I'm sore.

But it was so worth it, because I'm typing this from my brand new office, courtesy of Ikea!

Saturday afternoon, I peeked outside the garage to find this:

I was hoping they would arrive in a big blue and yellow truck like it shows on their website... but hey, as long as my crap is in there unharmed, I'm happy.

I had been anticipating this moment for two weeks, and when it finally came, we got right down to business:

This was just the couch, there was about 20 more boxes outside the shot full of chairs & office goodness.

One or two hours later the boxes transformed into this...

This couch is so much larger in person... I swear!

Finally, we have a real living room! We also built this TV stand (to replace the coffee table it's been sitting on since December)

I was debating between the white or this "grey-brown" flavor...

I'm definitely happy I chose the white, as the room is starting to become over-saturated with the grey/brown tones.

Back to the couch. I had my eye on this Tullinge grey-brown for months, since the new catalog came out almost a year ago:

So when we finally bought a house with a living room big enough to hold it... I call and find out it's out of stock. This was back in November, and it's been out of stock in every store in America (and most, if not all of Europe since... yes I checked every.single.store). I was going to wait to take the "big Ikea trip" until it came back in stock, but there was no telling when that would have been. And we really, really needed a couch (among other things). So I sucked it up and went, crossing my fingers I'd be able to settle on something halfway decent.

As soon as we walked in the door, there it was, on display. Our couch, in "Teno Light Grey". When I went in for a closer look, I was pretty much sold. I loved the durable woven fabric, and the thread coloring looked to be the same colors as our walls. That was the end of that couch hunt.

When I held the swatches up to the fabric, it was dead on. The top color is our kitchen (which is semi-open to the living area), the middle swatch is the living room, and the bottom is the dining nook and entryway. All colors were present in the fabric. Can't get any more perfect than that, can it?

And here's the new furnitures together:

The room still has a long ways to go in the form of pillows, art, accessories, etc... so we're not quite ready for an "After" picture. But just for fun, let's backtrack to a few months ago...

That makes for a good before shot! I don't even remember that room anymore.


Moving on to the room I am sitting at in this very moment... we officially have a workstation, ladies and gentlemen.

It's still in the preliminary stages, as we're about to build a new computer and re-run the wires, get another printer, another chair, a rug, art, etc etc etc. But the bones are there, and I couldn't be happier/more relieved.

Originally, I had planned to form an L shape with the two desks (one on the wall to the left when you walk in, and the other up against it on the back wall. That would have worked... but I apparently didn't measure the gap between the computer shelf and the second desk, leaving no room for my chair. Argh. But Brad and I worked together to come up with this alternative, which I actually think makes more sense now. It opens up the room a lot, so we can... stretch out on the floor, or something, if we ever wanted. Maybe we'll throw some bean bags down on the floor. Is that cheesy? Oh well. Here's another shot of "my side" (I call it my side, but my stuff will really be taking up 80% of the desk, cause this was supposed to be "my" office... since Brad has "his" Man Cave)

Recognize those shelves above? They're the same ones we used in the Man Cave, in separated form.

And here's "his" side...

There you have it, two huge checkmarks off our to-do list. We've been building furniture all weekend, but much of Saturday morning was spent hand-sanding down the dining room mirror that I'm in the middle of refinishing. I wasn't able to finish it today, but that will be the next post, so stay tuned! In the meantime, we've got a Superbowl party to host on our new couch. I hope the guests like it half as much as I do :)

Happy Superbowl Sunday!