Ala Assemble!

So now I've been in my apartment for several days and things are Slowly Coming Together. Yesterday my roommate and I went on a Grand Adventure to that most magnificent of stores, IKEA. Since my dad gave me one of the lazy-boy chairs from the living room (with permission from my mum, of course) I no longer had a need to get one of the comfy POÄNG chairs but J wanted  a dresser and a bookshelf and since I have the van (and love IKEA) off we went.

J ended up with two bookshelves and a dresser (no bed frame) and I did get a coffee table ($20! And looks classy!) and a lamp. I'm at the point in my life where even though I will be moving in two years or so I am looking for items that are quality and will last (aka "grown up"), not just cheap and disposable. One day I will have a place all to my self (and the cats) and I will need nothing to furnish it. Alas that day is not today and so most of my stuff is in storage in my parents' basement. Sigh.

Of course, the evil underbelly of IKEA is that once you fall in love with the item in the showroom, what you actually end up purchasing is a long box that weighs about 70 pounds. And once said box is lugged up the three flights of stairs it needs to be assembled.

Now I have very few skills/talents, but one of them seems to be "reading directions well enough to assemble flat-pack furniture." I've assembled quite a bit in the last three years, and yesterday I assembled a microwave stand for the kitchen. Today I have assembled, by myself (I refuse to call it "building"):

• the lamp


• the coffee table


• a shower organizer thing (so my various bottles stop falling into the tub)


• a cabinet for the kitchen (a place lacking in shelf/cupboard space)


• one of my roomie's bookcases

I drove to Ypsilanti to get the cabinet at the Walmart there, only to discover that their website lied and it wasn't in stock. On the way back to Ann Arbor I stopped by Meijer...and lo and behold there it was, and for $15 cheaper to boot! Another case of the kingdom beating the Evil Empire! Yeah this is my life now, I get excited over getting kitchen cabinets. I'm just very particular about my living space.

Now I am exhausted and I smell, and I have yet to actually unpack most of my stuff. Tomorrow I will most likely assemble J's dresser while he is at work, because I am awesome, and then back to Midland to spend time with families and kitties before kittens make the car ride back to Ann Arbor with me and I start orientation next week!