A day in the life of an Austenian young lady...: The prodigal land of Ikea....

Picture taken at the entrance:

Ikea is most definitely the motherland for us would-be-decorators on a budget. My decorating prowess, however limited, requires utmost variety. For those of you who've never had the pleasure, I'm posting some of the items I'm looking into purchasing for my new apartment...

I just loved this look:

This Expedit bookcase is fabulous. You can actually customize it with doors/baskets OR you can attach a desk and use it as an office wall unit as I will be doing in the near future. My sister-in-law has it in her loft and it is simply excellent!

I'm loving this L couch.Most pull-out couches have one of those creaky mattresses. This one actually has cushions that pull out into a large almost full-sized bed AND STILL has cubby space for storage. Needless to say, Ikea realized how much we loved it. It's actually one of the more large-ticket items at about $647.00.

This table is also fabulous. They managed to provide us with storage space even in the coffee tables!

The center actually pulls out like a drawer---amazing.

Yours truly in one of the frame isles: (I really like the look of disparate sized frames placed lackadaisically on the wall)

Look II:

Ok, by far my MOST FAVORITE thing at IKEA!!!! These personalizable cabinets. They are BEYOND amazing. They don't even fit within all the adjectivals I could begin to describe. I can just imagine pictures of Mr. G and I plastered everywhere!

Note the adorable magnet containers for the kitchen admired by my Mother Hen:

An amazing all-white room:

Super cute mirror:

This is actually a "Truman" occurance [Truman: a coined term by one of Mr. G's many sisters (Ms. Vicky) to convey serendipitousness]. I actually loved this mirror at first sight---and then saw it in Mr. G's other sister's house (Ms. Sof)!!!

Now I've showed you the good...and must show you the BAD & UGLY!!!

So, Mother Hen and I purchased an Expedit bookcase unit and desk for the Abyss. The Abyss is that extra room everyone has. The room was thought out with the best of intentions, but ended up being little more than a mosh-posh of everyone's surplus. In short, it is a disaster. Mother Hen dreams of it as her studio/study/serenity space. I let her know that was highly unlikely. Here go the "befores" of the room:

The first problem with this space is the hideous red paint. Compounded by an awkward layout, and quite frankly, a total lack of purpose. In fact, this room reminds me of people with a lack of purpose. They're tacky and a mess.

Here's the bookcase we built: (Disclaimer: practically everything produced by Ikea is held up by pegs. Tiny wooden pegs. My father rattled of a statistic while we slaved away on the pegs, realizing that after putting in one shelf, 2 others fell apart:

Dad: "Ikea is in fact responsible for the high incidence of divorce in the US. The expense you save with their cheap furniture comes back to haunt you in court proceedings and surmounting legal fees."