I blame Ikea

This room has always been a junkroom and the door is kept closed. I have wanted to improve the room by adding some bookshelves but never really had the time. Miss A and I went to Ikea, they had a great bookshelf system on display that might just work in that room. That afternoon, after a few calculations I roped Miss A into helping me clear out the room, it was just going to get a tidy up at that stage. Then maybe we could put the bookshelves in bit by bit over the next few months. It was so cluttered we could take 3 steps inside the door and that was it.

Over 4 days we fixed it up:








Day 1: We cleared it out. After clearing out the room we could see that it was pointless putting in new bookshelves when the carpet was so awful - split and tearing and worn in places, so...we started ripping out the carpet.
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Day 2: Now it was almost bare it looked better We got some carpet tiles from Bunnings and over the next day they were laid. Then we went back to Ikea to order the bookshelves and came back home to finish laying the tiles. After dumping everything in 3 other rooms it looked so messy that we had to get the back room in order fairly quickly as I couldn't stand having it so messy.









Day 3: We finished the carpeting the night before delivery so we just had to wait for the bookshelves to arrive. We assembled them (that was fun) and put them in the room. The first one took an hour ( and a few melt downs) to put together, the second one took 45 mins and by the third one we had the steps down pat so the rest took 30 mins or less to assemble.





They fit along the long wall round the corner and almost along the length of the short wall.

Day 4: Now we just had to put back in everything we had taken out. Would it all fit? Would it look messy? Would we have more space?



The room looks fantastic, there is room for the rocking chair so Miss A can have a quiet place (so can I ;) )





It all fits, with room to spare! There is heaps of space on top too. I even attached the bookshelves to the walls for stability. Although now I think I need to readjust them as the shelves are together at the tops, but have a half a centimetre gap at the bottom and I fear they are angled toward each other rather than straight. Which means unscrewing them and I know how much fun I had getting those screws in the first time!



Here's the view from the doorway:


Clearly more than 3 steps.

This was a long overdue home improvement, we worked from the time we woke up to the time we collapsed into bed for almost 4 days. My back hurts, my feet are dirty and my hand is numb from the screwing in of many screws and my bank balance has dropped. Like I said...I blame Ikea, but the room now has a nice, fresh feel to it.