the other man in the house Tweet

Ikea rack, Ikea hack, originally uploaded by gorgeoux.

Rationell Variera or so is the name of an Ikea series of more or less related objects that, like other products, can be found at the shop you visit, or not. To make it even more confusing, as their business model seems to request, this item doesn't even appear on their website anymore. Or yet? Hell if I know. What matters is that we finally found it. We've been hunting it for over a year. And when I eventually laid my eyes on it, and the DIY Manager showed me two packs in his hands, my eyes popped out and my voice warped into its Smeagol twin: MORE, I WANT MORE.

He carefully picked two more packs, then looked at me: More? MORE, MORE. He picked two more, and checked with me again (that's one sweet manager, no? like you daydream your manager would be): Is it too much? MORE, DAMMIT! No, I didn't say dammit. I didn't say more either. I was speechless and right now I'm very happy I didn't see myself in any mirror at that point, or it could've cracked, but not before giving me the nightmares. He picked two more and walked away, not even looking in my direction anymore, which is probably why our house has not yet been seized by the AVAILABLE TOTALITY of these.

Only at home I revealed my evil plan: Sweeeety, wouldn't they stack nicely as a bedstand in the bedroom? Sweety tried not to hear me for a while and then mumbled something to the effect of Nonsense. Many hours later, though, he called me to the bedroom to see the wonder: four of these wrongly called shelf inserts were stacking up just perfectly in the only space available for a bedstand in our royal bedroom. Some meager area that was very hard to fill for use in the first place. Now you see why my eyes popped out: I had spotted PURE GOLD.

Because I was the one to fill that area first time, thus the first to consider it, measure it, find ideas, find products, order them, receive them, install them and fill them. By that point, I knew the damn little corner by heart. I needn't recall it's 16 cm deep, I KNOW it inside out, as well as plenty of things that wouldn't go inside it. The DIY Manager, unfortunately, was too tired that evening to continue the assembling operation (or too stunned with my expertise? could be), and I know that what doesn't get done quickly, with us, hardly ever does.

SO. I grabbed them yesterday, found the extra screws, and screwed them together over a cigarette. It could've taken half a cigarette but, DAMMIT, Ikea understands cheap as imperfect, and one thing I wasn't going to do was file the holes so that screws worked. I instead moved the units around for a while, like in a puzzle, and there was a winning combination. Hallelujah! Feeling invigorated, challenged, and excited like a Lego player, I looked around for my next target—they can only abound after Ikea trips. And there it was, the toilet seat. The wooden toilet seat we bought last year and then lost when our landlord's monkeys destroyed our bathroom.

So we bought it again, kind as we are, and I couldn't wait to resume my royal activities on a throne that doesn't slide, isn't cold, and doesn't hurt my skin. Little did I realise, however, that Ikea's imperfections could take a simple task like this and not double it, like before, but make it, perhaps, five times longer. Make it call for pliers. Hard, heavy pliers. Make me take my heels off. Make me bend over the loo more than once. Make me get hot. Make me wish I wasn't the other man in the house, set to surprise the first man in the house.

But when I could finally attest the quality and endurance of my work, I forgot all that frustration and turned unstoppable. So there followed many more active activities, from washing several piles of dishes to baking that pie, from making our silly printer spit full colour again to pickling the boring veggies in the fridge, from rearranging a drawer to filling a whole new drawer, from getting dinner ready to sorting out the new loose leaf teas that arrived last week, from finding a good place for the other shelf inserts to calls to entertaining counterparts like the landlord and the cleaning company. I did, however, stay away from everything Ikea. And, unfortunately, Zoey. Which explains why there are 16 posts: I had too little work for my brain, too much for my hands.