Susan Hawthorne #164 Ikea has nothing on us

                                            for Vicky (in photo 2)

a bundle of shelves assorted brown beige

and green some bent and bashed

it's a job lot at a special price powder

coated signal red there are L-shelves

and T-shelves we unpack then sort

and build a prototype it takes hours

we don't seem to have enough parts

make piles of all the different elements

and take ourselves to the local library

on a research trip     back to the pile

of shelves now all is clear    we need brackets

so the shelves will not have to float

more research     phone calls and emails

to shelf manufacturers who send us

a sample in beige but that's okay

it works    an order is made for left

and right hand brackets fingers crossed

it works for all of them    six weeks later

 

two heavy boxes of brackets arrive

the signal red almost right    I'm not worried

once the books go in you won't notice

we begin again    a T-shelf which will have

books both sides    first the cross bar

whoops forgot the feet but we work out

that tipping will allow us to add them

without dismantling the lot    it takes us

two hours and it looks great

the next bookshelf takes just an hour

and the one after that twenty minutes

then we discover we have to exchange

some of the shelves but even with

building unbuilding and rebuilding

we finish fast   examine our achievement

people complain about Ikea but this

had more hurdles than not understanding

the instructions    we had to write our own