Solo Furniture Building

On what planet did someone actually think it was a great idea to create a large-scale furniture store where the winning feature was that you got to construct the furniture yourself? More to the point, how come they were right and people actually flock to this to-remain-nameless store? (It’s big, blue, and yellow).

One of the things that sucks about expatting alone is that you have to do everything yourself unless you can rope some kind random person that you just met into doing stuff for you. I mean, sure, I’ve done cheap flatpacks before. That time when you’re a student and/or living on the bones of your bum so you economise and buy flatpacks of white MDF board shelving to build yourself a bookcase. A few screws and dowel later, bit of banging with the screwdriver and voila, 30 minutes later, there’s your bookcase.

I am no longer a student. I am a with-it, daring, adventurous 40-something expat. My life is supposed to be seen on social networks as glamorous, chic and sophisticated. Quaffing French wine and munching on snails. OK it’s true I do that from time to time. But never as an expat did I think I would be spending my Saturday morning building a couch.

Yes, a couch.

Up until now I have prided myself on travelling and living a minimalist existence. When I first went on my big world trip I shed an enormous amount of Stuff. I am by no means materialistic, but I realised just how much Stuff I had accumulated over the years when I moved out of my house. I got rid of a lot of it, although my daughter would not agree, seeing as there is still Stuff in the shed.

My first three years in France I owned clothes and a couple of soft toys. I rented already-furnished places. My last place, I acquired some coffee cups, a car, and decided to bring over from New Zealand some books and my treasured snow globes from different parts of the world. But I still owned not a jot. Except the cat. Then Covid hit and I acquired a yoga mat, a blender, a swiss ball, superfood powders, and a penchant for good French wine.

So when I needed to move recently for work over to the other side of France, I was blessed with just being able to fill up the car and leave. OK I may have done a couple of car trips (those superfood powders and cat toys take up a lot of space). However, I was faced with renting an unfurnished apartment in a tight rental and housing market. This required furnishing with everything in one hit on a limited budget.

Bring on ginormous blue and yellow furniture chain store. This store does not exist in New Zealand. People talk of it as if it is some holy grail of home decoration, the answer to all your prayers. Stylish, Swedish furniture, mainly in wood or wood/steel mix paying homage to a sort of steampunk sauna trend. Extremely reasonable prices. There is also every type of utensil and appliance so you can literally deck out your entire house solely at this one store. Right down to the persian rugs (hand made too) and bohemian cushions (I confess, these are a personal favourite and I have succumbed to buying many).

I had been warned. There is just one small catch. You have to buy everything separately and build it all yourself. Buy here and you’ll spend much time cursing and breaking your back while putting together furniture. Millions of screws in packages. Instructions that come only in pictures, which are so iconic they feature in instagram posts. It will then all break when you next move. I had built flatpacks before, I decided. I was ready, I decided. How hard can this be?

I guess I should have been alerted when I booked the furniture-building service for a bookshelf, TV stand, table, couch, bed, chest of drawers and wardrobe. Total estimated construction time 10.7 hours. That’s nearly 1.5 hours per item.

For some reason the couch couldn’t be delivered the same day as everything else, because I had added it later. By some quirk of French simplicity I would have needed to cancel the entire first order then re-order everything in order to add the couch. There was no way to simply add it ot the existing scheduled delivery. Plus there was a six week waiting time and by the time I’d saved for the couch I was already four weeks in.

Here’s the thing. This place also makes its name on modularity. Furniture items don’t necessarily come all in one package when you order. That would be too simple. No, you can’t just order “a bed” and expect all the right parts to turn up. You have to make sure that you have included in your order the frame plus the slats plus that thing that goes down the middle of the slats. Miss one of those and you are heading back to the store to find whatever bit you missed. Then you get the joy of putting the bed together, including each individual slat. I spent an entire day at the store carefully checking that I had ordered all the correct bits. Even the lamp came in three separate packages.

When I ordered the couch, I thought I was being clever. I had got the hang of this place. I checked the picture at the store. I looked on the internet site. I read reviews. All pointed to the fact that you needed to make sure the couch came with the material cover actually on the couch. Plus the cushion covers. Plus the cushions. The couch I wanted definitely came with the cover. However from what I could see online it turned out the store didn’t stock the cushions. Since when do couch cushions come separately to a couch?? I ordered the couch part from the store. Then I ordered the cushions from another store with, helpfully, a pick up location an hour away.

I drove the hour to pick up the three cushions. Three months later after missed deliveries, long phone calls to customer service, and cushions staring at me from their place on the floor, the couch finally arrived. In three large pieces. Like seriously, I had to build the couch. Of course, I opened up one package to discover three cushions inside. Bastards. I now had six cushions.

The fun part was discovering the bag of screws and allen keys. An enormous bag of various types of screws, wheels, and couch feet. Some of the screws even came in two parts. WTAF? What nobsmoking nitwimble thought up that trick? Just give me effing whole screws!

“I know, not only can we take up excruciatingly long hours of their life and make them build a couch, but let’s have some fun making them build screws too! It’ll be just like playing with lego!” I kid you not, I spent half an hour putting screws together. By the time I finished, my fingers ached and I wanted to stab someone.

“The trick is,” said the guy from the agency service who found me my apartment, and who I persuaded to come in and build my kitchen island for me, “you don’t use the tools they provide. You need to use a cordless drill” he continued breezily, fitting screws, his cordless drill whirring away. I do not have a cordless drill.

I figured three big pieces of couch, should be relatively straightforward. That was until I discovered the bag of screws and allen keys. All I can say is that I’m grateful I do yoga. Once I finally had the screws together, there were poses of varying degrees of difficulty as I tried to get the sodding things in in tight corners with the godforsaken tiny allen keys. Not for the first time did I curse myself for being cheap and buying a screwdriver set instead of a drill. I thought “Here, I am woman, hear me roar!” “Women can do anything!” “I can build a couch without any help!”

Yes, you can build a couch without help and without a cordless drill. It will take you approximately four hours, much swearing, significant mental rotation ability (which I sadly lack) to read the instruction manual pictures , bandaids from the inevitable screw-stabbing, and a heatpack for your sore back.

But I did it, I finally did it. I proudly text a work colleague who happens to be a maintenance guy, to show off my achievement. I made mention that I did not have a cordless drill. “Oh I have one of those, he said.”

It’s a nice couch. I managed to squeeze the six cushions on, plus another three bohemian ones. There’s just enough space to sit on it. The cat has taken to it too. It’s sufficiently blue enough to show up all her cat hair. I came home after a long day’s work, looking forward to stretching out on it with said heatpack only to discover the cat had indeed profited from it during the day. As well as leaving me a present of well-aimed cat barf neatly stacked on one of the cushions.

At least I have six. Don’t do it. Buy your couch from a place that sells them whole.