The real lesson here is how unbelievably inept the hacker news audience seems to be with any practical task.
The idea someone would spend hours assembling any piece of Ikea furniture is absurd.
Anything on this list can be build in minutes.
I did so even as an inexperienced teenager myself with no help.
If it takes you 10 hours to assemble a wardrobe you should have a disability badge.
Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index
51–60 of 94 posts
Re: Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
The time it takes to assemble Ikea furniture is very dependent on your experience with it, and if you're using an assembly driver or not.
> and if you're using an assembly driver or not Not a good idea on modern Ikea furniture that's basically engineered wood and cardboard. Way too easy to strip out the threads.
I feel like this shouldn’t be down-voted. I insist on grabbing The Gun for anything more than a few screws, but have definitely overtightened or cracked boards when I don’t keep the torque low.
Always remember the rule: a half-turn before breaking is how tight you want it to be
Re: Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index
#53IKEA was cool years ago. Unfortunately the quality reduced enormously and the price raised over it. Yesterday I saw an ad for a table and chairs for the balcony: 70€ (80$ after tax). I bought this model years ago and paid 15€ (17.60$ after tax) for the whole set.
Re: Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index
#54I believe this table needs a column for the disassembly process as well. I bought and assembled a TUFFING Bunk Bed years ago, and even though the complexity of assembly is reported as 4644 on this web site (which is also suspiciously low), as far as I can tell the only way to disassemble it is to use an angle grinder.
I had to disassemble some furniture as well recently. It had one and a half million screws and whatnots and since it was going to recycling center anyways I figured out sledgehammer was as good tool as any. Turns out it was better than _any_, ultrafast (take that claude!) and a ton of fun.
I’ve used a reciprocating saw on a couch before.
Re: Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index
#55(in my experience) if this table included other flat-pack vendors the difference would be stark. Wayfair and the like are far more complex to assemble.
Re: Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index
#56What's the assembly time based on? IKEA in general is piss easy to assemble except for leveling stuff where you'd need a laser and often times another person. Some of provided tools (the famous L 6mm hex key made of cheese) and hardware (nails) tend to be very poor... and sometimes it'd need a visit to buy extra hardware - e.g. low-profile head, non-counter sunk screws to attach to the wall. Repairing furniture or ad…
> piss easy to assemble Sure, it’s not hard, but if there are a lot of steps it’s still going to take longer. A fully specced up pax double wardrobe with drawers, sliding doors, and lighting is made up of hundreds of parts, so does take a good amount of time to put together even though it’s not difficult per se. It’s also made up of many different SKUs so you get dozens of boxes turn up and it takes a little while to…
> it’s still going to take longer.
I never said otherwise, and the rest of my post tells it could be time consuming. The criticism is to the random time quote based off solely on parts count.
Re: Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index
#57Good idea. Wish I had this before I made a few purchases!
Re: Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index
#58What's the assembly time based on? IKEA in general is piss easy to assemble except for leveling stuff where you'd need a laser and often times another person. Some of provided tools (the famous L 6mm hex key made of cheese) and hardware (nails) tend to be very poor... and sometimes it'd need a visit to buy extra hardware - e.g. low-profile head, non-counter sunk screws to attach to the wall. Repairing furniture or ad…
> piss easy to assemble Sure, it’s not hard, but if there are a lot of steps it’s still going to take longer. A fully specced up pax double wardrobe with drawers, sliding doors, and lighting is made up of hundreds of parts, so does take a good amount of time to put together even though it’s not difficult per se. It’s also made up of many different SKUs so you get dozens of boxes turn up and it takes a little while to…
The Pax with sliding doors took me a really long time to put together. Long enough that when my brother in law (who doesn’t like assembling stuff) asked if I recommend them, it was a solid No.
Re: Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index
#59Cool! I had codex have a go at calculating "effective price" on a few items, that prices in the assembly labor, and then also calculates the delta between price and effective price. Obviously very depended on how you value your time, but here are some items at $30/hour: BRIMNES storage bed + headboard, Queen $549 + 320 min labor = $709 (delta: +$160 / +29%) HEMNES 8-drawer dresser $380 + 236 min labor = $498 (delta:…
If an ALEX drawer unit takes them over an hour and a half to build, IMHO they're doing something wrong. Many others on that list seem suspiciously high (the BRIMNES comes to mind). Curious how it came up with those values.
Re: Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index
#60I once bought a paper basket that was made out of two pieces and I managed to assemble it the wrong way. I guess I should multiply those estimates by pi.
(OP) thanks for this insight, truly - I took another look and ikea.com reviews actually include a whole dedicated "ease of assembly" value! some very easy-looking products do actually rate quite badly on the assembly
adding that column now, should be live in the next 10-20 mins cheers!