Okay, so we've got a couple of areas we're working on, but right now we are completely focused on the little gaming station that we're trying to create. We looked around at some thrift stores, went to a couple of designer places and then ultimately ended up at Ikea, where we found exactly what we were looking for... sort of. The DOCKSTA table and a couple TOBIAS chairs. Say it with your best "game show host" voice impression. It works with the corny face, promise. 1. Rough up the metal. 2. Wipe work area and metal surfaces to be sprayed, clean. After all your sanding is done, make sure you clean your work area and metal really well. 3. Shake, shake... shake, shake a' SHAKE IT! (we used 3 cans for 4 chair bases) We applied about 2-3 coats on our chairs and used 4 cans.) I posted this picture on our Instagram feed after our chair bases were all done, and got a few questions about the color, so I wanted to clarify some things. (probably due to my Instagram filter choice)
This picture below, that I took outside, but in the shade, sort of gives you a better idea of what I mean. A few things, because I'm sure someone will ask: 2. The oversized tic-tac-toe game was bought at Zgallerie. I had a gift card and it was just too cute to pass up :) linking up here: Tutorials & Tips Link Party By Wendy Kam Marcy I posted this list in 2010 when I bought my first condo... now I'm on condo number three (and married with a rambunctious toddler)! Here's my list of 20 places (beyond Ikea!) that I found during my own quest to seek out stylish furniture that is of good quality, design and reasonably priced. KROFT+CO: designs and makes beautiful handcrafted furniture right here in Toronto. Condo dwellers and small home owners will especially appreciation their collection of bedroom, dining and living room furniture with clean lines and modern finishes. They also meticulously customize pieces. Get 10% off here. Design Republic: my fave store because how can you not love a place where their mantra is “Furniture for the People”?
Whether you are searching for the edgiest modern sofa, design classics or industrial and vintage pieces, you can find it here at their Queen West showroom. Great service and custom solutions available as well. I bought most of my living room furniture here and they made me a cool custom wooden bench! : a hidden gem and another one of my favourite shops. This place is not very big but it is owned by a couple of very friendly knowledgeable ladies. They do have some condo furniture on display as well as lots of cool decor pieces and the popular Chilewich mats in all sizes and colours. This post was updated on February 2017 and has moved to a new home! Making a Pax Room in the Living Room September 12th, 2014 | I am very excited to share with this community and everybody what I have done in my little January 30th, 2014 | Finally I found a suitable piece of furniture to accommodate two litter-boxes. I found many clever ideas on how to July 23rd, 2013 | Materials: Pax closet frames (4 x 50 cm and 2 x 1 m);
Pax Stormdal sliding door frames, now discontinued Entrance cupboard with a place for everything & everything in its place June 24th, 2013 | Materials: Pax cupboard, 50cm wide & 37cm deep Description: Our entrance hall was always a mess with school bags, hats Pax Built-in for sloping ceiling June 1st, 2013 | Materials: PAX closet BIRKELAND doors FINTORP handle Description: First I have measured the space between the closet and the ceiling Pax Murphy Bed with Sliding Doors March 14th, 2013 | Materials: Pax Wardrobes and Lyngdal sliding doors Description: We wanted to make the second bedroom in our condo more multifunctional, Pax wardrobe as jewellery shop display cabinets March 13th, 2013 | Materials: Pax wardrobes, Vika Amon table tops, Billy shelves, Perfekt plinth, Rationell shelves,etc Description: This was a jewellery shop completed How-to: Change Pax sliding door to hinge door February 25th, 2013 | Materials: 75 cm PAX WARDROBE frame in white + 1 hinge door 50cm. with mirror / PAX VIKEDAL +
IKEA PAX Wardrobe Hack February 19th, 2013 | Materials: PAX Wardrobe Description: We started with 2 wide PAX units and 2 narrow PAX units. Our ceilings are not Pax Wardrobe: Inserted and Kompleted February 7th, 2013 | Materials: PAX wardrobe frame(s), Komplement shelf insert (tall), saw, tape measure Description: I wanted to have more order to my and turn any day from ordinary to extraordinary. Plus, I'll send you 10 Proven Tips for Finding More Time to Sew.Not long ago in downtown Toronto, someone threw out a whole dwelling’s worth of Ikea furniture. Stacked outside an apartment building, surrounding a maple tree, sat an Ektorp love seat, Sultan Hansbo mattress, Tullsta armchair and Malm dresser with five drawers piled beside it. The stuff looked fairly new, but soggy from weathering the rain all night; the medium density fibreboard on the dresser frame had expanded and then buckled. Nobody paid the rubbish much attention. These days, discarded furniture headed for landfill is a common sight on garbage day.
