An IKEA EXPEDITion

We’re making steady progress as we transform the guest room into a real kid’s room for Pete’s real kid. I never did a lot in the sense of decorating or re-imagining this bedroom after I moved in. It was a good place to store an extra mattress (the guest mattress), and an extra dresser (the guest dresser), and extra toilet paper (for all the guests, I guess).

With the walls painted light blue, it flowed enough with my house’s paint palette to not seem completely ignored, and once I had replaced the rainbow ceiling fan with a model a bit more simplified in design, not to mention less rainbow-y, it really just became another room, suitable for storage (and guests) but never a space I spent much time in myself. And I never really figured until more recent months that I’d be in the position in this house to be considering putting up another rainbow fan since this isn’t really the house I imagined myself in with my own family, but here we are.

The quick transformation has begun, as we brought home two birch-colored IKEA EXPEDIT cabinets to enhance the room’s storage in a way that favored Julia’s height, and collections of everything.

EXPEDIT shelves are the same as the unit I have in our living room, only smaller in scale. The ones we bought are 8 cubicles each (a 4×2 design) whereas the one in the living room is 16 cubes. I’ve had the living room unit for about 5-years, and it has held up really well both in its black-brown finish, and under the weight of 100 books.

We figured we couldn’t go wrong with IKEA, even if it was a quick and inexpensive attempt to retrofit the space to suit her and all of the stuff that kids have, which, I’d like to point out is more than Pete and I have cumulatively in the entire house somehow. I should also probably take the hit on some on that, we honed her garage sale skillz this summer and now her lego and stuffed animal count has multiplied like bunnies.

It’s OK, because now we’ve got 16 shelves and the whole top surface of each of the horizontally-laid unit too, so bring on the kid toys.

I’d also like to point out that my first EXPEDIT (yes, the one in the living room) took me 2 hours to assemble myself in my old little apartment. Pete did both units in a sweet half hour somehow. Brute manly know-how.

As the shelves were assembled, I did two other quick adjustments in the bedroom:

1. I shifted the bed back around so it fit into the corner of the room. One less side for her to roll off of, and it opens the room up a lot more than when it sat in the center.
2. I removed the beloved 6-drawer wooden dresser. It’s wedged into the office, my new “store everything here, including guests” space, but it really needs to move either to the attic, or to Craigslist.

In any case, adding shelves (and my precious handmade bear rug) to the room really takes it up a notch.

The room feels nice and tall and open now. And there’s lots of wall space for wall art like my gallery piece, and maybe an oversized utility feature, like a chalkboard or pegboard or shiplap paneling (I know, I know, cool it with the paneling). While we were at IKEA, we also picked up 4 of those pop-up DRÖNA baskets that you see in the unit. At $6.99/each Canadian, we didn’t want to buy too many because of customs limitations, but if we hit up a state-side store, I’d be inclined to buy a few more since it appears that they only cost $4.99 in USA. They’re a nice fit.

We obviously still have a ways to go, considering that only about 1% of her belongings and wardrobe have moved in. I’ll want to address paint color and linens in the coming weeks, and then other fun things, like carpets and curtains and the kind of stuff I’ve been vying excitedly for. Yay, new room to decorate!