I had everything set for Ikea: I knew what I wanted, triple checked that it would be in stock, had article numbers written down and ready to go. But then I actually got the chance to measure my new bedroom on Thursday. Complete design overhaul.

I had thought about this room for weeks and obsessed over the Ikea catalog until I finally nailed exactly what I wanted the room to look like. Mind you, I was working without measurements and had only taken one quick glimpse at the room. 

It turned out that while the furniture would technically fit in the room, the layout would be really awkward. That meant bye-bye, polka-dotted couch and bye-bye cool (and cheap) design ideas. I realized that the only furniture I would be able to have touching the floor (apart from maybe two floor lamps that I inherited from one of my roommates) was the bed and the wardrobe. I wasn’t even planning on getting a wardrobe, but because I had to change the whole design, the clothes rack I had been planning on getting would’ve just looked cheap and out of place (whereas before it would of looked like “oooh, how chic and modern”). 

I had just a few hours to come up with a new “design.” I use quotation marks because, let’s not kid ourselves, this time around I just threw together a list of things I needed and pretended that it was a “design.” Honestly, I didn’t know what to do with the room. I love it, but the dimensions made it hard to picture what would work and what wouldn’t.

The room is very long (about 15 feet), but kind of narrow (about 9 1/2 feet at its widest and a little over 7 feet at its narrowest). I had to get a bed with drawers so that ruled out putting things next to the bed (not to mention that it would block the path to the bed as well). I ended up deciding to just get two of the Billy wall shelves and another shelf to solve my oh-crap-there’s-no-floorspace-for-a-bookcase problem. I could’ve gone with a smaller bed to try and free up some space, but the difference between the queen and the full bed wasn’t significant enough to be worth it, and there was no way that I was going to buy a twin bed. If I have to spend the money to buy a mattress (which I’ve never had to do before), a twin bed just doesn’t seem like a good investment.

Jump to Friday and I’m standing in front of the U-Haul rental place between Kendall and Central, new list in hand. I miscalculated how long it would take me to walk there from work, so I got there about ten minutes early. While I waited for my friend (and chauffeur for the day—I don’t drive), I walked around the neighborhood and stumbled upon Toscanini’s .

I had heard about Toscanini’s and its fabled awesomeness, and with time to spare, it would have been irresponsible of me to not get a scoop. I tried the bananas foster and the salted caramel. Both were delicious. I was almost ready to commit to the bananas foster, but there was a questionable flavor in there that warned me not to get it (there’s a lot of stuff I can’t eat). I  went for a microscoop of the salted caramel, which was more than enough ice cream for a flavor so rich. I’ll come back to sample other flavors (they sound too interesting to pass up), but the prices border on ridiculous (the microscoop was $4.50).

The Actual Trip

My tall, bearded Australian friend (I think he would like me to include that he’s tall, bearded and Australian) and I hit massive amounts of traffic on the way to and from Ikea. Apparently I’ve now been banned from coming with him on his next road trip because it seems that every time we get in a car together we get stuck in traffic. And by “stuck” I mean that one time in Alabama the traffic got so bad that people were parking their cars and just walking about, waiting for it to move. I have actual evidence of this.

At Ikea, I changed my mind about the wardrobe again. Once I looked at it in the store, I just didn’t like the color and the dinky little knobs. I was going to change the knobs regardless, but the color and overall look of the white “wood” was not something I wanted to deal with. My friend suggested that I paint the wardrobe, but I moved last year and that move required painting a lot of furniture (because I didn’t have any money to buy new furniture) and I didn’t want to go through that again (at least not so soon). Sadly, the wardrobe I liked best was a lot pricier. I was still within my budget, so I decided to go for it. I would’ve loved to have gotten the matching bed as well, but that I definitely couldn’t afford.

Two hours, thirty Swedish meatballs and many, many short jokes later (I’m under five feet tall and my friend kept making fun of me for not getting appropriately sized furniture and insisting on buying a queen bed), we were on our way back to Somerville.

I have to say that it was quite amusing watching the guys trying to get my huge mattress up a very narrow staircase.

I’m very lucky to know such great people here in Boston/Cambridge/Somerville who were so willing to help me out. My coworker and her husband even assembled most of my furniture for me and brought me some beer as a housewarming gift (I can’t drink at all because of a medical condition, but I appreciated the gesture).

I’ll post some pictures of the room soon.

Next step: hiring someone to put the shelves on my walls.