It’s not going to fit,” she shouted as the sweat streamed down my face.

“It has to, darling. Just one more inch.”

“I told you it wasn’t going to fit.”

“It is going to fit, sweetness. I’ve just got to...”

“It isn’t.” “It... is!” I gave one last, desperate shove and we both heard a cracking sound. Then a slight splintering sound, like a dam in a 1970s disaster movie. Then I started crying.

We were in a loading bay outside Ikea Wembley in northwest London, or, as I call it, hell. And I had just shoved an Ikea flat-pack cupboard through the windscreen of my poor little Vauxhall Corsa.

“I told you it wouldn’t fit.” Next weekend, Ikea celebrates its 21st birthday. Yes, this time 21 years ago, little blue-eyed baby Ikea was born to Britain. Like most babies, it was quite cute: Scandinavian style but not at Scandinavian prices, practical furniture with impractical names. And didn’t it change the interior landscape of Britain? BI (Before Ikea), we all had frilly lampshades, orange things and deeply offensive sofas. Now we inhabit forests of birch- and beech-based storage solutions. We read by tea light. We drink tea from stylish yet affordable mugs.

But there has always been one big catch: you have to build the furniture yourself. It’s not just Ikea’s 21st birthday. It is flat-pack furniture’s 21st birthday and, as such, I will not be popping any party poppers.

Allow me to get to the heart of the matter: I hate Ikea.

And when I say hate, I mean proper, cackling, lock-me-up-before-I-do-something-irrational loathing. Along with parking tickets, BT broadband and fat people who go large at McDonald’s, then ask for Diet Coke like it’s some sort of cholesterol-offsetting potion, Ikea has the ability to make me cry full man-tears of sheer exasperation.

Several hours or days or lifetimes before I shoved the cupboard through the windscreen, still in the fleeting grip of matrimonial harmony (fleeting because no couple stays friends for long in Ikea), we had decided the 200cm Pax storage system was for us.

With its space-saving drawers, rolling rails and neutral birch skin tone, Pax had seemed like the perfect affordable solution to all our storage needs. Even the name was less mindlessly irritating than usual. It wasn’t, for example, called Flarke.

So we wrote down the aisle number and carried on snaking through the snaking showrooms, like you have to unless you know the short cuts – which you shouldn’t because that means you’ve been too much. Everything seemed to be going well. I had only seen three other couples divorcing, only two children in full-on, back-on-floor tantrums, only one man stringing himself up from a keenly priced lamp. I should have realised it was all too good to be true.

Through the Marketplace we went, buying a fluffy rug that we thought looked like it could have come from The Conran Shop, but would later realise didn’t. And that would moult for years to come, clogging up two successive vacuum cleaners and a dog. And that would upset me every time I looked at it, which was at least 15 times a day. And still is. Harriet wanted to get some picture frames. I wanted to get a letter tray. We met halfway, with some lurid picnic equipment and three 99p loo brushes (because they were 99p, not because we have a large house). Still, we were all right.

Then, the warehouse: the bit where all pretence that you’re actually buying proper, finished furniture evaporates. Among the mile-high piles of flat-pack fun, we found our Pax in L27 and loaded it onto our cart. We struggled to the checkout, queued like refugees – namely for ever – and then, inevitably, everything began to unravel: the queue for the 50p hot dog was too long.

“I’ve got biscuits in the car,” said Harriet, as if biscuits were a substitute. I CAN’T GO TO IKEA WITHOUT GETTING MY 50p HOT DOG.

It’s like going to the cup final and missing the goal. Except the cup final is fun. And nobody’s dressed in yellow. Unless you support Arsenal. But they’re never going to be in a cup final. We began to argue like I had always known we would.

She wanted to pay for some courier company to give us a delivery window between 3am and 11pm rather than try to squeeze the Pax into the Corsa. I didn’t. For once, I won. As you know, it was a hollow victory. I wheeled the car to the trolley, because Ikea doesn’t allow you to do it the other way round. Oh no, you have to fight your way into a bay next to the exit and struggle and bundle and throw smaller detritus such as rugs and candles in the back like it’s the last helicopter out of Saigon, because everyone’s waiting and shouting and crying. Then it’s an inch off fitting. One more shove. Splinter.

So we took the Pax to the delivery area, unspoken I-told-you-sos hanging deafeningly in the air, and arranged for it to arrive the following Tuesday. We got a new windscreen. Tuesday came and went. So did the delivery guy, apparently, though I’d waited by the front door all day except for seven minutes when I answered the call of nature more quickly than was medically advisable and risked dying, like Elvis, on the loo.

It arrived the following Thursday. It was beech. We wanted birch. Or vice versa. I’m not good with trees. My fault, but not really. Another week without our space-saving storage system. Another courier. Another Pax.

And then it’s instruction time. I’m not going to go into it, it’s not constructive. Except to say that I got through the first eight steps intact. I Allen-keyed myself down to the bone, I counted the holes, I examined the diagrams, I hammered, I sized up, I gambled, I said little prayers to a god who has never listened before in my dark, desperate hours of Ikea-related need. (“Dear Lord, I have finished building my cabinet and yet I have one big screw left over. I have sinned. Forgive me, Lord, for I have been to Ikea.”) By the ninth step, I should have been in the clear. If I had been, I might have been celebrating this week. Hooray for Ikea. Hooray for my simple but effective storage system. But I wasn’t and I’m not.

After many hours of checks and rechecks, I established, I think, that I’d got something wrong at stage two. There was no option but to unravel and start again. And sign in blood that I would never, ever go to Ikea again. That Habitat it would be henceforth.

But isn’t Habitat expensive? And isn’t Ikea cheap? And it all looks the same in the end, don’t you think? A little bit of hassle and car damage en route is a small price to pay, n’est-ce pas? For a beech/birch storage solution that isn’t slightly crooked. Not if you look at it with a squint.

Times recommends

• Second homes: credit crunch casualty or money-spinner?
• How I built my own sliding house
• Top 10 incentives for house buyers