Oh, IKEA - how I love and hate thee in the same breath!

Two of my Christmas presents were things from IKEA that I specifically picked out - a new glass shelf for the bathroom, and a step stool for the kitchen.  I don't have any photos of the step stool assembly process - it went quite quickly and well - but I was terribly amused by the "not intended for" pictures with the assembly instructions.  They didn't include anything written, just a series of pictures with Xs through them.  One of them showed a man on the step stool jumping out a window,

and my initial interpretation of that was

Not intended for use in committing suicide!

I eventually realized they probably just meant don't use it in front of a window in case you fall, but it still makes me laugh!

The glass shelf assembly took forever, though!  Like the step stool, the instructions were pictures instead of written steps.  The only thing written - although it was written in about a kajillion langauges - was a statement that hardware was not included and you should select whatever would work best with your wall material.

So I picked up some anchors and screws, looked over the pictures, and got to work.  The concept was simple enough - screw two brackets into the wall, hook the decorative braces to the brackets, and install the shelf.  The only problem?  The little ridge on the bracket actually had to fit into a slot inside the brace and still clear the bottom edge of the bracket, at which point there was this microscopic screw to secure the whole thing by passing through an opening in the bottom.  And somehow - although I have installed numerous bathroom fixtures using this same concept, it just wasn't working!

It felt like it took forever - and that was after measuring the spacing between the braces so the shelf would be level.  That final little screw on the bottom was so close to the wall that I had to do little quarter turns of the screw driver then reposition my fingers, and the screw fell out twice when I did this, leaving me to crawl around the bathroom floor searching for it.

But at last!

And now that it is up, I absolutely love it!