One thing that I really needed in our new apartment was a desk. I needed somewhere to be able to do my homework and study during the school year and a space for my computer to go while designing things and writing blog posts. I knew from the start exactly what I wanted it to look like. I wanted a dark wooden desk with plain, simple lines. I didn’t want it to have any drawers or anything because I knew if it did, it would be way too heavy and hard to maneuver up the stairs to our apartment by ourselves.  We had more than enough issues trying to get Drew’s desk into our old apartment (read about that, here) and then we ended up having to get rid of that desk when we got to our new apartment because it was too big and too heavy for the stairs.

So anyway, usually I have a hard time finding anything that fits my mental vision of what I want for a room. However, in this case, I must have struck gold. I found exactly what I wanted and at a really good price too! Enter IKEA’s INGO dining table. Solid pine, straight, simple lines, not too heavy or bulky, the perfect size and only $69.99! The only problem however, was the fact that New Orleans does not have an IKEA. 🙁 This is a very unfortunate fact because there are always little things that I find that I want from there and they usually have such great prices.

However, I wouldn’t have taken the time to bring you this far into a post, if it just stopped there. Enter this service. If you checked out the link, you will see that there is this company in New Orleans that basically just travels to the IKEA in Houston every week to buy things for people that want them but that don’t want to travel all the way to Houston, Texas just to go to IKEA. There is a 20% charge added to all orders that are under $1000 and a 15% charge added to all orders over $1000. Which is obviously more expensive than if there was an IKEA in New Orleans where I could have just gone and gotten it myself, but isn’t that bad really since shipping would have been more than that (if IKEA even offered shipping or sold hardly any of their products online).

I found out about this service through Drew’s former landlords whom I also babysit for and we have done a couple web design projects for. They were planning on ordering stuff from IKEA to furnish Drew’s old apartment in their house, so they offered to let us also add whatever items we wanted onto their order as well. (getting us the 15% price charge instead of the 20% charge). That made my table $69.99+$10.50 for the service charge + tax. Still, not a bad price for a solid wood desk. (Plus we also got some bookcases for the hallway while we were ordering things)

Therefore I ended up with this in my office:

You can just ignore all the clutter and the million other projects that I still need to do in this room. I don’t have any other furniture for this room yet, so I don’t have any place to put the things in those boxes and on the floor.

It was just what I always wanted. Except that it was a little naked. I wanted it to be dark (I like dark wood, plus it covers up pencil/pen marks and scratches better than lighter stains or paint colors)

So off to the foyer it was. We have our foyer closed off from the rest of the house right now since it just has storage in it anyway so that we aren’t cooling it. I opened all the windows in there for air circulation and got to staining.

Two lovely coats of stain later and I had this:

The stain was still a little wet in that picture, so that is why it looks so wet and shiny. It also isn’t quite so red in real life either. I decided not to add polyurethane or any kind of coating to the top because I didn’t want it to be shiny. I wanted a more natural look that sort-of would look weathered over time. I might change my mind later, but for now it is fine.

I love it! It will obviously look better once the rest of the room looks nicer as well. I’m loving that I have a space to work and blog at now! I really, really love the size of it. It looks kind-of small in the picture, but it is really actually quite big for a desk. (it originally was a 4 person dining table) I love that I have room for my computer and papers and everything on my desk all at once. Yay! 🙂 (Now Drew is jealous because we still haven’t gotten a new desk for him since getting rid of his old one)

Oh, and if you live in the New Orleans area and are interested in IKEA products but don’t want to travel to Houston, Blue Bag is a really great service as far as my experience with them goes! (My desk originally came with the holes missing in two of the legs to connect them to the table top and they switched the legs out at IKEA the next week.) I would definitely recommend them and plan on placing an order with them again soon!