IKEA has fascinated me since I first heard about it in high school. I’m not sure if it was because IKEA is from Sweden, and I had just read Sophie’s World, or all the DIY shows I consumed growing up, but Maven Mom and I were psyched when they opened one in Atlanta. However, having all the furniture that I needed, there was never any reason to have a true IKEA experience.

Then I moved, and Maven Mom claimed my living room furniture for a sunroom that she intends to build one day. (It is really cute furniture. Plus she helped upholster it. Actually, she upholstered and sewed pillows. I assisted.)

One year later, my friend R and I decide to get an apartment. However this apartment is 1200 square feet with 3 bedrooms. She has a futon and a bed. I have stuff for my room and a set of shelves. A trip to IKEA was in order.

Since we intended to move on July 14, we headed down to the giant IKEA in Woodbridge last Saturday. R picked out a sofa that she planned to buy, and I found some chairs that complemented it. Then we found curtains and pillows and picked out coordinating shelves.

We headed to the Marketplace excited about our purchases. We decided not to buy anything and wait until we moved since we would have a U-Haul, making it easy to transport a bunch of stuff.

Then we stumbled into the “As Is” room. Sitting before us in the center was the sectional version of the sofa that R planned to buy. It was marked down from $1299 to $600, making it only $150 more than it’s smaller version. It had been a floor model and nothing was wrong with it. The deal was just too good to pass up. Plus, we have 1200 square feet to fill up with furniture.

There was only the small problem of getting it home. R has a little Toyota, and my car is still in Tennessee.

Budget has a booth in IKEA, where you can rent a cargo van for under $100 a day. We decided that this was an exceptional deal, and it was worth renting it. We walked over to the desk.

Budget closes at 5 p.m. on Saturday. It’s now 6 p.m.

Next to the budget desk is the IKEA delivery stand. They’ll deliver anywhere in the region for $70. We decide this is an even better option. Then we find out that IKEA doesn’t deliver “AS IS” furniture since it’s not packaged.

The delivery stand person informs us that there’s a U-Haul down the street.

We run over to U-Haul, where we talked a guy into letting us rent a 14′ truck that was reserved for the next day on the condition that it’s back before 11 a.m.

My credit card had nothing on it, so I rented the U-Haul. This means, I get to drive it.

Have I mentioned that I’ve only driven in DC twice before and never on the Beltway?

Thankfully, it was a Saturday and traffic wasn’t too bad, but it’s hard to drive a 14′ panel truck through the mixing bowl when you can’t see anything behind you and the breaks are nonexistent.

PSA message to DC drivers: When you see a twenty something woman with pink sunglasses driving a gigantic U-Haul, chances are she’s not that experienced at driving it. Don’t tailgate and let her get over when she signals. It’s a smart move for the longevity of your vehicle.

Yesterday, we returned to IKEA for a few more things. They were having a huge sale, so we picked up some more odds and ends. However, the “As Is” karma wasn’t good, so we didn’t find any bargains. We can’t make a weekly habit of this since I’ve spent far too much money in the store already. However, I’ve learned a lot about assembling IKEA furniture:

1) Instructions only have odd bubble-like figures and no words.

2) I think they design the packaging first and then the furniture. How else do you explain a triangular shaped box?

3) IKEA is Sweden’s way of proving that Scandinavians are smarter than Americans.

4) Assembling a piece of IKEA furniture should be a test to get into MENSA.

Last night, I tried putting the pleated material on a lamp shade. Earlier I succeeded at putting a dresser together, so a lamp should have been easy. Why couldn’t they have made the box slightly bigger and put the lampshade together already? I stared at it for 30 minutes feeling like a complete idiot for not hooking the pleats on the correct wire. Apparently, lessons in assembling IKEA furniture only come with Ph.D. programs.

Note on the title: Once our place is set up, I’m really tempted to take a picture and photoshop the IKEA catalog on it a la Fight Club.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 2nd, 2007 at 5:12 pm and is filed under DC adventures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.