Helmer Time =)

Yes, finally! Pics from start to finish through the assembly. At $40.00 each, I consider these to be pretty reasonably affordable. They hold up to 500 bottles of polish, depending on what size of bottle you have, and although I am still procrastinating & haven't actually put any polish inside them yet, I am going to be taking the opportunity to sort my polish by color instead of by brand as it is currently.

So, as many pictures as I did end up with, I kind of feel like I should have chronicled the shopping trip also - it was my first time to Ikea, and man is that place HUGE! I didn't think we really needed to go through the showroom, but I ended up being glad I did, because while I knew the Helmers came in 3 colors - white, red & silver - the real-life colors were quite a bit different than I thought. I knew the latest version of the white is really more of eggshell cream from reading other blogs. For some reason, I had the red in my head as darker, like a cherry wood kind of color? No, the red Helmer is like a fire engine. It's bright. I ended up going with the silver, which really is just grey. Nice & neutral.

Now, on to the pics =) Here's a couple of the box:


See how methodically this thing is crammed into the smallest possible space?:


Now, while I've heard some horror stories about Ikea's instructions, I didn't have too much trouble - once I got over my initial astonishment that there are NO written instructions. Literally. The only word that appeared in the manual was the misleading "click" which I'll discuss when I get there. Still, the pictures proved to be self-explanatory enough that I did not have to call the store ... as the little cartoon character illustrated:


Count your pieces of course, lay them to the side - the only tool you'll need is a screwdriver.

The first step in installing the uh ... well excuse my technical terms here, but I'm going to call them the little ledges for the shelves. They're nothing fancy, you don't actually have a drawer slide - in fact, one of the display pieces at Ikea was put together pretty poorly & several of the drawers didn't pull out smoothly at all, but all of mine are fine. The ledges basically slide right into place with little tabs:


Once you've done all 6 on both side, you get to put the base on - and this is the one step that I thought the illustration was very misleading:


No way in hell would I say these pieces "click" together. You have to push HARD to complete this step, but once I realized how much force I actually needed to use, I still wouldn't call it difficult.

Slide on the back panel, then secure it by bending this little metal tab down like so:


The top basically just slips on, then you put the casters on the bottom. I'd say they're pretty decent quality, only downside is they don't swivel, but I don't plan on moving these around much so I don't care that the maneuverability is cut down a bit; This step uses 3 screws, one further securing the base to the sides, and 2 securing the caster to the base:


Now to the drawers - I will admit that I folded up 2 or 3 of the drawers inside out & had to flatten them & fold them the other way, so just pay close attention to all the little arrows & stuff in the diagram:


The handle attaches to the drawer-fronts with 2 screws, and then the front is secured to the body of the drawer with more bent tabs:


Same with the back:

Repeat 6 times, and you're done!


Now, I also read that since the drawers are metal, if they're not completely full the polish bottles tend to slide around in there - thankfully, I also read the solution, which was some gripping shelf liner:

I feel like I've treated this kind of like a review with all the details & pics LOL. Overall I am very happy with my Helmers, they were easy to put together & I can't wait to fill them up - and then of course take some pics to share =) Thanks for reading.

~Colette