I Love Ikea

My best friend texted me on her way home from Canada over the weekend to see if we needed anything from Ikea, as she and her husband were swinging by a store on their way home. The problem is I need A LOT of stuff. Too much to place that burden (financial and physical) on someone else. But she's awesome for offering.

Her text got me thinking about the new house and the little projects and decor pieces that will still be lingering long after we close. Even though our new house is roughly 1000 square feet larger than our current house, we didn't really add a lot of rooms. Most of that square footage is in an expanded kitchen and family room and larger bedrooms. We only "added" a bedroom and a full bath, which we felt was was necessary with our expanding family.

We mainly have projects in creating the girls' bedroom, Ryan's big boy room and the "formal" dining room. Aside from these three spaces all of our current furniture transfers over to the new house perfectly with pieces to spare.

Initially I planned on decorating a room for the twins using their nursery furniture from our current house and a room for Lola and then just redecorating in a few years when the girls shacked up together and Ryan got his own room. But it doesn't make sense to decorate two nurseries only to redecorate again in another 12 to 18 months. So I started thinking about Lola's nursery as the girls' "big girl room".

Frankly, by the time I actually complete the design I'm hoping that Reese will be ready to move in with Lola and Ryan will be ready for me to start on his big boy room too. I've been pinning images like crazy; the inspiration for the girls' room came from Joe's nana who knits the kids "nana blankets". Lola's came in the perfect shade of lavender (also my favorite color) and that got my wheels turning.

A quick google search led me to this nursery done by Caitlin Creer and then the brainstorming was on overload -- fed by a healthy supply of hormonal nesting. I'm just sorry I can't put this plan into action quicker. But as my father-in-law loves to remind me, Rome wasn't built in a day. (I usually tell him,  that's because I wasn't the general contractor.)

Among the Ikea pieces I plan on buying for the girls' room are these bookcases which I hope to back in a beautiful wallpaper like the one in the image below, similar to what we did with our billy bookcases in our living room.

I haven't quite pinned down Ryan's room, other than I know I want to do antiqued primary colors (think battleship blue, rust and mustard, instead of blue, red and yellow) and that I want the room to have a vintage airplane theme. And while I don't have an exact plan for his room right now, I'm 90% sure that I want to incorporate an Expedit bookcase and an Ekby Jarpen/ Ekby Bjarnum wall shelf, similar to these rooms. 

We also have our sights set on making our formal dining room into a game room/parlor. I already laid out my rough design. The idea is for it to have three separate spaces -- a table with a banquette, a reading area and a secretary desk that can be used for mail drop/storage and bill paying. 

The design is based on these images. 

We were going to have the carpenter that did all of the built ins for our house come back and build a banquette with storage for board games and kid things, but then I saw an Ikea Ektorp and Lindingo Kitchen Cabinets repurposed as bench seating by designer Samantha Pynn. The cabinets seem like an easy fix and a great way to add accessible storage to this space without breaking the bank on more custom builtins. The best part is if we ever move (something I don't even want to think about right now!) the room can easily be converted back into a formal dining space by the next owners; something that wouldn't be as easily remedied with permanent and pricey built-in seating. 

We're also planning on purchasing a third billy bookcase, which we'll add between the current cases we have in the house and modifying the three bookcases to look like a single built in unit similar to these projects by Centsational Girl and Little Green Notebook. 

Sadly, the idea of tackling these projects is less intimidating than figuring out how to drive 400+ miles roundtrip with three babies and then figuring out where to put all of the pieces we need to buy (roughly three bookshelves, several kitchen cabinets and one dresser) to get them back home. I'm praying we can convince the outlaws to come for a visit and watch the twins, making the whole trip a lot more feasible.

Ikea, if you're listening, Upstate New York would be a great place to house a new store. Sure, we don't come close to meeting your new store population requirements, but how much does that really matter anyway?