Our DIY venture (or On Surviving an Ikea Project)

We are very much Craigslist people. We have lots of furniture that we've gotten off Craigslist (we also have side-of-the-road furniture that we picked up in Boston), including a really nice, solid wood armoire/entertainment center (it's so solid that I've joked that if there's ever a tornado in Durham, we're all crawling inside that armoire; even if everything else is damaged, that cabinet is going nowhere). Until last year, we'd always kept our tv on a small tv stand that we inherited from my great aunt and uncle shortly before our wedding. It did the trick; it had a cabinet to hold movies and whatnot, a sliding shelf to hold the dvd player, and a perch for the tv. Ever since we've been married, though, Brad has been searching for ways to make the tv less of a primary visual fixture in our home. In Jackson, we never did come up with a solution, and it was annoying to Brad. In Boston, we had an odd little alcove thing in the living room that we put the tv in and then hung sliding curtains over it, moving them out of the way if we wanted to watch something. That pacified him quite a bit. Here in Durham, we were back to the tv having more of a prominent place in the living room, and it started annoying Brad again.

So, he set up a Craigslist alert for armoire/entertainment centers, hoping to find something. After quite a while, something popped up down in Cary (about half an hour from here), and we snagged it. It's so pretty and really served a great purpose. The best part is that it has cabinet doors that open and close to hide the tv. It is really large and partially blocks one of our windows, which isn't ideal, but we've really enjoyed it while we've had it.

Isn't it pretty? Kind of looks Narnian. It took three strapping fellows to move this bad boy inside.

Ta-da! The doors open and slide back. And, the cube unit you see to the left of the armoire is a side-of-the-road find we snagged in Boston. Folks put all kinds of awesome stuff on the curb for others to pick up- just because storage and transportation is such a difficult thing to work out. If you can't move it or store it and don't have time to sell it, on the street it goes. This one was actually put on the curb directly in front of our apartment front door. 

Although the armoire did much to assuage Brad's annoyance, he started dreaming bigger. The idea of a built-in looking entertainment center that spanned the length of the wall and increased our storage options by at least double began to percolate. We're pretty big on everything having a place to live (particularly toys and kid stuff), so the idea of more storage was really appealing.

Just for funsies, Brad starting Googling images of different kinds of entertainment center options. We found several that we loved the look of...but did not love the price. We knew that if we decided to make a move for something bigger and more expansive we'd have to be prepared to spend some cash. However, we are bargain hunters and get sticker shock pretty easily. On a whim, I suggested we just look at Ikea and see if there were any options for us. Or at least any options that we could cobble together to achieve our goal. Lo and behold. There is an entire series of modular units (Besta) that can be put together in about a bazillion different combinations. And, if you have an Ikea Family Card (which we do), it was on sale! We spent a loooong time playing with options and coming up with what would be ideal for us. Brad cobbled an image together in Paint or something like that (we later found out that there's actually a program that will do it for you ON THE IKEA WEBSITE. Oi. Hindsight and whatnot). Then we talked about it and priced it. Then we decided to go for it.

"Going for it" meant blocking out an afternoon for Brad to drive over to Charlotte (about 1.5-2 hours) to the nearest Ikea, as well as measuring the back of my CR-V to make sure that the boxes would indeed fit. A couple of days later (or maybe the next day?), Brad headed off to Charlotte and returned with our loot. This all happened before Christmas, but we just got around to putting it up about a week ago. We crossed our fingers and set to work, hoping it would be what we were wanting and that a miserable Do It Yourself project wouldn't crush our dreams.

The logistics of the project were a little complex, and we had to come up with some tricky engineering, but we (mostly Brad) made it happen. It was a 3- or 4-day project (in the evenings after Claire went to bed), but we are thrilled with the outcome. We tried to remember to document things along the way, but they hardly do justice to the Chaos That Was. Not only did we have the construction going on, we haven't yet gotten our armoire sold so it was hanging out, we had just returned from Christmas and had lots of new Claire paraphernalia with no place to live, and we were still in the process of putting away our Christmas decorations. Our timing is impeccable. Oh, and on one of the early nights of the project, we kept some of our friends' kids for a couple of hours. With about 4 square feet of "play space." Bless.

Here's a highly edited shot of the living room. It makes it look so spacious and not too chaotic. Do not be fooled. Also, we were watching BBC Emma.

The basic framework.

Brad assembled the cabinet frames (the tall structures) on the floor, planning to raise them once completed. We then had the complicated aspect of adding the feet to the bottom of the cabinets and then standing them upright. We realized that the cabinets were heavy enough that the weight would snap the feet if we used them as fulcrums, and they were also so heavy that we couldn't just hoist them completely off the floor stand them up. We ended up cutting up all of the boxes that the cabinets came in and rolling up the cardboard to make "platforms" to rest the cabinets on while raising them. MacGyvering at it's finest, methinks.

We didn't get in-progress pictures, so here's a lame reenactment. We actually had pretty large stacks of cardboard under each one to make sure that they were sturdy enough. It would have been super annoying to do all the work to make cardboard platforms only for them to collapse and snap the feet anyway. Sheesh.

The complete structure minus the cabinet doors. The tv isn't covered or hidden, but the overall effect ends up with the tv kind of blending into the landscape. Mission accomplished.

Note Claire playing in the bottom left corner. She thoroughly enjoyed the process. And, I saved the center from crayon love several times.

The finished product! The top row of cabinets have glass doors, the middle shelves are open, and the bottom cabinets have solid doors. I hadn't arranged or "styled" anything at this point (and still haven't, truth be told), but we were able to get all of Claire's toys put away (the bottom three cabinets on the right), all of our games, and all of our movies/media. We still have several completely empty shelves and cabinets, which is SO EXCITING because we are nerdy and adult-y or maybe have low standards for excitement. We've already made plans for where in the unit we'll be storing diapering and nursing paraphernalia when the baby arrives, which makes me feel all fuzzy inside, as I love having a plan in place- particularly for a period of time that I know will have big learning curves. I need to acquire a few more storage bins, but we're well on our way. Yay!

I'm super proud of Brad. He even made sense of the nonsensical-looking Ikea instructions, which I would have bet would driven him bonkers (have you ever seen them? They're ridiculous). He did a fantastic job, and now we have so much storage, we have most of the previously-blocked window back, and Brad's tv nemesis is still at bay. Now. If we could only get the armoire sold...