The Ikea thing took three trips. (Ikea = Sweden; Sweden = darkness, snow; Sweden, darkness, snow = Oskar & Eli. How my mind works. In case you were wondering.)

The first trip was strictly to re-familiarize myself with the process of doing 'the Ikea thing.' Get the lay of the land, as it were, because it's been a while ;) The second trip was the actual acquisition of stuff, said stuff being Ivar side units and shelves of varying dimensions. And finally the third trip, the return of the wrong stuff (cross bars a size too small, because I'm a stupid idiot) and the acquisition of more stuff which weren't on the original list, because sometimes inspiration kicks in and things change and you just have to roll with it.

And here's the fun part: Ikea discontinues things! So you need 12x29" side unit to match the ones you bought back in 04? Tough. Fucking. Luck. What's that? You need corner shelves? Too fucking bad, mate. So what's an intrepid person to do? Why, follow the intur-nets of course and hack the parts needed from the parts that are available. Like I said, fun. Seriously. I mean, sawblades, hello?

So yeah, that's what's been happeing the past couple of weeks, gentle reader. I'm pretty sure I have all the Ivar stuff that I need now, as sold and as hacked. I've assembled the whole... thing... or series of things. I've and laid them out as they are to be laid out and I'm pretty satisfied.

Next step: staining. Do I stain dark or do I stain light? Or do I just paint? And what shade matches blackboard walls best? Decisions, decisions, decisions.