If you must assemble any significant quantity of Ikea furniture, do yourself a favor and ignore the tiny and disposable circular wrench and allen key they include in the packaging. Spend a few more dollars to get yourself one or more of the Fixya 17 piece toolkits. It doesn't look like much but the tools are more than sufficient to assemble any furniture that Ikea sells. At the very least you won't tear your hands and wrists to pieces trying to use those tiny wrenches to assemble anything you plan on using every day. You'll also get the job done …

The past two weekends have been more or less non-stop running around so I haven't been writing about them lately. To make a long story short, Lyssa and I are fixing up the apartment a bit more and so are doing quite a bit of reorganizing. This weekend just passed we bought a new dresser from Ikea which wound up being an all weekend job of assembly. Last night we had to run back out there (and made it from Virginia to Maryland in record time on the beltway let me tell you, though most of it was due to …

An outfit called Innovative Fabrications is specialising in furniture with hidden compartments for Joe and Jane Average, though their prices are a bit more than /J*e Average/ can probably afford at the drop of a hat. That's not why I'm not so sure about them, though... if you click around in their catalogue, you'll notice two things: One, the styles of furniture, or at least the ones pictured, are a bit too old fashioned to blend in well with the furniture that people these days are likely to buy. Someone with a bit of common sense and a bit …