IKEA Vrijdag: Vilmar Stoel/Chair

When we moved into an empty house, one of the first items that we bought were kitchen-related. While we may have been watching shows off a laptop on the floor, at least we could still eat like civilized individuals... or at least as civilized as you can manage with a small child. And so, the kitchen table and chairs were the very first IKEA purchase.

Our chairs were put together first. At the time I decided that in case the table turned into a bigger project than I anticipated, it would be better to eat off a paper plate in a chair than on the floor. Ergo, do the chairs first. We purchased four Vilmar chairs in white with black stripes and chrome legs. The seats are made of birch plywood, "laminate," and acrylic lacquer, and the legs are made of a chrome steel.

The chairs seemed like they would go together easily. It was "just" a matter of attaching the legs to each other and then to the chair, and attaching these stupid little plastic bumper things that are meant to make it easier to stack the chairs on top of one another. The legs and the plastic bumpers never felt like they were tightening all the way in - and lead me to my first encounter with the "wobble" problem. As it turned out, over time and lots of sitting, the wobble problems seem to have diminished, but you can still detect a wobble.

The underside of the Vilmar chair - Zappa is suspicious of the chair lying down on the job.

The chairs are easy to clean. So far we've had to problem just wiping with a damp cloth, which is good considering the ability Little Man and I share for dropping every manner of things on everything. We've also had no issues with cleaning the legs since they're chrome.

We give the Vilmar stoel/chair 3 Swedish meatballs on our 5 meatball scale. My annoyance by the wobble and the difficulty that we had getting the bottoms to tighten.

Life in Dutch rating for Vilmar stoel/chair: