When it comes to books and movies, Holly and I have a pretty healthy collection. Not the healthiest, by any means, but healthy enough. In any case, our collection of each was a bit too large for our storage space. Our bookcase was about three feet high and had three shelves. Books were doubled up on each shelf (packed two deep) and even stacked another couple feet on top of the case. Our DVD rack was shorter, but maybe half a foot wider. Movies were again packed two deep and even piled on top of each other. I never got any pictures of our bookshelf, but here’s one of the DVD rack:

So lately we’ve been looking around for a new bookcase and DVD rack. The bookcase is in our bedroom. The picture above was taken in our living room. We also wanted both in the living room. Not finding anything that we really liked (or that was inside our price range) online, we decided to visit IKEA. If you’ve never been there, IKEA is kind of a big deal. We’d never been to one, but had driven by the local IKEA many times in the past.

I’ll tell you right now, it’s not nearly as intimidating from the highway as it is from the parking lot. Boy howdy, that is a big store. Below are a couple pictures taken from the front of the building (the first was obviously taken facing away from the building):

Our first stop inside was the cafeteria – it was early afternoon and we hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I didn’t even know until we got there that IKEA had a decent-sized restaurant on the second floor. But sure enough, they had some pretty good-looking food on a good-sized menu (for a furniture store). Nevertheless, Holly and I both opted for the Swedish meatballs they’re supposedly known for:

That picture was actually taken by Holly. I’m the one digging into my salad on the other side of the table.

Anyway, after lunch it was time to start shopping. Now, we were there for a bookshelf and a DVD cabinet, but we have all the time in the world (we’ve both taken a week off from work, just for the hell of it) so we took our time in that store, especially since it was our first visit.

Nevertheless, we managed to stay focused on our goal and we found a couple tall shelving units we liked. Here’s a set-up they had in the store that we aspire to build up to. I got the picture for future reference – you’ll see what we ended up with in a moment:

We ended up making our ultimate selection shortly thereafter, but first I wanted to get a couple pictures of the kitchens they’d set up:

Anyway, we finished our shopping and headed out to the car. We ended up with two of the same shelving units – “Billy,” in a brown/black color. Unfortunately the boxes were a little large, and we arrived in Holly’s Honda Fit. Don’t get me wrong – the Fit is known for having an awful lot of storage space, and it absolutely does, but lengthwise the car is kind of lacking.

That didn’t stop us, though. We did some shifting and managed to fit both boxes in the car. I just had to ride in the back with them:

So we took our new Billys home with us, and then the fun began. Holly and I live on the second floor of our apartment building, and these boxes are heavy. In addition to that, it’s 100+ degrees (F) outside. Halfway up the stairs with the first box, the tape on the back end broke and pieces began sliding out of the box. Quick as I am, I managed to keep anything from falling all the way out of the box and from hitting the stairs, or worse, falling all the way back down to the bottom which would have at best damaged the shelving unit and at worse seriously injured either Holly or me.

Everything ended up working out, and the second box was actually a cinch – I just hoisted it up on my shoulder (which in retrospect is probably why my shoulder is so sore) and practically jogged upstairs with it. It wasn’t quite time for business yet. We needed some water, and a rest. While cooling off I emptied the old DVD cabinet and sorted everything into stacks in front of my desk, according to genre. We had television series/miniseries and boxed sets, animated movies, comedies, drama/horror, action, fantasy, concerts/musicals, documentaries, and workout DVDs:

We got cooled off, had a drink or two, then got to work. I failed to get any pictures of us in the process of building the first shelving unit, but got a couple pictures of us stocking it up once we had finished. This first unit actually became the bookshelf. Incidentally, the books on this shelf only make up about two thirds of our collection, as we still have quite a few left on the original bookshelf in our bedroom:

As for the DVDs and the second shelf, they would have to wait. By the time we finished organizing the bookshelf it was getting pretty late and we still had dinner plans. So we headed out to the Londoner Pub, had some fish and chips and a couple beers, then came home and called it a night.

This morning (Tuesday) we got up early and while Holly made coffee, I got the pieces out of the box for the DVD shelf:

Since Freyja walked into the shot at the last second (bottom left) I decided to go ahead and try for a second picture:

As you can see, that didn’t exactly go as planned.

Knowing the instructions after having put together the bookshelf the night before, we sped through this one and were finished in half an hour. Here are the pictures I took as we loaded it up with our movie collection:

As you can see in the second photograph, we chose to replace Odin on the bottom shelf with our collection of Wii and Playstation games. In the third photograph, you’ll see that we decided to replace the decorative basket with a collection of computer games. For the most part, we managed to keep all the DVDs sorted according to genre, though we haven’t yet gotten around to alphabetizing them (nor have we decided for certain whether or not we actually will alphabetize them).

We’ve had a busy couple days, Holly and I. After building the DVD shelf today, we treated ourselves to a nice Italian lunch followed by the newly-released final Harry Potter film, followed by some R&R at home for a couple hours, and we finished out the night at TopGolf where I managed to play my best round to date, scoring a grand total of 125 points.

But I don’t feel like posting about those things. This post was about IKEA, and the two new shelving units in our living room. So to finish the post here are two final pictures, each taken by Holly to show the shelves with their surrounding furniture and decor: