Dressing My Dresser

Posted on February 25th, 2016

I am not afraid to admit when I’m wrong.  Some people might say I’m insecure, whereas I prefer to think of it as being deeply self aware.  So.  Acutely.  Aware.

I was wrong about the dressers I bought for our apartment last summer.  I read the reviews, I did the measurements, I was so excited about scoring a great deal.  And when the dressers arrived, they were just as they were pictured… but not exactly what I was looking for.

Because they were not functional as actual chests of drawers.

My dresser in particular was simply the worst.  The drawers were just slightly too narrow for the tracks, so that the drawers would fall out of place every time I went to get something out.  At first, I pretended things were fine.  It’s perfectly normal to keep your drawers full of clothes stacked up on the floor of your closet while your actual drawer-less dresser sits empty, right?

Yeah.  Ian thought that sounded about as crazy as you all do.  So one Saturday, while we were out to a very romantic lunch at the world’s finest establishment (California Pizza Kitchen, of course), we made a spontaneous decision.

We were going to IKEA.  Neither of us had actually been to an IKEA before.  And yes, we had seen that 30 Rock episode about the perils of an IKEA date.  Yes, I had read that article in the Wall Street Journal.  Yes, we were going during a rainy Saturday afternoon of a holiday weekend.  But that dresser would be ours.

And this is where I hate to disappoint and be anticlimactic… but it was not that bad.  A psychological surprise, certainly.  But manageable.  More entertaining than anything, really.  And we left with a beautiful, big, highly affordable dresser.

That we paid someone else to assemble.  I’m not ashamed to admit it.   Although my extremely handy fiance did switch out the knobs for me, which I actually think  is crucial.  My hesitation with IKEA furniture has always been the sterile factory vibe it gives off, but even something as simple as an $18 upgrade of switching to brass knobs really alleviates this.

I would have loved to use these amazing bow knobs, but could not really justify the knobs being almost the same price as the dresser.  Maybe some other time.
 
PS Sorry about the lighting; my dresser is in my windowless closet.  Which is massive, and roughly the size of my Manhattan bedroom last year.  #westcoastbestcoast ?