Robert's Dresser

The dresser from Amazon arrived on Monday. Hinojosa had helped me bring it to Robert's room. It's pretty heavy. Sandra was concerned about the state of the dresser, since the delivery man basically dropped it on our front steps. Yesterday was the day to build the dresser! I could watch the Giant's game in Robert's room, so it all worked out.

I started around 5:30, and by 7:00 PM, dinner had arrived (pizza!). I had pretty much everything except three drawers done. It was looking pretty good! The wood that's visible is solid and nice. The problem is the wood that makes up the other three sides of the drawers - they're pretty flimsy. I'm pretty sure I could've cracked a piece in half putting it together, if I just pushed on it a little hard. I made sure I took my time to read the directions, lay out the pieces, and put it together really, really slowly, just to it'd only happen once. Here she is, done:

It's the four drawer dresser that matches Robert's crib.

Ikea FAIL

We started bright and early on the assembly of the Ikea Malm dressers.  I wanted to get them done before noon, so we could do some painting and return to Ikea to get more stuff.

Talk about FAIL.  We unboxed the first dresser, and started putting it together.  Part way through it, I noticed a piece of wood didn't have laminate all the way across.  What?!  Yes, the laminate was shorter than the fiberboard.  Great.  I called Ikea, and they said they could ship me a replacement piece, but it'd take 3 to 7 days.  3 to 7 days?!  Are you kidding me?!  So I'm supposed to deal with an unbuilt dresser sitting around for a week!?  She ends up telling me that I can go to the retail store and get a new piece if I brought in the defective one.  Cool.

Here's the trouble maker:

We ended up waiting about 30 minutes.  Probably longer, but we grabbed a number then hit the cinnamon rolls.  Sandra got some Swedish Fish, too.  Pure win.  As we sat and ate, we looked at how full of Fail the Ikea return department was.  One lady kept dancing between customers.  One guy would come out, help one person, leave for 15 minutes, then go back to his seat without accepting anyone from the cue.  The other chick looked like she had just about had it for the day.  We got the dancer.

She looked at the piece, and asked if we really wanted another one.  Uh... YEAH!  We drove all the way out here for it!  She returned 15 minutes later with the same piece, in a different color, asking if that would do.  Nope! Seriously, why would I buy a brand new piece of furniture, only to find that a piece was flawed, drive 30 minutes back to the store for a new piece, then accept a replacement that was dissimilar?!  She left for another 15 minutes, then returned with the replacement piece in a matching veneer.  I suspect they modded a similar looking piece of MDF to make it into the part we needed.

We bought another drawer unit, then headed home to finish the building.  Here it is, finally!

Craigslist>Free (Part 8)

I guess this weekend, I was meant to get couches! We picked up another couch from Craigslist>Free today. It's pretty nice. One rip on a cushion, but it can be hidden by turning it upside-down. It didn't really fit in the van, so we had to tie it shut.



It looks good, too, but I want to steam clean it, just for good measure.

Craigslist>Free (Part 7)

Got a love seat off Craigslist today. Free is pretty good. It always surprised me how well maintained some of these things are, especially since they're being given away for free!

We had to carry it down from the second floor!


It pretty much filled up the van.


Looks great, though!


I think we should steam clean it, just in case...

Craigslist>Free (Part 6)

We finally got our schedules coordinated (from the posting mentioned here), and Sandra and I picked up the dressers today.



The funny thing is that they were the dressers from Ikea that I was thinking of getting! The two smaller ones fit perfectly on the sides of the bed.


The other one was the smaller one that I wanted to place a mirror above.

Trip to Ikea

I emailed a post on Craigslist>Free about some dressers. The guy emailed me back and said that someone else had emailed before me, and that he was giving them to him. I responded with a thank you for letting me know, and if the other person falls through, I'll be more than happy to take them off his hands. Fast forward to the weekend: Emily's home, and she accompanies me to Ikea to look at dressers.

The dressers came down in price. Here's what they had:
Black and White:


Different shades of fake wood:


I liked the lightest fake wood; Emily said I should get either black or white. It would've been white. She talks some sense into me (how do I know how many dressers to get, if I don't know how much room I have?) We end up getting a cinnamon roll instead of furniture.



We get back from Ikea, thinking about how good that cinnamon roll was, explaining how we didn't pick up any furniture, and I received an email from the guy saying the other person fell through! I immediately called him back to let him know I was definitely interested in picking up the dressers!

Craigslist>Free (Part 5)

Here's an odd one. I saw a posting on Craigslist a few weeks ago for an Ikea bed frame. I responded to the posting since it looked really clean, but I got no response. The same images got reposted to Craigslist>Free this week, and I responded again. This time, I asked Sandra to respond as well. She emailed the poster after I did, but she received the response! Kind of creepy, huh? We're wondering why he'd respond to a girl, and not a guy? That, plus his emails all ended with ellipses, and he seemed kind of a creeper.

Anywho, we did go pick it up. It's clean, nice, and best of all - FREE!

Craigslist>Free (Part 3)

Craigslist comes through once again! It's been hard to actually get anything off Craigslist>Free lately, but this weekend, I came up!

I picked up this tv stand this morning.




Later in the day, I got a hit on a glass table/desk.

It's pretty big. It looks like it could fit two computers! This was from a Marine who re-enlisted into the Army Special Forces. Seemed like a good guy; I hope everything goes well out there.

Craigslist>Free

Everyone's had to have heard about the guy who sold his life on Ebay, but has anyone ever heard of furnishing a house on Craigslist? Moving in to a house requires a lot of things that I don't have - like tables, chairs, shelves, etc. To get started, I decided to look under Craigslist>Free and >Furniture to acquire the necessities frugally.

So far, here's what I've gotten from Craigslist:

• Dining Table, leaf, 5 chairs - $60 (picked up near State)
  
• Hallway Table - Free (Picked up on 48th and Balboa)
  
• Coffee table and matching end table - $20 (Picked up near CPMC)
  
• 7 full sheets of drywall - Free (Picked up on 30th and Ulloa)
• 7 ft Slanted Shelf - Free (Picked up in DC)
  
• 6 ft Shelves (2) - Free (Picked up on 2nd and Howard)