I know a lot of Mom's who never used their changing table. I wasn't one of them. Until my son was 2 1/2 and way to heavy for me to lift, I used my changing table. Now, the one I had was large, too large to fit into the room, we got all new furniture to outfit my son's and my daughters nursery. But the one thing I needed was a changing table. A very small one. I liked the ones that just perched on the crib railing.
I couldn't find any to buy though,and wasn't sure it was very safe. So I went to my go to place for cheap and small....Ikea.
I thought the gulliver table would work.
The website said it was $10 cheaper that it was in the store, so I went and saved $10 and got an even cheaper one that I thought was kind've ugly....the Sundvik or something or another.
When I got it home and put it together I was dismayed at how HUGE it was. It was 3 inches taller than the crib and I KNEW I would just destroy my hips, elbows and other body parts trying to squeeze past it. Plus, the ugly black screws just don't make sense to me. So it came part with the help of my trusty Allen wrench and went back into the box.
I didn't know what to do. I grabbed the changing pad and tried to get an idea of how the hell I was going to make this work. Would I just change the baby where-ever? Well, I could, but in the night....ugh. I like a known entity. I spied an old side table I had gotten from IKEA before my son was born. I placed the changing pad on top of it. And an IDEA was born. A bad no good, terrible idea.
I seem to labor under the delusion that I am very handy. That I can build anything. My husband doesn't seem to agree but then, he's a bit more "practical" than I am.
It was a solid idea, but my bad craftsmanship came calling and made it not so great a realization.
So we went to Home Depot and got lot's of the wood/mdf/screws and paint we would need. And since we have no circular saw we had to have the guy there cut them to my precise measurements. He cut them incorrectly again, I found out when we got home. By about 1/4" on the table legs. He's done this before, I think he hates me.
I didn't wait for my husband to help/direct/instruct me. I just went on an started building. I am woman, hear the whine of my black and decker drill!!!
Except for the badly cut wood, it was going well and I was feeling damn proud of myself.
I started sanding, priming and spray painting and you're thinking.....OHmagherd! You cannot paint/spray paint, walk outside on a misty day because you're pregnant!!! And I would go......I wore a mask buddy. Because I care. The color was very off so I went back and had an exact match made. This meant I would have to paint it with a brush (oh horror) but I persevered. Here's where this ikea Hack went from hack to hobo*. (hobo is a term my husband uses when you patch things together in a bad way that kind've works but will fall apart at any moment.)
One of the stupid table legs fell off. IT JUST FELL OFF. I used TWO screws. How obnoxious. So I hurriedly screwed it back in and added some wood glue for good measure. I screwed in some L braces to help them stay together. The screws were too long and pushed thru the top of the table. Oh Jeez.
I wasn't ready to give up yet, so I just went with it. I told myself it wasn't THAT noticeable and that the changing pad would be on top so no worries. (I had also told myself that when I was done using it as a changing table it would work perfectly as a child's desk. --great idea in theory. Until my son/daughter tries to draw over it and gets bumpy looking coloring.)
I started painting again. And it was OK. And then something happened. It wouldn't dry. I researched paint dry times and found out that even though it was latex, it takes a good 30 days to cure, so it would feel sticky and tacky to the skin for 30 damn days. I thought latex was supposed to dry faster. Apparently it dries from the outside in, so the top layer feels "a little" dry, while the under layer is still all gooey.
As my husband said, "Like hoover dam."
I gave up on waiting since it was going to take forever, and just put the door and the shelves back in. After much shoving and a lot of paint peeling. It was finished. And I cried. Because it was all wonky, even with the leveling I did to fix the damn table legs, the paint was never going to dry correctly since I only sanded part of the pieces, and I was a big damn failure.
I put it back in the humid garage (it rained for a couple days----I live in Texas in a perpetual drought but when I want to paint, deluge.)
I just gave up and tried to find something else to use. Lot's of internet searching later I came up with Nada. I was at that point, glad I didn't take a hammer and go all Gallager on the changing table.
Somehow in the middle of the night I found a glimmer of hope and decided to just paint over the messy parts, and just use the damn thing, whether it was perfect or not. So I did. I waited a couple days to put it in the house just in case it wanted to spontaneously combust....it didn't so I carried it into the nursery.
So now it sit's in the nursery, waiting to be used, I just put the changing pad on it for pictures, then I took it off for fear of paint peeling and am just waiting for it to dry. (for 30 freaking days)
So here it is, my Ikea hack. I'm coming around to thinking it's going to be fine. It's just furniture, pressed particle board furniture that serves a purpose and that purpose isn't to make my eyeballs jump out of my sockets in furniture lust.
So there. Ikea score one=Ruth score 1/2 a point, for damned effort.
Ruth
ps.
My pictures are horrible, I cannot take a good picture. Not with a small un-dslr camera, bad lighting and the propensity to never try all that hard. So, alas, my blog will not be filled with beautiful styled pictures, it will just look, well homemade. I have not the money, nor the time to figure out how to make it look like something out of Dwell magazine. Oh well. Maybe when I have more followers.
