Greetings! We are getting ready for the move into our permanent place and we bought a bunch of furniture new in Germany before we left and have been informed that the company won't pay for this furniture to be assembled (fair enough) and that if we want to pay separately for it, it will be 75/hour/man. Now, I am not sure how long and how many men it would require - 3 PAX wardrobes, 1 tv/living room cabinet thing and 1 sideboard.
Now, of course, we (or I should say, my husband) is more than capable of doing this himself, but as I would like to have the wardrobes to put things in before Christmas if possible, I think hiring a person or 2 to do this might be worth the pain in the wallet.
Anyone have experience with this here and an idea of this cost is acceptable? I have asked them if they can estimate how many men and hours would be needed for the job. I have searched the forum a bit but didn't see any ideas of the rates for this type of work...
I'm sorry, I have no advice about rates etc. But, have you tried to put the items together yourself? We recently bought a chest of drawers & my pregnant wife put it together by herself...
Buuut, I put my stuff together. Poor little female-me. With the exception of one of the closet units - I made my husband do his so it'd be organized how he likes I watched a lot of TV while doing it, but got all the things done in 2 days (working off and on between 10a and 4pm) - one chair, one dresser, one shelf, two closet units. I imagine someone working for-real would probably get all the things done in 6 hours or so.
We have done plenty of assemblies - but with 3 kids (2,5 &7) and the entire house being delivered in boxes, I am not sure how much (a) patience and (b) time I will have to try it myself...but never say never! I figure I will decide whether or not it will be another special family memory to talk about in 10 years about who was right all along once I get an idea how much damage it will do to the wallet.
As a young 20 something I would never have thought of paying someone to do it. But as a wiser end-of-30 something, my priorities have changed a bit and having a semi-pro put it together who won't have to first figure out which way is up with the IKEA directions is worth a lot
When IKEA first came to UK, they used to advertise on TV showing that all the work was down to us who brought, that was before being able to buy it on the internet. Even delivery was down to us. I brought a settee and armchair, they were good enough, as I had 2 trollies to get someone to roll one of the trollies out of the store for me (I rolled the other) to the external delivery company a short walk, then left me there for me to organise with the delivery company and pay, that I had no option but to do at that stage, not that is was a problem. So now they must have had so many people ask for them to put the stuff together they are offering the service, but the price does seem high to me, I guess it is to put people off asking. As you have asked for a quote of how long, if they answer then it is your choice whether to pay or not. I would say I have never heard of anyone who found they were short of the necessary screws or Alan keys from IKEA to do the job, I seem to recall in one instance, one friend said they had been given 2 sets of screws. If you/your husband are not up to it, do you not know someone who will either do it as a favour or that you can pay a lesser amount to? - good luck
It took my husband and I two weeks to put together a PAX wardrobe with the rolling glass doors.
Reasons:
The glass doors have 1 billion, fussy small parts. Seriously. We can't hammer after 8 pm. We usually get home around 7 pm. (And, Sundays are also a quiet day--shhh!) So, this resulted in the work getting really stretched out.
It took my husband and I about one hour to put together each of our three sections (including the doors and handles) of our Pax unit. Those units really are a two person job for the shell. The first one always takes the longest to put together yourself. For a two person professional team, it shouldn't take them that long to put together the units.
Recently purchased a load of furniture from Comforma. Similar to Ikea I guess. When it was all delivered, even the driver commented. "you have load of boxes!!!" 2 days later.......we have king size bed with mattresses, side tables, 2 large bookcases, office desk and leather chair. all i can say........thank god for electric screw drivers!!!! and erm.....beer, red bull and chocolate!!! needed the engineer sticking all this stuff together. now have ordered a pax wardrobe....so looking forward to deciphering those instructions.
Depends how big the items are as to whether it is easy to put together on your own. The bigger items need somebody to support otherwise the weight snaps the connectors etc. Its not difficult though and not worth paying 80 CHF plus an hour for.
Not exactly much a gentleman, are we... couldn't you have helped or heaven forefend done it for her? Or was the rugby on (in which case I might understand)?
To all the DIYers - the cheapskate in us is coming out and we are going to tackle the job ourselves! We have put loads of things together with 5 moves over the last 15 years or so, so we are quite well versed :-) I will just try to remember to not through in my opinion and let my husband pick the way things go together. He does, after all, read the directions...