Assembling Ikea Flat Pack - The True Test of a Relationship

We've been spending a stack of time at the beach shack of late and between chilling out, we get a urge to do a little project.

Recently we went to Melbourne and in typical Alex style, I brought half of Ikea back in my suitcase! This time I managed to get back two flat packed trestle table legs. They are super light-weight (and therefore probably not the best quality) and they packed down into these two tiny boxes. Even better was that at $25 each, they are a good looking but budget option for a table in our new shack kitchen.

Since I've moved the old wood fire out of the kitchen, we made a bench seat (to have a look again, click here) but I've been keeping an eye out for a small and slender table to go in front of it. Something that will not take up too much space in what is a narrow room. I've searched Gumtree, the local markets and other second hand forums regularly but haven't found anything within budget or anything suitable. Roger had an idea that he would make a small table out of an old door (as the table top) but we couldn't agree on what to do for the legs...until we were strolling through Ikea and we spotted these.

So back to present time. It has been windy and overcast so we have watched DVD's and generally not done much at all. Getting a sudden urge to do something I suggest we put together the trestle table legs.

Now I don't claim to be an expert at assembling flat pack stuff but I have done a fair bit of it in my time so I guess one could say I wasn't worried about putting these ones together. I think that's what they call false confidence because I will tell you now, after screwing and then unscrewing the first hole FIVE TIMES before conceding defeat and handing it over to Roge (who had already finished his), I was truly hopeless.

I think the Ikea instructions were a premonition of what was going to happen. This was Roge putting together his table leg:

This was me:

Anyhoo, the table legs are together now and look pretty cool. Roge has found an old door and sanded it back ready to put on top of the new trestle legs. Keep an eye out for my next post because I'm going to do the big kitchen/dining room reveal at the beach shack, complete with the new table.