Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Longing for An Expedit

If I have time tonight I'm going to paint this shelf, that I use as a kitchen counter, that was free, stolen from a crazy landlord of a building my roommate once lived in. Did you catch all that?

Speaking of shelves, it is really sad that I've been longing for an Expedit shelf from Ikea for so long and never bought one. I don't have any "real" shelving, as in I don't have anything that was actually purchased by myself to store items. I love the cubes, the idea that I could fill some of them with books, others with my white vase collections, others with photos, and swap them all in and out as much as I like...ok, I know, it's just Ikea, but still...
Maybe if I had some more money to spend on furniture I'd be lusting after some of these instead. Ahh to have real wood furniture.....Vivavi Stagger StorageRoom and Board Kiva Shelving (Looooove this room)
Design Public Brave Space Shelving

Not totally my style, but has the same idea as the Expedit (and other listed above), with the mixing and matching and filling in the different spaces with various objects.

Designbeam's Xel Design

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here via SprayGlue...

I LOVE my expedit. I've had it for years and have all kinds of things in it: stereo, CDs, art boxes, books, trinkets, pictures - everything goes every which way and it makes for a very interesting wall in my home office.

ChiGirl said...

So jealous...ha. Glad someone's enjoying their Expedit. That's exactly what I imagine doing with mine when I get it.

Anonymous said...

I love my expedit, too. However, offer a few tips.

Get a big truck to bring it home assembled, put it together with a friend at IKEA in the customer service area close to the spare parts; get two copies of the assembly instructions and many extra of every part, especially the tiny wrenches.

I bought mine in the flat pack.
It was a beast to re-assemble at home, was missing parts and a only a little bit of the know-how.

ChiGirl said...

hallaren,
Thank you for the tips. I will keep that in mind when I finally do buy one of these shelves. Ikea can be so tricky, and if I can save myself a trip because of missing parts that'd be great.
-Laura

Anonymous said...

Hi! We bought an Expedit recently from the "scratch and dent" section of Ikea. It wasn't really scratched nor dented, and it was dark brown, and we just moved into a house with precious little storage, so it's perfect for our (finished) basement room. It was made to store LPs if you're into those things (I'm old). Ours was assembled as I think it was a store display, so we had a fun time disassembling it by the car--at one point, when we removed enough pieces, the whole thing CRASHED to the ground like a deck of cards! Amazingly, it was all okay. My husband is pretty handy and managed to put it all together in the basement by himself. I will caution you to absolutely plan to secure it to the wall as the directions suggest. It's big and heavy and if it falls over, it won't be happy.

ChiGirl said...

Wow it sounds like everyone has Expedit horror stories! These are all good things to know, I'll be sure to secure it to the wall, and be careful with the assembly :)

Anonymous said...

I'm the first commenter at the top. :)

I disagree with the recommendations based on the horror stories. We had no missing parts or difficulty assembling the shelves. And we've moved since purchasing it, so it's been assembled twice. I can't imagine trying to get that bookcase in to the house assembled (especially the 6' square version).

If your floors are relatively level, and the shelf is backed up to a wall, my experience has been that it is QUITE stable. I think all of the extra book weight helps keep it anchored, but regardless of books, the shelves themselves are very heavy given that it's all MDF.

Rather than assembling in the parking lot, open the box and count all the pieces, if they're all there you're good to go. If not, go back inside and ask for the parts.

Good luck! :D

ChiGirl said...

Anon-
Hello again! Glad to see you back here. I'm happy you think I don't need to secure it to the wall, I always hate that about Ikea, even their dressers are supposed to be secured. Good point to count the pieces, I've made that mistake before with stuff I've bought there.

I won't be buying this shelf for awhile, I'm moving to Chicago in a month and am definitely going to wait. I'll be sure to post pics when I do and let you know how it goes!
-Laura