The long-term plan is to turn the front room into a library because (a) once there's a new family room in back, the pretty tiny front room will essentially become a hallway and (b) i have ALWAYS wanted a library. I could care less about a den or a rec room or a dressing room. To me, heaven is a library, and i'd like a little slice of heaven in this hell on earth we call our house. So, as mentioned earlier, when we learned that there would be yet even more chapters to the basement drainage woes, we said f*** it - we're going to Ikea, gettin' us sum book cases, an' buildin' us a G. D. library - yee haw!!
As usual, we got to Ikea around 5pm on Saturday, ran through the store, made our selections under duress (this actually totally cuts down on time spent debating - consensus comes a lot faster when you're running against the clock), loaded up the cart with what looked like an impossible amount of boxes, and loaded up Marsha (the car) in the rain (because it always rains when we go to Ikea). And, as usual, we celebrated by going out for tacos and realized on the way home that we really needed to paint the room before we installed these monster bookcases.
So the next morning, we were at Home Depot by 10am and (again, under a time crunch) spent about an 45 minutes presenting our respective cases over the paint color, got home, cleared the room, and started painting by about noon. Painting of the walls on which the bookcase would go was done around 4 pm, and more arguing about how dark the paint was went on until about 4:30, when I decided for possibly only the 2d time in our discussions about house design, to just shut it and let my husband win; we do, after all, have pretty similar taste, and I loved his old apartments. Yes, the paint is darker than I would like, but it looks great, and as the song goes, you have to know when to fold 'em. Ikea de-boxing then commenced in earnest and the deluge of cardboard, weird metal pieces, and allen wrenches flooded the house. By the end of the week, after another set of arguments on how to place the cabinet doors, we were done with the arguing, the painting, the building, and the trim!
So, thanks to Ikea (and a gallon of Coastal Beige Ralph Lauren-colored Behr satin paint), we have gone from this:
To this (a sharp eye will also catch the change in the chairs from the earlier post):
Oh, and the top lights (also picked out by the DH), change colors:
Dearest Husband also took out the candle holder of my college lantern and put one of the lights in it to keep the flame lit for my alma mater:
And our lovely wedding gift from India is now properly displayed. Oh, Ganesha, please bless this house and start removing obstacles to the completion of our little nest!
