Swedish Modern Lust
When I'm bored at work, I sometimes like to browse the IKEA website. I harbor fantasies of getting rid of my truly awful couch and loveseat--both found abandoned next to the dumpster at the complex I live in (at the time, I was really broke and had no living room furniture at all apart from a papasan and some plastic shelves) and replacing it with a couch and side chairs from IKEA. I'm getting married in October, and while we are going to register at a few places, I'm hoping we'll be given enough money so I can buy at least some of the following:
- Lillberg sofa (natural) - $189
- 2 Lillberg chairs (natural) - $158
- 2 Frojsta side tables - $50
- Frojsta coffee table - $70
- 2 Truve lamps - $26
- Benno TV unit - $99
- Billy bookcase - $99
- Something to hold our DVDs and CDs - $100
That comes to just under $800 to completely re-do my living room. Of course, it's all contingent on us getting up to IKEA at some point and actually putting our butts in the furniture and seeing how comfortable it is (and, for me, to see if my butt will fit into the chairs!)--and if it's not comfortable we'll revise. The big thing, for me, is to get a new couch, another bookcase, and a new entertainment center and more media storage. I'm willing to forego some things in favor of a more expensive couch if that's necessary for our comfort.
The part that really amuses me about pricing this stuff out, though, is that my spinning wheel? Cost $500. That's more than half of what I estimate I want to spend on furniture at IKEA. And it's got this really clean, modern look which has sort of solidified my desire to have the living room have pale woods and neutral fabrics--with punches of color to come from accessories like pillows or the bright orange vase I just got at the Crate & Barrel outlet a few weeks ago.
I used to be really torn between two decorating aesthetics: those of Martha Stewart Living and Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion. One clean and modern, the other fussy and eclectic. Now, I'm not torn. I want to purge the house of anything fussy or frilly or cluttery and I want everything to be put away in its proper place. Which is really funny, because I'm a bit of a slob and I hate cleaning. But if I have a place for everything, I'm less likely to let stuff pile up, too. It's a catch-22.
Comments
Hey! Word of warning about Ikea lamps, they look AMAZING and cool in the store and catalog, but they come together totally crooked. We got all of our floor lamps there and it's all "Leaning Lamps of Piza" at our place now. The couches are pretty great though. I'd check out West Elm for living room stuff as well, they have sort of a modern sensibility, they're pretty much in the same price range as Ikea (maybe slightly more), and I found their furniture SO much easier to assemble. As for lamps I wish I could offer a better suggestion...
Considering that my lamps currently come from the land of Wal-Mart, anything would be an upgrade. IKEA lamps do look great, but I haven't looked closely at them, just the pretty pictures on the website--I do covet some of those ceiling lantern things for the bedroom, though. We have 3 IKEAs within driving distance here. I sense a field trip one weekend to firm up the list.
We have a Value City very near us that I'm also planning on checking out for furniture; my cousin got an amazing glass table and 4 chairs for $500 for her breakfast nook from them. I'll definitely take a peek at West Elm, too. Our problem, in part, is that our current place isn't very big, so all that overstuffed furniture in a lot of furniture stores is way out of scale. And while we do hope to get into a bigger place soon, we're not likely to ever live in a place where overstuffed furniture is really going to be to scale. It's just not our style.
So delayed, but actually one of the things I liked about West Elm is that they're built on scale for a smaller apartment. When I was looking for stuff for my current place (smallllll) we went to several stores where the furniture was great, if I were 7' tall. Just so oversized to fit all the mega mansions around here.
Another suggestion: Target, I got all of my lamps in college from them, they were amazingly sturdy and light giving, and I never paid more then $20 for any of them.