I am returned from a trip to IKEA.  One of my favorite stores.

It was quite a trip in the rain and dark, being we didn’t get started until 3:30.  But it was needed.

The other day, while I was sewing, Tim came into my sewing room to see what I was up to.  He noticed my huge mess on the floor and my small shelves.  “It looks like you need some more shelf space in here,” he said.  “Totally,” I said.  Something tall and something that makes use of the corner.  There would be plenty of space for baskets and piles of fabric and boxes of scrapbooking things.  We thought about it and remembered some shelving units we had upstairs at our old house.  They were from IKEA, but we left them behind because they were secured to the walls.  They would have been a perfect fit, though, on on each wall in the corner, hardly taking up the 40 inches between the corner and the window.

Today(yesterday) being Veteran’s Day meant Tim had off of work.  So after he got back from the dentist and after the plumber came, we figured we could take a trip down to Illinois and get some shelves.  And some other things as I am wont to do when shopping at IKEA.

Well, the plumber never came.  Something about a difficult water heater install (WTF?).  After doing some much needed floor sweeping and room cleaning, I demanded asked nicely that we please leave now.  It was decided that just SM and I would go, while Tim stayed behind and did some more work on cleaning up this joint.

Several rainy hours and a nap (for SM, not me!) later, I went in search of shelves.  I figured I could just buy those same ones we used to have and be done with it.  I remembered them being reasonably light-weight, so I could handle them.  Well, lo and behold, I found these.  Pretty white, a nice decorative top, and closed-out at $29.99 a piece!

I wrote down the little aisle number so I could pick them up in the warehouse section and SM and I went to check out the kids’ stuff.  We made our way to the warehouse when I realized it was 7:30!  I transfered my other finds into a bag and we grabbed a flat cart.  We located the shelves in aisle 4.  They were beastly, but I managed to wrangle two of them onto my little flat cart.  Then I loaded everything back up and we pushed the cart awkwardly towards the checkout.

The wait for the checkout was a little long, but I appreciated the friendly clerk.  We pushed our shelves outside and left them while we went to get the car.  A nice worker loaded them into the van for me when we returned and then we were on our way.  Another two hours and a large iced coffee* later, we were home.  It was still raining and still dark, but I was happy.  A success!  And these shelves are going to actually look pretty nice up in my room.  I can’t wait to put them together.

So my question to you is do you think I should hack my new shelves at all?  Change them up?  Paint?   Maybe some pretty shelf liners or edging?  What about some scrapbook paper behind the shelves?  I have some ideas, but I would just love to put them together and get my sewing room organized!

*the reason why I am up at 12:30 am writing this!