IKEA Should Pay Me for the Publicity

All three of my girls share a bedroom that is slightly less than 10’x10’. We have a three-bedroom house, but we decided to use the third bedroom for an office/playroom. It’s even smaller than the girls’ room.

Our biggest problem here is storage space. There isn’t much. At all.

Vicki and Ellie share a bunk bed, and Lexi’s loft bed is perpendicular to that. Underneath the loft bed are their dressers. The only other furniture in the room was a bookshelf, which had books on the bottom three shelves, my old college stereo above that, and then a lot of useless space above that, since the girls can’t reach that high.

A few years ago for Christmas the girls each got a magnet board, shelf, and flower light from Santa. In theory, the shelf was supposed to be a good place to put things they wanted easy access to while on their beds. In reality, it was a good place to put a few things while they dumped everything else on their beds. It got so bad that Lexi didn’t even have room to sleep.

We’ve been mulling this over for a while, and the conclusion was that they needed more storage space, but we hadn’t gotten farther than that.

Until the new IKEA catalog arrived in the mail.

We should know by now that it’s a bad idea for us to even open the thing.

On Monday evening we took a family trip to YoCream for dessert. YoCream happens to be conveniently located right near IKEA. After indulging in the goodness of frozen yogurt mixed with delicacies like Nerds and gummy bears, we somehow found ourselves surrounded by inexpensive furnishings, trying to make sense of Swedish labels.

And we came home with one Expedit bookcase, six Lekman storage bins, three Trofast units, and 18 storage boxes containers to go in the Trofast units. And a garlic press, which was all we really needed when we walked into the store.

So the girls and I have spent the last three days cleaning messes (hoo boy, were there messes to clean!), building furniture, and totally re-designing the look of their bedroom.

Here are some before shots:

Chris moved it before I could get my "before" shot, but the bookcase (also from IKEA, by the way) used to be in the corner where the stereo is now.  The ladder leads to Lexi's bed.

Vicki's bed.  Yes, that is a cracked mirror on her shelf.  She calls it the Mirror of Erised.  Next to it is a Golden Snitch and at least one magic wand.

Lexi's bed.   She wanted her shelf up high, which provides even less storage space.  Also, I realize now I should have taken these pictures pre-deep clean.  You have no idea what this used to look like.  It was a hoarder's dream come true.

Ellie's bed.  Because she's on the bottom bunk, she really only has the one wall there.  Her shelf usually has a lot more than a water bottle on it.  And I have no idea why she's lying facedown, but I like it.

And...drum roll...the afters:

Yay for more storage space!  We have one of these in our living room and we love it.  And I'm sure those empty spaces will be filled soon.

Really all we did here was move the magnet board so we could put the case above her head.  But I think this shot provides an even better view of the shrine to Harry Potter she has going on there.

For Lexi's, I had to move everything.  The magnet board had to move down a little so the shelf could fit over it, and the light had to move to make room for the case.  I like it.

Again, I had to move everything.  Ellie wins the coolness prize, though, because her lamp is now above the bed, instead of on the wall.  The other two think it's no fair, but they have more wall space than her.

So, there we go.  Three days' worth of hard work.  I like playing with power tools, but I'm not very good at it, so there are a few extra holes in the wall. Drywall anchors don't go through studs, FYI.  But we had fun, and hopefully we'll have a little less mess now that they have more places to put things.  Fingers crossed.  Now I just have to clean up the aftermath.

I haven’t even used the garlic press yet.