First-Ever Post-Wedding Pre-Winter Project

At last, one IKEA table has made it out of the box!

Yesterday we worked together to make the dining table I've dreamed of for so long. Our place is very small and packed with his old stuff already so we had to find furniture that could be set aside after use. Enter frame well-known Scandanavian furniture store, purveyor of Nordic-cool dreams!

We went to the cavernous outlet just outside Paris two weeks ago. H's friend, Olivier M, told us IKEA may be the ultimate test of a marriage. If you get out without going into a fight then you're a lucky couple indeed, and if you do fight and patch up after you get out then you have a good thing going. I bet if you look up reasons for divorce, you'd see IKEA up there with cheating and hogging the remote.

Amazing

Well, I'm not going to lie to you. We bickered through the whole maze. It's amazing how individual tastes and the idea of seeing furniture that "just isn't you" in your house forever could really start some friction, and how simple suggestions about where the TV could go could escalate into frustration, tears and physical exhaustion. If they have a kid's play area, they should offer couple's counseling too. And because of all that time we spent in the upper floors psychoanalyzing each other, we had to run through the lower floors that had all the cute knicknacks so we could get to the counter before the store closed. If you like pretty stuff and you've been to IKEA, you would know how much that hurts. All I got was an apron and a wok.

But we survived the IKEA test, and it made us stronger.

And now, the second test. Assembly.

The smart, retro-chic of the store's philosophy extends to their manual, on the left. Being a global brand, they've done away with words and returned to man's first language: the pictograph. Never since Babel has man spoken so universally. Even aliens will have no problem assembling our table. Notice also the second and third panels. H had fun explaining this to me.

1 person: NO!
2 persons: Yeees (with a nodding grin)

On the floor: NO!
On the carpet: Ouiiii (with a nodding grin)

Screwed

As anyone who's ever assembled any D-I-Y project would attest, it is best to start by making an inventory and, like the old Batibot song goes, "pagsama-samahin ang pare-pareho" or "put that shit next to that shit because they look alike."

This was easy.

Then we followed the pictures.

That was fun.

But then on step 3, I put in one metal peg the wrong way, and I mean no screwdriver or jedi mind trick could ever have gotten it back. I knew H would have fun with this (and he was about to!) so I immediately pulled the peg out with the Totoro magnet from the fridge... THAT he didn't expect.

And then H had an asthma situation.

It didn't last long. We were both sick anyway, so I made him sit down and I did the hammering on the drawers.

That was really really fun.

I imagined every dickwad who ever screwed me over.

And tah-daaah! Drawers!

That look like coffins.

H finished off the table top and had a shower because we were hungry and we wanted to eat a bit of something before going to a friend's house at the 15th Arrondisement (very near the Seine and the Eiffel Tower, you could see their neighbor's windows sparkle every start of the hour).

And we were REALLY hungry. We had some bread for breakfast and then rid the closet of his old stuff (some for charity, the rest for recycling), threw out the junk that had been collecting next to the door for a decade, and assembled the table without having lunch.

Now, pre-IKEA we would have hemmed and hawed for hours about what to eat. Post-IKEA, we threw ideas around but immediately decided on chicken nuggets at the McDonald's across the street.

Did IKEA save this young couple?

We still argue a lot, sometimes I'm surprised because he seems to freak out about the most simple things and I'm the one with the tissue hanging off her nose wondering where it all went south. It all boils down to communication and understanding. As a mixed couple, we have to navigate cultural differences on top of gender and personality differences.

When the building custodian saw my husband carrying the IKEA boxes up he said: "Just got married, huh?" Like it was THE THING newlyweds just do. In a way, it is. You come from two different worlds and then you merge, and you want it to be the world you want to live in because what you see outside just makes no sense. That's all there is to it: You want to create a world with your partner that makes sense. But then you realize your husband wants different things, he has different ideas, and then you are afraid of abandoning who you were, the aesthetic that defined you, your process of doing things. It's the scariest thing in the world, losing yourself.

We saw this on the way to the 15th Arr. that night. Ironically, I saw a similar poster on a truck while we were at McDo (a fridge in the forest)... Apparently, Parisians like putting their unwanted furniture, appliances and now bathroom fixtures out on the street for anyone who's interested.

Anyway, when he saw it he said I could use the toilet in the street if I wanted to. I said I didn't feel like going yet, but I said it so innocently that he didn't catch the sarcasm... and he had to ask, if I was really serious, like really really serious that I would pee in the toilet if I felt like it.

We have a long way to go, baby.