Let’s throw paint at Ikea (+ RIP Grumpykins)

Lions on the Serengeti can smell Paolo’s fear every time I declare “I have an idea!” Most of these ideas! are barely half-baked and almost always strike within the first 5 minutes of televised hockey. His biggest mistake? Moving into  a 500-square-foot apartment with me.

Nowhere to run to baby, nowhere to hide.

Unwilling rental rats in October 2009, we knew an apartment purchase was somewhere in the future but hadn’t quite got that piece of adulthood organized. As long as I could get away with using my expired student ID for cheap movie tickets, I had no business with words like ‘mortgage’ and ‘equity’.

I started an offshoot of Britney’s abandoned club (no, not the Mousekeeters – the other one): Not a happy renter, not yet a home-owner. Club principles included a love of money and noble thoughts of ‘progress‘. Biding time wasn’t any kind of fun – particularly because it left me craving the best game known to man. Scattegories? Nope. Before and after photos.

But I live in a rental apartment! A self-defense course in university used a half-full perspective in its methods. If attacked – never panic that an arm is pinned or unavailable, instead remember that you’ve got 2 feet perfectly able to kick. Survival methods in apartment rental? Same deal. I can’t paint the walls, I can’t change the carpet…. I can attack, destroy and reinvent my own furniture. The knotty pine Ikea Ingo can suck it. This caged bird was through with singing.

Paolo! Get your coat! We’re going to Home Depot!

…. Why?

We need paint!

…For what?

I’ve had an idea.

To his unending credit he put down the Friday-night-beer, turned off the hockey game and asked what we were doing. Ikea Ingo was student furniture, then “recent-graduate furniture” and, a year or two later, “well, whatever” furniture. It was time.

Total supply cost to reinvent Ingo: $104.08 (Sand paper & sanding blocks, breathing masks, primer, paint, wood sealer and paint brushes – all of which we’ve used since).

Bad rental apartments can suffocate creative sorts – but I never would have guessed what a difference it made to change what we could. In hindsight, we probably should have started house hunting that evening. If the “have-to-change-something” urge is strong enough that Home Depot on a Friday night seems a good idea – you’re definitely sick enough in the head to start the search.

A year ago, Home Depot held a certain charm and a far-away mystique. Much like Birks or Holt, it sold things we didn’t need - which only made us want them more. Wood glue…. sanding blocks…. all sorts of paste! Almost adorably, we spent an hour in the paint aisle that night and still came away with the wrong thing. Who cares – it satiated, with or without satin finish.

Ikea Ingo table before, with character-lending scorchmarks:

• Dining table: Ikea Ingo dining table. Provenance: $50 from Craigslist, including delivery.
• Dining chairs: Ikea Bollo chairs. Excuses: We spent summer 2009 eating every meal outside, ignoring our lack of dining chairs to avoid the expense. These got carried inside when it got cold & never repatriated – in fact, we’re still using them. Pikey Pride.
• Bookshelf: Left behind by an old roommate, thankyouverymuch.
• Dead black bear under the table: Paolo’s hockey bag (we’ve since had a “talk” about where sports equipment and food can and cannot mix)

Ikea Ingo: after, with flat white paint:

As for the pumpkins? Why not a little bit of Halloween Human Interest? (See Halloween 2010 and 2011).

The pumpkins – in seed form – were a spring-time gift from a great friend with a “why not?” approach to life. Why not? We chucked them into a yoghurt pot and shrieked as they grew mile-a-minute stylie. Shrieked less when they took over our entire garden plot and planned (as punishment) their demise over the course of the summer. Soup or pie? Pie or soup? The pumpkins grew forever until the 3 largest asked to come inside, away from the rain.

Given to naming things, I extended the honour to a friend I knew was right for the job. He didn’t draw breath before christening the threesome. Grumpykins, Bunny Fu Fu and Orange Delicious had come home.

They lived, very happily, on the dining table until we made up our minds. Pie. The end.

Except it wasn’t. There was yet more to be changed. While at Home Depot – we’d price-checked our cheap landlord’s choice of lighting. Just as suspected – the very cheapest of them all, and rather resemblant of a plastic golden boob. Nothing against boobage, but I’m more of a drum girl. A light shade we already owned, one that had never made it from the box in this apartment because “we weren’t staying long enough to care” was unpacked and installed the very next morning.

Proud as punch, I sent off some quick iPhone pics to my parents. Response:

Lovely, but why did the alcohol get relegated to the bottom shelf??

Overlooked? The kitchen cart (left, next to the bookshelf), remained ignored & hated for a further 18 months. Then a regime change, and “burned and wonky” no longer cut it. Check out our new & improved Ikea Bekvam, as well as what we’ve done to his friend Ikea Groland. We completed the foursome with Ikea’s butcher block, Lagan. Ingo’s got company in the Ikea hacking world.