Adventures in Assembling DIY Sweedish Furniture

So the fun part of shopping at Ikea is the actual shopping. The assembly is a little less fun... although we chose to make it fun :)

After we got back from the store and unloaded all of our stuff, it was at least 8:30. We ate dinner (on the couch boxes) and settled in for the evening to put the couch together. That was the first

 thing we needed to get done, because let's face it... I need a couch to watch my shows, and Gossip Girl was starting this week.

The Before shot of all our boxes...

Jon posing with the instruction booklet. The couch has a funny name, as do all the pieces at Ikea. It probably means "You must be an idiot to buy a couch that's going to take you 3 hours to

 assemble"

Almost done with the couch... me finishing up the storage compartment. The left side also has a pull out bed that wasn't put in in this picture.

Christy came over to assist us in putting together everything- she was on drawer duty. There were 10 drawers total between the dressers and TV stand.... and each drawer probably had at least 6 parts to them.

Finishing up the dressers...

Jon's tired of assembly. And for some reason, Babar the Elephant was the only thing on.

Christy learns the fun of power tools...

Overall, I love the way everything turned out. I promise an after picture post, as soon as we're finished unpacking and cleaning up. Which could be, sigh.... forever...

Adventures in buying DIY Sweedish Furniture

Jon and I spent pretty much all day at Ikea last weekend. For those not familiar with Ikea, it's a Sweedish furniture brand, mostly for small spaces, pretty simple stuff.... and you have to put it all together. Their furniture is really cool looking, some of it crummy quality, but some of it pretty decent. It's the shopping that's the fun part. The store is H-U-G-E. We're talking a two story warehouse style building. The day started off at Enterprise Rent-a-Car, where we picked up our cargo van. That's the thing about Ikea... they keep their prices down by encouraging you to bring your own rental vans, and do pretty much everything on your own. We arrived at Ikea at 11, apartment floor plan, tape measurer, and pen in hand. 

Our first priority was a couch. We wanted an L-shaped couch, preferebly with a sleeper sofa. They had a ton of couches... and we had to try them all out.

We settled on one that not only has a sleeper sofa, but it also has storage. Score. The rest of our six hour jaunt in Ikea included lunch at the cafe... $0.99 mac-n-cheese. 

As we made our way through the store, we got dressers, a desk, shelves, some fun knick knacks, and a TV stand. It was a good trip, and six hours later, we had our van loaded up with all of our stuff. The funny part about Ikea is that once you've walked the entire show room and made notes of all the stuff you want to buy, you have to go to the bottom floor and pull all the boxes of the stuff you chose. They're heavy, they're bulky, and the carts they give you to load them on are very difficult to drive. The knick-knack section (my favorite!) is down in the

 same area, and you can just take all that stuff off the shelves, stuff like candles and pillow cases. 

From the rest of the trip....

The something-skin fake rug... it stayed at Ikea. 

Me, in the beginning of our box pickup.

Our entire haul, minus the couch.  We had to get that a special pickup area.