Tangled Up In Blog

Back to Ikea

When I was in college and law school I was obsessed with Ikea. Almost all of the furniture and accents in my apartment were from Ikea. The first time Andy and I went to the Ikea in Houston we spent about 7-8 hours there. In case you've never been, the beginning of the store is organized into individual sample rooms, decorated completely with Ikea furnishings. If I could have afforded it I would have just picked out one living room, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, bought everything and replicated the rooms in my apartment. Almost everything there matches so it always looks so put together. The lure of the birch and the Swedish names for the products was too much for me to resist. The day after we moved to NYC, while we still had our U-Haul we made a trip to Ikea in New Jersey and got a few pieces of furniture but we haven't been back since.

So, in the past two and a half years Ikea sort of slipped from my mind. There is a bus that goes there from Manhattan but otherwise, no real way for me to get there. I look on their website every now and then but my dreams of an Ikea filled apartment were over. When we bought our dining room table I looked online at Ikea briefly but settled on a table from Crate and Barrel. I think I felt like I had outgrown Ikea, so that was that. Until yesterday....

Due to the fact that our basement, also our living room, is about as well lit as a dungeon we rented a car and trekked out to Long Island to visit our old friend, Ikea. Lamps are grossly expensive so I figured we would take a chance with the old standby. Ikea did not disappoint. I feel a little guilty for thinking that we were through. We found two great floor lamps, some table lamps, a great plant for the dining room, and curtain panels to cover Andy's closet. We did spend a little more money than I would have liked, but that's just because I'm cheap.

Things did hit a snag when we got home. We were assembling the track and panels for the curtains when I saw on the instructions sheet in the "tools needed" section, a drawing of a needle and thread. Then I realized that the panels have to be SEWN! A strip of velcro has to be sewn to the top and then hemmed to the correct length at the bottom. Wish me luck.

Labels: apartment

posted by carolyn @ 3:00 PM