I Love (hate) Love Ikea...

I have a serious love/hate relationship with Ikea. I recently (finally) decided on their Leirvik bed frame for my bedroom, since I have up until last month had my bed sitting in the middle of the floor in an unfinished room. Well, that and my dad kept asking me why my room looked like a crack den every time he stopped by. (Just kidding.)

Now, I have been raised to be a do-it-yourself kind of person, which is a really good thing, because if you've never had the pleasure of assembling an Ikea product, these are their instructions:

Yep.

There are no words, only pictures. You get to figure out what everything is and how exactly it goes together.

So, I shoved everything over to the side of the room and put down a blanket (because God forbid I accidentally dent the new floor) and started putting it together.

(Yes, that is the oldest phone jack known to man on the wall--I'm not even sure it works anymore)

Now, I understand that the instructions with the little blob people are telling me to NOT do this by myself, but really, who actually pays attention to instructions? (Let's just say that it was a REALLY good thing that I put down that blanket!)

I got it to this stage when I discovered a slight problem...

This stupid piece wouldn't screw into the other. Seems that there's a small piece of metal crud clogging up the threads. Hooray.

It all worked out okay though, because Ikea has a bin of spare parts by their return desk, and while I couldn't find the exact piece I needed, I did find one that did the job, and was able to finish putting the bed frame together:
Now, if I could only sit on the edge and actually have my feet touch the floor, life would be perfect...(turns out it's a very high bed.)