Saturday, February 22, 2014

The Continuing Adventures of IKEA Expedit...


"All ways lead to rome. I agree, the expedit is shit. But that's for aesthetic reasons. The problem with your self-destroying setup wasn't the expedit quality - you did it wrong. The long boards are supposed to run horizontally, not vertically as your picture suggests. So your expedit did not stand on its supposed bottom, but on its side. I'm sorry anyway!"

I get at least a half-dozen of these kind of comments per week, all in response to this blog entry: http://thevinylanachronist.blogspot.com/2011/03/for-all-you-using-ikea-expedit-shelving.html. It's amusing to me that I still have to moderate--and delete--these comments since I've repeatedly explained the following:

1. That's not my IKEA Expedit. It's a common image you can find in Google Images. I made an explicit reference to this in the original blog and provided the proper credit. People seem to ignore this and comment on my poor IKEA-building skills anyway.

2. I know the right way to assemble the Expedit. I had two--a 1X5 and a 4X4. They still started coming apart after just a few years. Others have written me saying they had the same exact problem even when assembled correctly. (I do have another one, the 2X2 version, which I use for my record cleaning machine and accessories.)

3. I explain all of this in a follow-up blog entry here. Now I've had to go back and edit the previous two blogs so that readers will be able to see the entire story, and not just comment on the photo. It's not quite working.

That said, the original blog entry has taken on a life of its own. It is currently my most read entry in this blog--by far. Apparently it's being linked to by a variety of websites, blogs and discussion forums. Hundreds and hundreds of Expedit fans keep telling me that the Expedit in the pic was assembled incorrectly (albeit per the manufacturer's instructions). My favorite response came in an article in an audio e-zine--one I used to work for, by the way--where the publisher says I'm wrong to diss the Expedit. He then goes on to tell his readers to add brackets and screws and fasteners and more glue and it should work just fine.

In other words, I'm not wrong about the Expedit.

Needless to say, I have been ignoring all comments regarding the Expedit. They do not get approved and published on my blog. So don't bother to write a 2000 word essay on the subject (something that has occurred). Sorry if this sounds so abrupt...but please pay attention before making the effort to respond. Besides, the Expedit has been discontinued--maybe IKEA has decided to make its replacement more suitable for LPs. ALL MY ORIGINAL COMMENTS STAND.

[EDIT: The author of the comment at the top of this blog article wrote a lengthy and angry response after reading this--exactly what I asked people not to do. He also wants me to credit him for the quote, which is obviously why he signed all his correspondence as "Anonymous." So there, Mr. Anonymous, you've been credited. A few minutes later I received yet another comment from someone telling me the rack isn't assembled correctly for LPs.]

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