Professionals? Pah!
Last year, my girlfriend and I moved in to our first place together. I lived in the flat for a month on my own while she got her things together to make the big move to London.

On the day she arrived, she had an entire contingent of her family with her, including her Father.

This man absolutely terrifies me. He’s a great bloke, but he’s an attack dog handler for the MOD. In his day-to-day job, he carries a variety of nasty-looking weaponry. In short, I had better never hurt his daughter, or I’m in trouble. Anyway, years ago this chap joined the RAF as a carpenter, and still builds things he needs for the house, and very well he does it too.

Well, my girlfriend and I needed a couple of shelving units, so we did what any young couple does – we went to Ikea. After a couple of hours we returned triumphant to the flat, our flat-pack furniture ready to be quickly built.

The father-in-law and I decide to take it on ourselves to use this as a kind of ‘bonding’ moment, and start putting the shelves in together.

Things didn’t start well. There’s a kind of nutty-bolty thing (a technical term, look it up) which, when twisted, grabs hold of a screw that has been inserted in a corresponding hole (fnar!) and anchors two pieces of wood together. I had got ahead of myself and inserted the wrong screws in to the wrong holes, and after much swearing and use of pliers, we managed to remove them.

The shelves for the unit were affixed using allen keys, and this is where my story comes to a close. I was stood there, holding everything in place while he was using an electric screwdriver to screw the bolts in to place.

“SHIT.”

Not a good sign.

“SHITTING FUCKING BUGGERY.”

Ah. Houston, we have a problem.

*thump*

“What the… COCKING FUCKBASKETS!”

Silence.

Then:

“…Oh.”

It turns out that this man had attempted to screw in a bolt that needed an allen key bit with a cross-head bit.

A carpenter, indeed. Could still kill any one of us without even thinking about it, though…
( Devil_In_Tights the *real* DiT!, Tue 8 Apr 2008, 10:05, 3 replies)

I rather like
those clever little grabby-screwy bolty things in Ikea furniture - once you get the hang of the little bastards. We have a wall full of shelf units from there what I assembled all by myself while DG was at work - no aubergine required!

Yeah, and "pah!", oh, and *click* because your story is funny and a little bit rude :o)
( Tourette's ( . )( . ) has a monkey hair in her fried egg, Tue 8 Apr 2008, 10:55, closed)

I have attachments for my electric drill that fit those ikea screws
I can assemble a desk in less than a minute

unless I screw them in too much and it splits the wood
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 8 Apr 2008, 11:24, closed)

If you ever develop suicidal tendencies
Just refer to his hairy land shark attack beast as a "brain on a chain".

For some reason it tends to annoy dog-handlers...
(osok Rebel without a clue, Tue 8 Apr 2008, 13:00, closed)