Ikea opened its first Canadian store in Richmond, B.C., in 1976, and now counts 12 stores across Canada. It will open its 13th store in Halifax next year. “After 40 years,” the company titled a recent birthday news release, “IKEA Canada continues to inspire Canadians with new product designs for a better everyday life.” We used to buy furniture that would last a century; now many of us buy chairs, tables, dressers, shelving units and desks, and then dump them in a few years or less. It’s cheap and looks good initially, but when our tastes change, we kick it to the curb. Buying and disposing these non-durable durable goods has become a national pastime and Ikea is helping to fuel it. Canadians love to shop at Ikea. In June, Ikea announced a recall of Malm dressers, some of which had toppled over and killed six toddlers in the United States. About 29 million dressers sold in the U.S. between 2002 and 2016 were recalled, while 6.6 million Malm dressers were recalled in Canada.
On a per-capita basis, Canadians bought more than twice as many dressers as Americans. Ikea itself appears to acknowledge in its 2017 catalogue — which at 328 pages landed with a resounding thud on doorsteps across the country this summer — that its furniture won’t last. In one article, Ikea designer Maja Ganszyniec describes her father discarding his old sofa. “It took him almost two days to sort the material for recycling,” she says. “Who has two days to dismantle a sofa? So most of us just chuck the whole thing away, and that’s not good for the environment. That’s why it’s important for us to design these products in a way that’s easy for you to take them apart and separate the materials once the lifetime of the product has run out.” The article’s headline hints at Ikea’s future: “Furniture made out of paper. Ikea, of course, is in good company in the disposable-furnishings category. Walmart, Sears, Home Depot, Rona and Lowes all sell cheap furniture made of medium-density fibreboard, some of it made in Canada.
Walmart sells a desk for $84.97; Sears’ computer desk is $99.97 (some assembly required). The desks are heavy, you can take them apart to move them, but they probably won’t come back together quite as well, so you toss them out and move on. Cities across Quebec are accustomed to disposable furniture littering the streets after the Canada Day weekend, which is moving day in the province. Dilip Soman, who studies behavioural economics, particularly retailing, at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, suggests that Ikea has helped create a fundamental shift in housewares. “In the past, there wasn’t a whole lot of choice,” Soman says. “Ikea stuff is cheap, simple and modular. In a fairly insidious way, they have changed interior decorating. People are now a lot more in a co-creation way. You go to Ikea and you have your pencil and your tape, and it makes you feel in control. Shoppers will take an inferior product if they feel it was designed for them.
When I visited one of my graduate students, I was stunned at how spiffy it looked. I didn’t have the money to furnish a place like that when I was in grad school.” Disposable furniture mimics trends in clothing and technology, and many consumers think that is just fine. “Look at Zara,” Soman says. “Most of their clothes fall apart after 10 washes. You get the sense the consumers say, ‘I am glad that jacket fell apart because I wanted a new design anyway.’ If you use low-cost materials you are not going to get durability, but I don’t think durability is what people want.” This trend has taken its toll on second-hand and antique stores. The Louvre des Antiquaires, an enclave of hundreds of antique dealers that thrived next to the Louvre in Paris, has closed. People want new furniture, and when they no longer want it, the tables, chairs and beds are not well enough made to resell. Some second-hand furniture shops stubbornly persist, such as Green’s Antiques in Toronto, a glorious cacophony of hand-carved Chinese chairs, vintage telephones and thick oak side tables.
Sconces dot its walls and the ceiling drips with chandeliers. A clerk, Daniel Simon, sniffs when asked about Ikea. “Kids buy some shelves,” he says. “It looks nice in the condo, but then they have a kid and the staples come out, and they have to buy another one. Young people are not educated. When you’re 20, you want dazzle. At some point, as Ikea notes, the product’s lifetime runs out. And then the furniture “typically is collected with the same vehicle that collects garbage, and is taken to a transfer station for disposal in the landfill,” says Pat Barrett, who does PR for the City of Toronto’s Solid Waste Management division. “It’s included as one of the materials that we don’t have secondary uses for.” Toronto tried taking furniture apart in a pilot project a few years ago, but “there are limited markets for the components,” said Jim McKay, general manager of Solid Waste Management Services. The city continues to dismantle some fold-out couches to recycle the metal.