Following on from this post where by a catalogue made it’s way into our home, I planned to go to IKEA at some point in the next few weeks. Yesterday evening, I planned to go to Dundrum to purchase some new trousers for work purposes. Being on customer site dictates that you have to dress up and be acceptably attired even if lots of people around you are wearing jeans.
I tried to get onto the M50 northbound at Leopardstwon, a fatal, fatal mistake, because at Leopardstown, you don’t go onto the M50 to get to Dundrum, you follow the signs to Dundrum. Lesson learned there. Anyway, because of the M50 upgrade works, the exit at Ballyboden seems to have some accessibility problems, or perhaps I imagined that if I exited, I wouldn’t be able to get back onto the southbound M50 to go back to Dundrum. Added to that, the traffic going in the south bound direction was completely backed up. I wrestled with my conscience about what to do. Turn around and spend an hour trying to get back to Dundrum, or keep going and head for the blue box on the north side of the city. I pondered the length of the journey and recalled my days in DCU where I thought NOTHING of travelling from Loughlinstown to Glasnevin on a thrice weekly basis. During rush hour traffic. It’s not far I reasoned. It has a 60 kilometer speed limits for large portions of the journey which is really annoying when you have to obey the speed limit for fear of more penalty points. Anyway, whilst the voices ni my head were arguing with each other about whether to get off the M50, turn around and head back south, I found myself at the point of no return, which for me is Tallaght. Why go past Tallaght when you are trying to get back to Dundrum?
There I found myself, at the blue box with the large yellow letters. I recalled being there with SK a few weeks ago, on the bank holiday monday, when it was raining and IKEA was still, at half six on a bank holiday monday, totally chaotic. This time, things were serene. For one, I didn’t feel pressure to keep moving as I made my way around the store after a delicious repast of meatballs, lingonberry sauce, pepper gravy and chips. (they had no mashed potato and meatballs and boiled potatoes just didn’t seem so appealing as chips). I love the IKEA meatballs, and I do not want to know or think about what goes into them. They are just tasty. That was washed down with a glass of lingonsaft. I adore all things Lingon.
Fortified, I proceed to walk around the shop. I was there ONLY to do the following 1) get the isle and shelf number for my Billy bookcase, the rast chest of drawers I wanted for inside my wardrobe and a lampshade for our bedroom. Three things. Piece of cake, in and out in no time.
But therein lies the dangers of the IKEA showroom. I found all sorts of other temptations. I got tempted because SK wasn’t standing near me, moving me along. A dustpan and brush for one euro forty nine cents or something. So cheap, I decided to have two. Because we always lose our dust pans and brushes. It’s hard to know how you can lose a dust pan and brush in a one hundred square meter duplex, but lose them we do. Now we have one for upstairs and one for downstairs if we so choose, or one for the house and one for the boat. Moving on. Two hundred straws for less than two euro. Couldn’t leave those behind, could you? A bin, in lime green. Metal. Nice. Vegetables need homes with lids. Vegetables currently live in a terracotta flower pot on the balcony, a very unsatisfactory solution as it doesn’t keep the rain out. (Despite being under the eaves and slightly sheltered). A new light fitting. Because, after three and a half years, we still have naked bulbs. Because, it made me think of spiders and daddy long legs and octopi, so I wanted it. But not just because of what it looked like, also because the lighting over our dining table is completely dissatisfactory. A pouffe. Because I need to elevate my feet in order to be able to sit comfortably on couches. I like having my feet up. But it’s a purchase I find myself wondering about. Perhaps the other one would have been nicer. Shelves for the kitchen from the varde range which I can’t find online. A Towel rail for the kitchen with hooks to hang aprons from and tea towels and hand towels rather than plastic, stick on hooks. A kitchen towel holder. Because the kitchen paper being housed under the kitchen sink drives me bananas.
And so it went on and I found myself at the check outs with my laser card at the ready. Except then the sky FELL ON MY HEAD. The IKEA checkouts were only accepting CASH! Who carries that much cash anymore? I don’t. IKEA has ATMs, but they would only give you money if you were an AIB customer. So after my card being held prisoner by at ATM twice, I found myself back in my car, shooting off to the nearest petrol station and an ATM. Back I went, my trolley of items had to be rescanned. Would you believe it, the cash registers were able to accept cards again. Whatever the problem was with the credit/laser card terminal outage, it had been solved.
Word to the wise for IKEA, next time your credit card payment systems stop working, announce it the ENTIRE shop via the tannoy. After asking supervisors WHY they HAD NOT announced it over the tannoy, I was told “But I thought that you knew”, how would I know, the queues were long and slow, but no one could have telepathically picked up that it was because the credit card systems had gone down.
It occurs to me, that when we first moved in, we didn’t need all this storage. And now we do. That to me says something. We have a hoarding problem and it is time to clear out the house. Unless we get the shiny red DVD wall cabinet, which will free up the lack shelves we put up last year for more books. Then we can continue hoarding. Only time will tell whether the IKEA furniture will turn out to be the equivalent of Penny’s clothes. Fine as a stop gap but in the long run it ends up getting binned. I don’t know. Most of the stuff we bought last year in IKEA has just been indespensible. I’m still coveting the grundtal magnetic knife rack. I imagine how much counter space it would free up if we had that rather than a knife block…………. obviously I have to go back. Don’t get me started on the wonderful interior wardrobe fittings. If the measuring tape tells me they will fit our wardrobes, then SKs funds in the joint account (and mine obviously) are certainly not out of danger.
There’s a corner of our kitchen so badly planned it makes me wonder what the builders were thinking. The kitchen designers we know, didn’t want to design the corner this way, they told us as much when we approached them about making changes. Essentially, it is made up of two cupboards, one housing a pull out larder and one housing the oven and microwave, at right angles to each other. You can see it in the photos above. Hidden in the corner behind them is a 600mm by 600mm space that is completely wasted. When I consider the amount of storage it would offer if it were a pantry or larder style cupboard, I gnash my teeth. A space that is begging to be turned ino a pantry. I would love to turn this corner into a built in cupboard as a throwpack the era when houses came with pantrys. Alas, this would require a kitchen remodel. Essentially, we would have to change what is an L-Shaped kitchen into a kitchen that runs in a straight line with a pantry in one corner. Which isn’t a big deal, except that the kitchen is a german designer kitchen, made by a company called Pronorm, and these designer pronorm kitchens do not come cheaply. Pantries appear to be coming back into fashion, the Telegraph Newspaper wrote two articles about pantries recently. Which is funny, because I have been craving one for a while. A pantry will have to go on the “Next house will have this” wishlist, as it is unlikely that we will stay in our current home for ever, so no point wasting money that is better used for stamp duty. In the mean time, I’ll have to satisfy myself with looking at flickr photographs of pantries and larders.
As an update to desk woe and better living through ikea part i, ii, iii, and iv, here is better living through ikea storage iv,
SK hard at work putting up my shelves and the finished product.
The problem with lack shelves is book ends to fit them. We invented book ends by spacing the first and second shelf just shy of A4 size apart and the second and third shelves just shy of standard computer size book apart. Book ends are then provided by the shelves.
thank you SK for the lack shelves. 
