This one was a no brainer when I was putting my list together. I’ve always said that if I lived close enough to an IKEA to furnish my house, I would be broke but have an awesome house.
The solution to this issue was, apparently, to move to Switzerland and get a stipend to help furnish our apartment. So we get to pick stuff out and bring it home, but it’s not our money. Whoo!
We’ve also spent so much time in IKEA that I kind of got sick of it!
(I also had a series of tweets that included inappropriate hashtags, so I’m not going to embed those. And a long rant about the entire process that only my sisters-in-law were subjected to. IKEA is not for the faint of heart.)
But our apartment will be awesome!
I won’t tell you everything we’re getting for the new apartment because I want some things to be a surprise when I show it off. But I will show you some things. And because I love my (mostly-English-speaking) readers, I will link to things on the US site instead of the Swiss site so you can actually read the words.
Living Room/Office Space
Since we didn’t end up with a three-bedroom apartment, we knew we needed to get a sleeper sofa for when people (hopefully!) come visit. I’ve also always wanted a couch with a chaise lounge, so we went with the Friheten sofa in dark grey.
G fell in love with the Poäng chair, so we had to get one for her. Hopefully she’ll actually use it!
We hope to have an office space in the living room, so we picked out this cool teal desk chair.
Kitchen
We brought our dining room table from the States and hope that it fits in the kitchen (fingers crossed!), but we needed to pick up some chairs. None of them really grabbed me, and I was already stressing about the medium-color of the wood cabinets and the dark wood table, so we decided to go with a mix of chairs, too.
Genevieve’s Room
We brought pretty much all of Genevieve’s furniture with us, so all we needed to get for her was a wardrobe (no closets!) and a rug. She picked the Tåstrup rug, which I think is super cute. It also matches her cousin Margeaux’s rug, which makes me happy.
Master Bedroom
The master bedroom is a good size, but since there aren’t any built-in closets, we need to integrate a lot of storage. We picked the Malm bed with four drawers. I picked out this Stolmen storage system for my clothes, and Andy is getting a Pax wardrobe that looks something like this. (Those are the doors and that’s the right size, but the interior is going to be different.)
Entryway
The thing I’m most excited about for the entryway is the Brimnes mirror.
Our IKEA furniture is being delivered on the 15th and they’re putting some of it together; Andy and I will be putting the rest together ourselves. Once we are unpacked and see what all we brought with us from the States and what else we need, we’ll be taking one last trip to IKEA to get all the little things.
Oh! You know what else IKEA is good for?
Living small is the European way. I wouldn’t mind getting smaller.
Congratulations on an IKEA house! I am soooooo envious 🙂
I can’t say I’m a fan of IKEA, but I’m happy that you’re happy! Living in Europe is awesome. I hope you get a ton of traveling in! Happy A-Zing!
I’m sure that if I’d always had easy access to it, I wouldn’t be as enamored with it as I am 🙂
Well, now that you’ve already done your bedroom, here’s a link to Ikea youtube.