Don’t pull a Chuck Norris on your Ikea shelves

So, we put up our second set of Besta shelves from Ikea tonight. I’ll give any of you out there a forewarning: don’t go all Chuck Norris on them. The backings of these shelves are nothing more than MDF or construction paper or something and tend to be flimsy. The back comes prefolded and you are supposed to unfold it, fit the sides into the grooves on the sides of the unit and slide the back in place. It’s all supposed to fit nicely inside the grooves. Right.

If you’ve ever put together any kind of prefab shelving you know it never works exactly as planned. For us, the backing was not wanting to slide all the way down and fit into the bottom groove. Me, being the innovative thinker and general all-around problem solver using what’s on hand, I realize that all this backing needs is a swift kick in the middle (where the prefold is not getting as straight as it needs to be) to get it into the grooves. See where I’m going? I slowly begin to tap the middle of the backing trying to force it into the grooves. The tapping turns somewhat violent as the backing doesn’t want to budge. Pretty soon I kicked so hard that it split the backing in two. I’m laughing as I write this. Are you? I guess you had to be there. Du tried to laugh in order to not scold me. All that came out was some rolling of his eyes. Oh, and the Chuck Norris comment. He did provide that.

So please, for the love of all that is pressed wood, be careful and gentle when you’re putting that stuff together.

And maybe we should all pray that I don’t get all Jackie Chan on the chandelier tomorrow when I switch the old lighting fixture out for the cute one. (A project I tried to complete today but a part was missing.)