The Playroom and a Near-Death Experience

Remember a few weeks ago when I posted this picture of my playroom?

The shelves and bins had served us well for almost a decade, but after years of being tossed on the floor and dumped, many of the bins were cracked, and over the years I've gotten more and more lax about making sure that everything ended up in the correct bin (when Bryce and Annie were little, it was part of my daily decompressing to put all of the toys in the correct bin-- an errant Little Person in a Lego bin just would not do!). So anyway, after looking at the ugly toy mess for a decade, I decided to do something about it.

Two weeks ago, I returned from Wasatch Back (more on that in an upcoming post) tired, sunburned, and with a plan. Five days later I would be hosting the fine women of Segullah at a sleepover at my house, and I wanted to get the toys out of sight before then. So I measured and searched and drew up a plan. On Tuesday I went to IKEA, returning home with a whole SUV full of walnut laminate and shiny red foil. On Tuesday and Wednesday, I built, realizing by Wednesday night that the pieces I'd built would not fit in the spaces I'd bought them for, due to some serious crown molding issues. So I made due and moved things around. The space wasn't as pretty as I would have hoped for my Segullah friends, but no one complained that they could see stuffed animals and dolls in my basement.

Last week, Leslie and Allen came to town (more on that later too). The time with Les was fantastic, but Allen saved my butt. He took apart one of the units and made the whole thing 1" narrower, which allowed us to slide it in the spot I bought it for without cutting my crown moldings. Yes, it took four adults to get it in there, and I didn't believe it would happen until the magical moment where everything fell (literally) into place, but it worked.

The Graffs left to dig for trilobites, and inspired by Allen's mad skilz with a drill, I decided to go buy one more piece and put it together by myself. I got the frame built and added the doors to the top of the unit without a problem. Then I opened both doors at the same time to put in the shelves, and the whole thing-- shelves, doors, frame and all, fell over on top of me. I stuck my legs in the air as I rolled onto my back, so my legs, not my face, absorbed the brunt of the blow, and for once in my life, I screamed for my kids and they actually came. Bryce saw my distress, and instead of heading out to the garage for a Sprite, he got Annie and the two of them lifted the unit off of me. That necessitated another trip to IKEA to replace a door that got scratched in the process, and when Allen came back the next day, I had him bolt the whole unit to the wall. Eventually we'll build cabinetry all along the south wall, but IKEA is out of legs and extension units, and we don't have a TV that fits in the space yet, so this is how it looks for now.

If not for the pink doll furniture, you might not even know it was a playroom, right?