It’s frustrating that after all my furniture research, I’m back at the start – yep, I’ve gone back to IKEA. Sometimes, that price point is just too good to resist.
I read a post on Apartment Therapy (or on one of its related sites) a few months ago (can’t find it again). This woman realised that she had so much Ikea furniture that it could have been a photo in an Ikea catalogue, and photoshopped it thusly. The above is my attempt at it. The photos aren’t great but by the time I decided to catalogify it, the photos had been taken and I didn’t feel like retaking them. (Other milestones: I’ve finally figured out how to draw a rectangle in photoshop!)
I have yet to buy a bed frame, and possibly a bedside table. Then I’ll possibly go through yet another furniture rearrangement to accomodate the new pieces.
And how practical is the BESTA shelf? It’s so nice and deep; I’m able to squish my whole culled book collection, sometimes two rows deep, on the left half of the shelf. The right half contains, among other things, my handbags, sewing machine and digital media.
My work space. I love the pink pattern on the round cylindrical box I use to keep random cables. Matches my desktop wallpaper perfectly. It was the packaging for some knick knacks Cat gave me when I visited her in Japan. I remember struggling to pack my luggage and contemplating tossing it. Good thing I didn’t.
I got the alarm clock from Loft in Japan a couple of years ago. Nice, big digits that I can see from across the room … as long as I have my glasses on.
Some necklaces I didn’t get a chance to blog about before. I like the delicate green enamel flower on these necklaces from Pilgrim. I’d actually been eyeing them for awhile but they looked prohibitively expensive. One day, after a particularly bad job interview, I decided to reward myself by buying the smaller necklace on the right (in the photo on the left), whatever the cost. It turned out that Myer had only just marked down the price of all Pilgrim jewellry that day. It was so recent that the SAs didn’t even realize there was price reduction till they scanned it! Anyway, everything was $40. I bought 3 necklaces that day, with RRPs ranging from about $130-$220. Not bad eh. The third necklace is in the background of the photo on the right. It’s huge and rather overdone but would probably look good nestled in between a low-cut v-neck black dress.
The little pink bunny stole pin and the hair pin with purple chirimen flowers that dangle off a chain (you can just about see it in the photo on the right) are from Chirimen Craft Museum in Kyoto. I got it from the big store on Shijo. I love that place. Too bad most of the items are so cutesy though. I’m still scratching my head on how to wear these things. It’s winter here now so I must wear that bunny stole pin, somehow! In anticipation of that event I’ve been accumulating scarves and other neck wear. Too bad I mostly look like an air stewardess when I wear a scarf. Gah. Cannot. Pull. It. Off.
Here are some ‘before’ photos of my room. Note the mass of wires on the floor (still there, and in fact they have reproduced since I’ve made my desktop functional again, just hidden for the most part) and the mass of shoeboxes lining the wall.
I was Googling photos of how other people use their BILLY bookshelves (see other contenders here) and stumbled upon a blogger’s usage of the ubiquitous bookshelf as her shoe storage solution. I thought it was a bonza idea. Using a bookshelf is definitely more space efficient than IKEA’s KOMPLEMENT shoe organizer for the PAX wardrobe, and cheaper than the TRONES and other like shoe cabinets, which I would have to buy multiples of. Not to mention it would display my shoes (my precioussssssssss) a whole lot better too. All in all, I’m rather pleased with my new shoe cabinet.
P.S. note how I swapped out the stubby little knobs that come with the BILLY BYOM doors with HEDRA knobs that are the same as the knobs on HEMNES series furniture, thus matching my HEMNES chest of drawers? My first Ikea hack!
