Buidling Ikea Furniture is an Act of Faith II

Posted on by katiesinc

In case you were wondering, back in the day, and by day I mean Italy during the Renaissance, people would have incredibly intricate chests called cassone, or marriage chests. These things were very intricately carved and painted, and we studied a couple of them when I took Art History back in the day. We didn’t spend a ton of time on the decorative arts (we had ~50,000 years of art history to cover) but some famous dude painted a lid on a chest, and we talked about it. Cassone were ostensibly for brides to store stuff before the wedding, but were also major status symbols.

I’m not getting married anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean I can’t find a fancy place to put my clothes. Loyal readers may remember my triumphant construction of the Koppang dresser. It’s a perfectly serviceable, reasonably priced dresser, but was missing something. Perhaps, longing for the time when I too will have status symbol furniture (ie, anything that does not come from Ikea) I had spent an embarrassingly long time on Amazon, in search of decorative drawer knobs. I was not going to shell out Anthropologie money on drawer knobs (because seriously, who has $10 to blow on a single drawer knob??) but I was aiming for Anthropologie aesthetic with an Ikea price range. Also, it made me kind of sad that the drawer knobs on the Koppang are made of shitty plastic–you have to spring for the Hemnes line if you want actual metal-alloy knobs.

I had narrowed down the possible drawer knob selection to about half-dozen options, and then promptly forgot all about it, because school started and I had to learn about stuff like the prima facie case for battery and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, while my Koppang dresser simply sat there. It was fine, but could have been so much better.

I knew someone once, who, for a brief period of time, convinced herself that she had an online shopping addiction. I suspect that the root of most of my online forays lies in procrastination. I spend a lot of time looking at things, comparing prices, agonizing over buying something, deciding to buy something, and then realizing that it is sold out and unattainable forever.

What I like about the interwebs is that you can put stuff in your cart, think about it, and then decide if you want to buy it later. And at some point, I realized that my dream of being a person with aspirational drawer knobs was attainable: the only thing standing in my way was me. Plus, I had Amazon Student (thanks berkeley.edu email address!) so for the low, low price of $13.50, (ie, the price of 1.5 Anthropologie drawer knobs, or literally 2 beers in the Bay Area) I got me some nice drawer hardware.

Is it perfect? Does it match everything perfectly? Is it, perhaps, a little “busy”? Sure, but the best thing is that my Ikea dresser no longer looks like a plain old boring Ikea dresser. It looks like an Ikea dresser that belongs to someone who got bored one day and stuck some garish faux-vintage knobs on it, which is exactly the look I was going for.

I have friends who are much more handy than me—they go to thrift stores and buy furniture and then re-sand it and paint it and it looks brand new. I am not at that level. But if I have a vision that requires minimal time, skill, money, or effort, I will do my best to make sure that vision is fulfilled.

So, now that I am an old person, I spend my time internet shopping browsing for home goods, and cleaning supplies, not just cheap formal dresses and uncomfortable shoes. I found a kitchen utensil crock, because this sounds gross but the repurposed coffee can that we were using was literally rusting into the counter. And some nice lavender scented multi-surface cleaner. Reviews from Amazon convinced me to buy a Magic Eraser, which actually really works.

Is this the point where I suddenly become a clean person, who cooks things with actual vegetables in them? Eh, probably not. Because while I love living in a place that smells like lavender multi-surface cleaner, the truth of the matter is that cleaning things and replacing drawer knobs is an even better way to procrastinate than online shopping.