture, gardening equipment, you name it.

Whoof, can't stand it, myself. I don't know what it is about the activity, but it just bores/frustrates me silly.

It's not hard! It's perfectly within the realm of accomplishment! I have already built my IKEA desk, bed, table, and bookshelves. I just really disliked every minute of it.

> I just really disliked every minute of it.

Reminds me of a marathon I ran. Did it give me a feeling of accomplishment afterwards? No, just really, really disliked the whole experience. Every min.

I seem to remember a survey that showed people who assembled their own Ikea furniture valued it higher than people who didn't.

That is strange. Even as a Swede I would probably value a Billy more if it came pre assambled, so I was not made actively aware of low quality materials and holes drilled in not-quite-the-right places.

Maybe a cultural thing. I always got the impression IKEA is more respected in other countries, while in Sweden it is seen as cheap furniture owned by everyone.

I think it's certainly seen as cheap elsewhere, but usually of better quality than comparably cheap furniture.

I think that's true. But, in addition, in the US going to an Ikea is usually a bit of an expedition as there aren't that many stores. The stores themselves make things a bit of an event because they're different from the norm, have a fairly nice cafeteria, etc. Add it up and there's a certain aura to Ikea furniture that wouldn't exist if you picked up the exact same box at the local Walmart.

A standard of living thing, you Swedes are richer than almost everyone else.

At some point, McDonalds here (ass end of Eastern Europe) was a place where well-dressed grandparents took their well-dressed kids on Sunday lunches.

Right now Ikea is something people aspire to, as a mark of getting into the middle class. There's A LOT of cheaper, crapier local stuff, with bleached pine wood you can leave a visible dent on if you drop a plate on. (Funny thing is, many of the same furniture factories also work for Ikea.)

It is cheap, and it do not hold up well - but that is why it is cheap.

It's not all rubbish, I've got a solid wood kitchen table from them which is already quite a few years old and looks like it will last a long time.

Their solid wood and better-than-usual-finish furniture are not cheap though. So that goes out the window.

The phenomenon has actually been the subject of a couple of studies, it has been dubbed "The Ikea effect"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect

My parents, who do small-scale construction and decorating, get non-trivial numbers of enquiries about fixing people's poorly-assembled Ikea furniture.

The problem - is simply dimensions..

I had a ikea desk, which is simply not deep enough - when i sit on it, my hands palm are on the border of the desk. You can not work this way.

It's a meme that a couple who assembles Ikea furniture together is jeopardizing their relationship.

Haha, yea, that is strictly a one-person job.

It’s less fun when you need to do four identical chairs, or two dressers with six identical drawers.

Some don't have a helping hand and/or cannot follow the instructions (most of the time low quality) and/or don't have the patience and/or have a screw +/- left at the end and/or etc...

> most of the time low quality

Huh? Do they have instruction leaflets where you live? I live in Germany, about 80% of my furniture is Ikea, and I've always found the instructions to be very precise. I was never confused about what to do.

(I won't argue that some furniture needs an additional pair of hands to assemble just because of the weight, of course.)

The Do-it-yourself part is what protects Ikea from all complaints on this earth. Why would they punnish themselves.

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