Curtains, Robert's Room, and un Raton

It seems like forever and a day has gone by since I've updated the blog.  The house is extremely livable, and we've been here for almost a year now.  Robert Jacob Leung was born around the end of last year, and his room is almost ready for him.

Yesterday, after work, I put up his curtains.  While I was drilling the holes in the walls to hold up the curtain rod, I noticed movement outside in the backyard.  I paused to get a better look, and I discovered a HUGE rat climbing up the dying vines in the backyard over the fence to the neighbor's side.  I really hope this thing doesn't live underneath our house.  Just to be sure, I'm planning on getting under Robert's room this weekend.

Anywho, the curtains are up.  We used the brown curtains with the blackout lining that Sandra's mom made for us.  We got the curtain rod from Ikea a while ago.  It was the only one we could find that was long enough for the 9 foot sliding glass door.  Instead of putting the cloth over the rod, I decided that I wanted the curtain to open and close easily while sliding along the curtain rod.  We picked up curtain clips from Target.  They were about $4.50 for a pack of 7.  Because the curtains themselves are a bit heavy, we got two packs to distribute more of the weight.

Robert's room can now be shrouded in darkness any time we want!  The problem with that is that it gets too dark, so now we're looking for night lights...

Front Bedroom Coming Together

Today, we brought over the box spring and mattress for the bed!  We loaded them into the house with a few other items, then brought the van back home.  We returned to begin cleaning and stuff.  

While I sorted out the items in the garage to separate the two halves (mines vs. my sister's), Sandra steam cleaned the bed frame, box spring, and mattress.  I stopped by and thought it looked really cool when she was steaming the mattress.  The steam came out the other side!

I washed the sheets that we picked up for the bed the night before, so they were ready to put on.

The $1.99 curtain rod from Ikea is now up as well.  The blanket covering the window still looks a bit funky.  we must revisit that soon.  

We picked this steam cleaner up.  If you've ever seen the infomercial, don't believe it.  This is a steam cleaner.  Not a vacuum, not a mop, just a steam cleaner.  It will super heat water to create steam and that steam will kill anything you put it to.  It will also cook your hand or face if you point it there, so be CAREFUL!  It's well worth the $50 to avoid using chemicals on everything!

East Bay Trip

After a fun day at the house, Sandra decided she wanted to see Felicia out in Hayward.  We took this trip out to the East Bay to also stop by Ikea and check out the light fixtures.

I want to get rid of the hanging orb in the hallway since it does such a horrible job of lighting the hallway.  It lights the stair case, but that's about it!  I think track lighting in the shape of an L would be sufficient.  The Ikea Sanda system would work well for what we need.  It will, however, cost about $300 for everything we need.

We passed on buying the lights now and picked up two curtain rods for $1.99 each and a sheer curtain for the dining room.

Adding a Curtain in the Front Bedroom

The west facing window in the bedroom has textured glass on it, but it still lets in a lot of sunlight.  For two people who enjoy sleep in a dark room, Sandra and I decided we should put up a curtain here.  During a trip to Ikea, we bought two curtain rod holders and a throw that would be temporary yet suitable.

The rod is a wooden dowel that I bought for the living room Ugly Bookshelf.

Ikea Long Dresser

We went to the house after work today and built the dresser unit we bought yesterday.  After building the other two last night, we developed a pretty good rhythm.  Whereas the first one took us forever to put together, we barely referred to the directions on this one and just built!

Now to decide who gets what drawers...

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!

Trip to Ikea

Sandra and I went to Ikea today.  We were thinking of taking our time to look at the dressers, decide what we needed, peruse useless crap, and take it slow.  The website said it closed at 9, so leaving SF around 6, we thought we'd have plenty of time.  We were soooo wrong.  We got there around 6:30, and they closed at 7!  We rushed to grab the dressers we wanted, just so we didn't waste the trip.

We stopped on Treasure Island for the sunset on the way back.

I freakin LOVE my City.

Craigslist>Free (Part 9)

Picked up some shelves today from Nicole. Her husband got moved up to Colorado Springs for work, so they're packing up and leaving. The shelves are really nice! She said my post was the most "normal" one, so she figured I'd be the best candidate!

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!