Sorry for the blog gap! We've been incredibly busy around here and tired of being busy too. The winner of the mega box of lemons was Jenny (who has probably worked her way through them already). I loved all the enthusiasm but I'm so sorry for the cruddy weather most of the nation has had this winter (Spring is coming!).
Here is a preview peek at one of the projects we are juggling right now. The master bedroom. We have torn up the carpet, installed new laminate floors, painted the walls, hauled our massive old bed out and a jillion other things and we would love to be finished (but alas!).
This is our old bed frame. It was too dark and massive (and squeaky, ahem) and I've been wanting to replace it for quite a while. I sold it on Craigslist for 300.00 and squirreled that money away for the new bed. This is our actual Craigslist picture so everything looks more bare than it really was.
We were contemplating building our own frame until I saw these cabinets at IKEA (yes, it's an IKEA hack!) and knew what to do. They are Akurum wall cabinets without doors. They are supposed to be tall and skinny but if you lay them down like we did, they are long and skinny. Perfect. We bought 2 of the 39 inch cabinets (26.00 each) and 4 of the 30 inch cabinets (21.00 each). A king sized bed is 80 inches long so these came out to 81 inches when placed together which was just perfect once we scooted the mattresses away from the wall (to make room for the new headboard). We placed them so there is 72" across from the outside on the left to the outside on the right. If you put them together (so there's no gap at the bottom) then it's 60" across which is the perfect width for a queen sized bed.
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Blog update: Apparently IKEA has done away with the Akurum system and now has the Sektion system as the foundation for their kitchen designs. I will try to get more information on how to just get the cabinets without doors but here is a nice blog post detailing the size options. It will still work with our design here but you'd need to do some math before deciding which ones to buy since the changed both the height and depth options. I'll add info as I get more details.
Here is the side view so you can see how great this storage is going to be! And it turns out that gap at the foot of the bed makes a great entrance to the new cat hidey-hole where they go to avoid this pesky little dog.
Joey built these spans/slats out of 2 x 4's and attached them to the cabinets with mending plates. The box springs set perfectly on them. But they were ugly to look at. And that's where I came in!
One mega king sized bed skirt later and bam! it's pretty and practical. I can't tell you how much happier I am! I'll post more later on the bed skirt process and our beautiful, amazing, glorious, one-of-a-kind headboard. See, we've been busy! And I've got a lot more planned for this room (don't tell Joey!).
We still have to lay new floor in 3 bedrooms and my office but it's much fresher and prettier in our upstairs already and I'm so happy to see the 10 year old carpet kicked to the curb after all these years, and kids, and pets....ugh. Hang tight! Spring is coming!!
