Quick-and-Dirty unboxing & assembly of Ikea Furniture

New sofa from Ikea — the “Ektorp” love seat with chaise lounge option, Nordvalla gray cover.

No need for words — they are useless when it comes to Ikea furniture. Instead, enjoy this pictorial essay! (Some comments at the end, actually…)

Two gigantic boxes were delivered to our apartment — and one smaller box that held the cover for the Ektorp sofa.

The foundation of the sofa as seen immediately after opening box.

The cushions: chaise lounge against wall (left); seat and back cushions (right).

Hard to believe a solid piece of furniture will result from these scattered parts!

And we’re hard at work here! Well, he is… I’m taking photos…

The hardest part was getting the chaise part in its cover.

One long “tongue” cushion for the bottom of the L-shape, and two rectangular cushions for the rest of the sofa.

Trying out various props: pillow and stuffed lamb from Target, batchel from The Cambridge Satchel Company.

The cover itself

And there you have it! The fabric cover is somewhat wrinkled — the instruction booklet recommended ironing it first but there was no way we were doing that. We’d need to purchase an iron, for one thing. Also, the booklet states that the cushions, which were slightly compressed in the boxes, will fluff out over time.

We chose the canvas gray because it seems sturdy and like it would disguise stains/marks the most, although the employee who processed our order said she had a white cover and it does well with an application of Scotch Guard. The covers are machine washable, at any rate, and we can always buy another cover in future if we get sick of the gray.

It is a bit nicer in person than in the photos.

Assembly Time

Assembly took two hours (approximate). I actually wanted to start a timer but my partner felt this put pressure on him so we abandoned that idea.

Ordering & Delivery

Great experience with ordering and delivery: we ordered on a Friday morning in Ikea Emeryville and received delivery the very next day before 9:00 AM, even though our delivery window was scheduled for 10 am–2pm! We were given a warning call prior to arrival, which was appreciated as I was still in my pajamas.

Given that we spontaneously decided to visit Ikea on Friday, this whole process went swimmingly and we couldn’t be happier with our new sofa. I won’t even mention the old one as it was so horribly run-down and frankly an embarrassment.

Talk about instant gratification.

~ Fin ~