We-Haul it

Yesterday was a first for me. I drove a U-haul to Michigan with my good friend Amber to go to Ikea. Amber managed to get us roped into a major design project at our church and we went to Ikea to buy a load of furniture. We have been working together for the last few weeks choosing and planning and changing our minds for Apex's new conference room. Now a conference room doesn't really sound like the most exciting or glamorous room to be designing, but it's not just any old conference room. The powers-that-be want it to be really comfortable and to feel more like a home than a meeting room. So we have racked our brains and come up with a pretty great plan- at least we think so!

We had a great time at Ikea making our final decisions about furniture and seeing in person the things that we have been hoping would work for the last few weeks. We got cool couches and a ton of other stuff- a 14 foot U-haul's worth to be exact! We had a pretty clear idea of what we wanted so we made it through the store at a pretty good pace. A stop for lunch (I love the Ikea cafe!) and a few minutes to do some personal shopping and we were ready to go down and load our furniture up. It took us 2 shopping carts, 4 flatbed carts, 3 Ikea workers and umpteen trips up and down the aisles to get all our stuff. We started to stash all the merchandise in one place and put signs on it saying we were still shopping so no one would put our stuff back. We checked out and Amber went to get the U-haul while I waited for the couches.

TWO HOURS later they brought our couches out and we were able to load up. It was incredibly frustrating to have to wait so long especially since we had a 3.5 hour drive ahead of us. But regardless, we survived and were able to get everything we had hoped to. It was a long day, but good company and spending someone else's money made it all worthwhile!

The plan is for paint and carpet to go in the room in the next week or so and then we can get to the fun stuff and put it all together. We have so many things to do before then, but I love doing stuff like this so I don't mind a bit. And the best part is I get to work with Amber and we don't have to come up with excuses to get together (as if we needed them before!). So thanks, Amber, for getting us sucked into this major undertaking - I love it!