A Little Bit of Sweden

This weekend we began our 1st room makeover for the year, Jacob's bedroom. (See my before the makeover post here.)

Since all I ever hear are great things about Ikea we chose to purchase his furniture there. This was going to be our first time going to Ikea and I was very excited. I couldn't sleep Friday night knowing I was about to enter the home furnishing superstore the next day. When I could sleep I dreamed of all the wonderful items I would buy to organize my pantry, scrapbook area and bathroom. I couldn't wait.

Just before we left Jim asked me to call Ikea to find out if they can deliver the items we are purchasing for Jacob. Turns out we live smack dab in the middle of three stores. Each about 50 to 60 miles in opposite directions. I called the first store at 9:35 am and this is what I got. "Hello the customer service office is closed, we are open 7 days at week from 9:00 am to ........." What! it's 9:35 am. Are you kidding me?
So I called the 2nd store and promptly got to a live person. Since we apparently are not in a regular delivery area she was going to need to get a quote and call me back. Okay no problem, I can deal with that. 5 minutes later I received the call. $250.00, yes that's right $250.00 to deliver Jacob's bedroom set and it was going to take a week to do it. With this lovely piece of news we decided to bring the mini van and pray everything will fit.

Off to Ikea we went. We actually decided to go to the farthest store because the drive would be much easier because we would be going against weekend traffic. This proved beneficial when we headed home which I will get to later.

Oh my gosh! This place is huge! We couldn't believe our eyes. We headed in following some people who must have been there before because they looked like they knew what they were doing and entered the elevator that took us to the showroom. Now here are a few things I learned from this shopping experience.

1. The best deals are found near the bathroom. I got two surge protectors for only $4.99 and a ton of tea light candles for only $3.99

2. If you bring food for your toddler make sure it's not Cheerios, or at least make sure your toddler is confident you know the way out of there so they don't feel the need to leave a Cheerio trail through the store. They must have read Hansel and Gretel at daycare recently.  

3. Take lots of pictures - If you like an accessory on display take a picture so you can find it easier when you are in the actual shopping area.

4. If you are taking pictures for future reference or for a wish list, just take it even though a random family will be in the picture. There will always be a random family in a picture. 

5. and finally - Don't ever bring your son and husband to Ikea when they are on a mission. As soon as we got Jacob's bedroom furniture picked out they wanted to get out of there. Clearly I didn't express to them my deep desire to go through the entire store. Oh well, they were right since we still needed to build the pieces and we had an hour drive ahead of us, we took a quick peek at the kitchens and went on our way. I will be going again, probably by myself or with my mom.

and look it all fit - one queen size bed, nightstand, two dressers, a lamp and a few other items I picked up along the way.

the mattress had to be put on the top of the car. Oh wait! I have one more lesson learned.

6. Don't ever buy a mattress if you need to strap it to your mini van and drive 60 miles!!!!!!!!!!

This was crazy. Everything was fine until we hit the freeway and the whole front end of the matress flew up. So we pulled off at the next exit and reconfigured how we strapped it on. We then decided to find a Lowes and buy more straps just to be safe. Once we finished that we headed out again, this time we decided to take the route that avoided the major freeway. Remember I said Ikea was 60 miles away. We drove home on the two lane highway that runs through every small town along the Delta at about 45 to 50 miles per hour. Thank goodness we choose this Ikea because the other two would have been major freeways the entire drive home. We stopped at least 4 more times because the straps we bought a Lowes kept coming undone. After a 2 1/2 hour drive we finally made it home and Jim and Jacob began building his bed. All was well until it was time to place the bed slats on. Oops lesson number 7. Make sure you buy the right size of all the pieces you will need. Yep we bought slats for a full size bed not a queen. Luckly Sunday's Mother's Day party was near an Ikea, which ment I got to go again! Woo hoo! While Jacob, Jim and Alexa stood in line returning the bed slates. I ran around the store trying to catch everything I missed the last time. It was quick but I did find a few great boxes I will be sharing later this week. So far we have completed the bed, which Jacob said gave hime the best night's sleep ever, the night stand and one of the dressers. We have one more to make and some pictures to repostion on the walls and his room will be complete. I told him I want to reveal the room on Friday's blog. It always helps to give my family a deadline.

Until next time,

Karri 

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