BoKlok: no assembly required

Everyone loves IKEA furniture, and I’ve even been known to enjoy their Swedish meatballs on occasion. Well, now you can buy an entire IKEA house, if you live in the U.K. The new pre-fab dwellings, long available in Scandinavia, are called “BoKlok” or, roughly, “smart living.”

IKEA currently sells them in blocks of six units, each designed to feel like a complete house. If you’re worried about whether you will need to put them together yourself, don’t worry—there’s no assembly required, according to the BoKlok FAQ:

Will BoKlok homes be available to buy as flat packs from IKEA stores?
No. You will not be able to buy a flatpack house from IKEA. The BoKlok UK homes are not suitable for self-build. The homes will be built by specialist contractors and then offered for sale or rent. BoKlok UK will market the built homes in conjunction with IKEA stores local to each development.

The BoKlok is a far cry from the famous Sears mail-order houses of yore, which did require a handyman’s skill:

After selecting a house design from the Sears Modern Homes catalog, customers were asked to send in $1. By return mail, they received a bill of materials list and full blueprints. When the buyer placed the actual order for the home-building materials, the $1 was credited toward their purchase.

A few weeks after the order was placed, two boxcars containing 30,000 pieces of house would arrive at the nearest train depot. A 75-page, leather-bound instruction book told homeowners how to assemble those 30,000 pieces. The book offered this somber (and probably wise) warning: “Do not take anyone’s advice as to how this building should be assembled.”