Rusted Sky

Or, actually, the assembly of an IKEA chair...

How easy is IKEA furniture to assemble? Well, fairly easy. As related before, I picked up a couple of their Pello chairs the other night. Last night, before the little guy took his bath, I told him I was going to assemble one of the chairs. I opened the box up, he carried the cushion up, and I took the rest. Then he was off to get his bath - and by the time I'd gotten the framework together, about ten minutes, he was back in his safety gear. (That was the fastest bath he's taken in months. Literally.) Safety gear? His leather jacket, his boots. And he went to get the first aid kit. (grin)

IKEA instructions are pictographic, not written... at least, in the items I've bought so far that needed instructions. They're all very clear, step by step, and so well done that a 2nd grader was able to tell me what to do without any problems. (grin)

The only problem I had was in getting the fabric sleeve over the seat framework - it was pretty stiff and a pain to get on - but I got it into place, got the legs on, got the spacers in place, got everything tightened down (I let the little guy do a lot of the bolt tightening, doing the final torquing myself) and got the cushion on. Then he wanted to be the first one in it to try it out. (He was, after all, wearing safety gear if anything went wrong.)

After it'd been tested, he let Sue and I sit in it. And he made an interesting observation. Due to the design of the chair, it sinks a bit when you sit in it. He measured how much it went down for Sue, and how much for me... and then he thought about it, and asked "Daddy, are you heavier than Mommy?" I told him I thought so - and he said that the chair could be used as a scale since it sinks more when the person's heavy than when they're light.

Dang. Who knew assembling a chair could be so educational?

J.