Maybe it’ll surprise you, but up until today I had never stepped foot inside an Ikea. With the idea of picking up a coffee table in mind, my mother (who had come to visit to help get my place organized) and I ventured over to the North York location to have a peek around. I had no idea what to expect. As we approached the place, the building looked enormous. Immediately, I kind of felt dwarfed by the scale of it. I parked on the upper deck and we ventured down to the front entrance. As I walked to the front I couldn’t help but notice just how crowded the place was on a Saturday afternoon. I have never seen a furniture place that packed, you know? I passed a lot of families with their little kids in tow. I swear, you’d think they we were all heading into an amusement park. Maybe I was imagining it, but there was some palpable excitement among the kiddies. On my first step in, the fact that I saw kids playing in a ball pit made me laugh out loud. Yup, the magic happens inside.

So my mother and I were wandering around the showroom, kind of ooh-ing and aah-ing at some of the merchandise. Sure, there are some items there that kind of look inexpensive, but if you pick the right item you’ll get that whole clean-line modern thing without much fuss. Now, yesterday I said I was eyeing the Ramvik or the Klubbo coffee tables. When I finally got to see it for myself, I realized that the Klubbo was far too low to the ground for my liking, and the Ramvik was just way too chunky. Even the fact that the Ramvik had storage was not enough to make me want it. However, then I saw a black-brown version of the Expedit coffee table. It was thick, sufficiently chunky, and looked sturdy. The glass on top gave it a bit more character. At that point I knew that if I were to get a table, that would be the one. So, I pencilled it onto my Ikea sheet. It just so happened that beside the coffee table they had the corresponding side table. I figured that if I got the coffee table it would probably be a good idea to just get the side table as well. At $60, why not? I pencilled that in, too. I wasn’t intending on getting a bookcase either, but when I saw the 4×2 bookcase and noticed that it was also Expedit, I just decided to pencil it in as well. I don’t know if I intended to actually buy all of that from the get go, but I figured that writing down what I wanted wouldn’t hurt.

Well, my mother and I wound our way through the store. We tried to minimize the impulse stuff as much as we could, though I did end up getting an Årstid floor lamp as well. We eventually got to that self-pick up area with the flat-pack boxes. Right by the entrance was the bookcase. Sweet mercy, that thing was freaking heavy. I was already wondering how the heck we were going to bring it home. As we went around, the boxes piled up. The cart was heavily loaded. Every time there was a slight slope, the cart really started rolling out of my control. That’s how heavy everything was. All in all, I ended up paying $365 for the day, which, in my mind, seemed obscenely cheap for all the stuff I got.

When we got back to my car, my mother and I sort of had to play Ikea Tetris just to get all of the items to fit into my car. She had all of her training lifting heavy patients at the hospital. Even though I knew that, I was still quite impressed with her ability to lift things to get them in. That bookcase package wasn’t light at all. I’m also impressed with the Corolla. I knew that it was good at holding cargo because of the fact that I was able to stuff all of my boxes in there during my move. Still, the fact that I got all of the furniture in there just amazed me. I really did a lot of heavy lifting today. Moving has that effect, no? Part of me wishes that this process is on-going because this necessary weight lifting must be doing something good for me (or so I’d like to think).

So, it’s late on a Saturday now. All of the furniture is assembled and I swear, my living room is now looking like a proper living room. Yes, there’s more stuff, but no, it’s not cramped. Everything goes well together, and that makes me happy. Very soon, I’m going to start work on softening up the room. I’m a little afraid that all of the pieces together might be a little overwhelming. Maybe adding cushions and other textures to the couch will help. We’ll see.

Yup. It’s been yet another productive weekend.