what we bought/ikea kids' furniture

Continuing on from my last post, we went on an Ikea adventure to buy new furniture for little guy and his expected baby brother.  Can I just tell you that a trip to Ikea, with serious plans in hand, is exhausting.  I can understand why I'd be tired out, I'm lugging around a lot of extra weight, but hubby and little guy were worn out too.  I think it's all that walking in such a large store and then the self service which lowers prices (or so they claim, our bill was quite high in the end, and we had to do all the work).

We did find some great things though.  And I always leave with such inspiration.  Such great ideas.  So many new little things that I want to buy up (I was good though and stayed on target with our list).

Here are some things we bought:

This is little guy's new bed (well, the blue on his seems to be a different shade).  It's reversible.  Here it can be a bunk, with the lower bed on floor level, which means it could be used for sleeping or as a comfy place to sit and hang out.  When you reverse it, it'll have only one bed, but at a higher, more normal level.  We bought 2 mattresses and we bought this canopy to put on the top:

They had it displayed together and made it look extra fun.  :)  Besides, if little guy sleeps on the top bunk, he's gonna need something to prevent him from rolling off.  He's a crazy sleeper...lol.

We also found kid-friendly closets.  You can buy the frame, and then customize with doors, shelves, and drawers.  We went with a railing, and the shelves.  We bought blue doors for little guy and white doors for the baby.

And for all of the toys, we found these great bin/shelving units:

We bought one for little guy and one for the baby.  We bought some colored bins, all white is too boring.  You can buy lids for the bins as well, something that will help keep our toys clean from our dusty weather here.

We also bought little guy a new dresser, but I don't have a pic of that.  It's just a basic, white dresser.  I also found a VERY afforadable dresser which I plan to use for towels and linens.  Houses here have no built in storage so we must buy storage pieces.  There's a matching closet but by that point we were all DONE.  So, next time.

We seriously had FOUR carts to take to the check out...lol.  A guy in front of us was pretty close, so we didn't feel out of place.  After checking out, we headed over to the delivery and assembly area.  The line was VERY long.  During this wait, we discovered that the prices were quite high for these services.  So hubby went outside and found some guys with their own delivery service.  We paid a very small fraction of what we would've paid Ikea.  The only thing was that these guys were a bit shady.  So me, the paranoid investigator type, quickly jotted down their license plate, and hubby set up the directions so that we followed the truck, not the other way around.  And our things actually arrived at our house...lol (I still have that license plate memorized though...hahaha).

So that left us with a huge stack of boxes.  :(  I spent yesterday putting together the toy storage shelves.  Don't worry, I did it very slowly, and with caution.  I didn't lift anything too heavy either.  As far as the dressers, closets, and bed, well, hubby is planning to bring a carpenter to come and put them together.  This is one benefit of living in Saudi.  It is very easy to find guys to help with household things, and the labor is cheap.  Sometimes my hubby will pay more than the asking price because they charge such low amounts.

So, the room is started.  All I need is for the rest of this furntire to be assembled and then I can start organizing the room.  I get VERY impatient with these projects.  I like to get things done asap.  The bad part is that hubby has training in the evenings this week, which means little-no time to bring someone to help.  If I wasn't pregnant, I'd have it all done by now.  ;)



P.S.  Dear Ikea, I do love your store.  However, a little dash of customer service would be lovely.  My hubby is young and fit but still he should not be lifting heavy boxes by himself.  I am clearly not able to help with my huge belly.  And one more thing, please clean the bathrooms....yuk!  Ok, that's all.

all images via Ikea.com