The Ikea Saga

First thing's first: I love Ikea. I'm totally ok with having a home brought to you by Ikea furniture, and kind of get annoyed and sad when people go on about how "it's ONLY Ikea" and "one day we'll have REAL furniture".

Psh. Whatever. Ikea IS real furniture as far as I'm concerned. It just requires a bit of DIY.. and what kind of semi-crafty, on a budget, bride-to-be doesn't love a bit of DIY?! (I'm assuming a fair amount, but that's ok.)

Sure, it's probably only meant to be temporary for most folks, and true, we'll probably "upgrade" some of our coordinating black-brown living room furniture in the future. But part of what I really love about Ikea is how (sort of) easy it can be to assemble, disassemble, and reassemble most of their stuff. Example: our current "couch" is actually a daybed I bought from Ikea over 8 years ago, when I was in college. It's a bit ghetto (can I say that?) and, you know.. not actually a couch.. but it does the job until our money tree starts growing faster. I've probably put together and taken apart that bed/couch at least 6 times now.

Yes, that is a penguin pillow pet on said "couch"

Second thing you should know: we have a queen sized memory foam mattress that was previously resting on a box spring, with a super dinky "bed frame" - it was really about 5 metal bars that fit together in a mysterious way, then rested on a few of those bed raisers so that we had a good foot or so of space to stuff things under the bed. We ditched the headboard a long time ago, since even sitting on the bed made it wobble and creak.. forget any other, ahem, "extracurricular activities".

As for the Ikea debacle: we realized pretty quickly that there was no way in heck our box spring was going to fit up the stairs and into the master bedroom of the new house, and there was no way the mattress could rest on the five metal bar bed frame by itself. Fortuitously, Scot and I had gone to Ikea a few weeks prior to our move in and found a bed frame and headboard that we loved and planned on getting sometime in the near future - at the time, though, our first priority was to get a dining room table (since, ummm, we don't have one.. at all) and some area rugs to spruce the place up a bit.

That priority list changed super quickly, and after all the major trips were done on move in day (Sunday), Scot's sister Shannon and I headed to Ikea (only about a 20 minute drive) to pick up the bed frame and headboard. Except that the place was mobbed, and they literally just sold their last bed frame.

OPPDAL bed frame with drawers

 Headboards were sold out as well.

OPPDAL headboard with storage compartment

Super awesome that we decided to love the most popular bed set at the moment.

A nice employee filled us in that there should be more bed frames on Monday - and we should be sure to pick up a midbeam for the frame since it does not come with the set - and the headboards would be in on Tuesday.

Ok, fine. Scot and I slept with the mattress on the floor our first night in the house. We decided we'd make the necessary trips to Ikea in the upcoming days in order to assure that we got everything.

We headed in on Monday for trip #2 to get the frame and midbeam - success. We assembled it when we got home, only to realize that the instruction booklet shows slats being placed above the frame of the bed for the mattress to rest on. Slats that we did not have. Slats that, if I looked on the website for .5 seconds, I would have known to get.

Yep. Missed that.

Long story short on this one - the mattress fell through the frame and we spent a second night on the floor.

Tuesday, we headed back to Ikea for trip #3 in as many days to get the headboard and slats. The first still wasn't in stock (despite what Mr. Nice Employee promised), and the latter? They wouldn't be in for another week. I? Was not sleeping on the floor another week. I was annoyed that they had miscellaneous parts in stock and others not, that you can't put a hold on things, that I got wrong information.. all kind of petty, but when you just move in somewhere and the whole place is a mess, you at least want your bedroom to represent some minor state of calm. Well.. Scot and I did.

So my genius self asked if they could check if the next closest Ikea outside of Baltimore had either the headboard or slats - lo and behold, they did! We jetted out of the store, I dropped Scot off at home (since Fios was supposed to be installed in an hour), and I headed out to the store solo. Now, it's really not that far, but when it was literally monsooning out (which always adds time) and it's about an hour away on a good day? Ughhh it just gets annoying and long.

But! Three hours and a few beers later? We had a pretty, new bed set!

I have no idea how we'll get this monstrosity out of the house next time we move, but whatever. A different dilemma for a different time.

So, in the end, dearest Ikea: please have more furniture in stock when it's your most popular item. And please tell me ALL of the pieces I'm supposed to have from the get go, k? Thanks :)