IKEA Expedit: Sneaking a Peek Inside

So many wonderful Before and Afters were shared for yesterday's Met Monday!  I haven't made my way through all of them yet, but I the ones I have visited were fabulous!

Yesterday I shared an update in the office...new buffalo check curtains.  Thanks so much for all your wonderful, much appreciated  comments on that post!  You made my day!

IKEA Expedit:

Today I thought I'd take you into the office closet and give you a peek into how I'm using the IKEA Expedit I WILLED into that closet a while back.  I say "willed" because I still can't believe I actually got it in there!  I think Houdini would have been impressed. :)

You may remember the closet looked like this prior to its renovation.  Am I really showing you this picture???  Embarrassing!   Magazines and catalogs were on the floor along with, left over paint and painting equipment from when I painted the office.  Miscellaneous camera boxes, trash bags and printer paper were tossed onto the only shelf in this non-functioning, inefficient closet.  I so badly wanted to use an Expedit unit from IKEA in this space but the Expedit was pretty much the exact same size as the closet with only 3/4 of an inch to spare!

But I pulled a Samantha, wiggled my nose Bewitched style and made it work.
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The Mystery of the Closet Expedit

Kind of sounds like a Nancy Drew Mystery Book, doesn't it? ;)   A few days ago I pulled a Houdini in the renovation of the office closet.

Here's a view of the "Before" and "After" below.  You can view this closet renovation project, HERE.

The Houdini part was getting an IKEA Expedit shelving unit, which measures 58 5/8 inches wide, into in a closet that is only about 1/2 to 3/4 inch wider than the Expedit itself.  The closet only measures around 59 1/4 inches wide with the baseboard removed.

I didn't buy the Expedit on my first trip down to IKEA but after I realized the side panel of the Expedit fit inside the unit itself once it was assembled giving me a teeny bit of wiggle room with which to work, I was embolden to give it a try.  I considered the worse thing that could happen:  I'd have to take it all apart and haul it back downstairs to either the garage or basement where it would become storage shelving for one of those areas.  Not really what I wanted, but I could live with that if it came down to it.

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Billy Bookcase, Easy to Assemble

Billy, where have you been all my life?  I'm a latecomer to Billy bookcases but it turns out they have been around for 30+ years.   The factory that produces the Billy bookshelf makes 15 Billys a minute.  That's 3.1 million a year!  Wow!  After buying three of my own, I can see why they are so popular.   They are sturdy, easy to assemble and reasonably priced.

I shared my small (but growing) office library for Met Monday, HERE.

Before my Billy bookcases looked like this...

They looked like this.

As I shopped IKEA on the day I purchased the Billy shelves, I was not really looking forward to putting them together.  I won't go so far as to say I dreaded it...but I was just a tad apprehensive.
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A Library for the Office: Welcome to the 136th Metamorphosis Monday!

If you've been reading BNOTP for a while, you're very familiar with this view of my  Office.

I've shared this side of the room in previous posts, too.

But, I've rarely shared this side because...well, there's just nothing to see.  Pretty boring, right?  Well, that's about to change!
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Hooked on IKEA

Ikea isn't a store, it's an adventure!  Recently, I mentioned on the BNOTP Facebook page that a friend and I were going shopping at the IKEA store in Atlanta the following day.  I had never been before, despite living only 20 minutes away.  I knew from the comments on Facebook, this was definitely not just another store.

To start with it's GIGANTIC...like stacking two big box stores on top of each other...only bigger. Way bigger. You need a compass, hiking boots and a sack lunch. A cell phone might be in order too, for when you get lost and need to be rescued.

I have to be honest, I wasn't prepared to really like IKEA. I knew almost nothing about this store other than the furniture I had seen on other sites just wasn't quite my cup of tea. But there's just so much more in IKEA than furniture. And the prices are good. I mean, really good.

I got a little carried away and forgot to take pics of a lot of the things I most liked...like all the baskets and kitchen storage stuff.  But I do have quite a few to share today.

Throughout much of the store they have "rooms" set up to show you how you can live in a small space and live well.  Their current catalog says, "A home doesn't need to be big, just smart."  Not sure if that's their motto, but the whole store seems to be a study on how to live efficiently, as well as comfortably.  If you live in New York City or any large city where apartments are tiny and expensive, IKEA is probably a place you love to shop.  Though I don't live in a small space, I'm an organization freak, so I was reveling in the way they pack so much living into such a small space.

This picture looks like a collage of three pics, doesn't it?  It's not, though.  This is just the way the "room" was designed and sectioned off.

This is one of their most popular light fixtures.  I've seen it on quite a few blogs.  It's called the Maskros Pendant Lamp.  It creates beautiful designs on the ceiling and is amazing to see in person.

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