She Was Blinded By The Light, the Short Story

The Problem  :  My living room didn't have enough lighting, and lacked side tables for setting things like books and drinks.

The Search  :  Tried to find an extra long sofa table to fit behind the sectional couch, but everything was either ugly or cost-prohibitive.  

The Brainstorming  :  Could we rig up a horizontal surface on which to set drinks and lamps?

The Final Solution (sorry, that sounds bad... and if you don't know what I am referring to, then clearly your mother wasn't obsessed enough with WWII and the Holocaust)  :   Installed Ikea shelving and brackets to serve as a "table" behind the sectional.



So, here it is.  Ta-da  :

The only photos I took during installation were on my cell and are shown below... despite the quality, I think it's helpful to see how simple this was.  Four Ekby Bjarnam brackets from Ikea, and three pine shelves, also from Ikea.

Supplies:

Ekby Bjarnum end brackets(pack of 2)  :  $15

Ekby Bjarnum connecting brackets, 2 :  $6 each, $12 total

Ekby Tryggve unstained wood shelves, 3  " $7 each, $21 total

A can of stain : about $5

Total cost  :  $53 for a 100 inch long unit


If you do this yourself, things you should know  :

• The shelves are actually not as deep as the brackets.  We installed shims underneath them, in the brackets to raise the level of the shelf to be even with the top of the bracket.  This probably will only make sense if you at at the store, you hold the bracket up to the shelf and say to yourself, hey, this ain't right, the shelf will wiggle up and down in there.  And then you'll remember that you just need to get a couple of shims to put underneath the shelf in the brackets.

• We cut two of the three boards to get the proper length.  This was necessary to span the entire wall, without hanging over.  

• You could probably do this with a number of various Ikea or hardware store hardware, but we were and are pleased with how this came out.  

***  For FAR more detail than you could ever possibly want, see my post "She Was Blinded By the Light, the Long Story." ***

She Was Blinded by the Light, the Long Story

***  Please note, for a less effusive version of how we installed an extra long sofa table/shelf, see my post "She Was Blinded by the Light, the Short Story."  ***






One of the reasons I care about Decent Order in my home and my life is because I am easily overstimulated.  Noise, information, activity, caffiene, clutter, and more... too much of anything makes me go into either a panic-like state or a partial shutdown until I can make the over-stimulation stop.


I could add "light" to the list of over-stimulators... not just any light, really, but man-made light.  Evenings at home are usually low light... no ceiling lights, only lamps are afire, and only certain rooms at that.  It drives my mom nuts.  When she visits, she starts throwing lights on at all times of the day, not just at night.  I find myself tracing her steps by turning light switches off because my nerves are raw from the blast of overhead light.


There were three lamps in my living room (including this one, a favorite) that were not adequately lighting the room as  a whole, but they were overstimulating me constantly because, individually, they were far too bright.  I fiddled with the angle of this Ikea Barometer lamp a lot, trying to get it to light up my reading, but not blast me in the face across the room.  With every tweak I made, it still was never right.  I offhandedly complained to my husband about it and he suggested changing the bulb to a lower wattage.  This sounded counter-intuitive to me, since the living room didn't have enough light, but I thought it could be worth it to not have an interrogation light in  my house.

We replaced the bulb with an incandescent (how very unhip of us) 40 watt bulb and ... my life changed.  I felt pressure release from me.  So weird how something like a too-bright-bulb can affect general well-being.  And, seriously... why didn't I think of this before?!


In fact, it felt so good that we went around the house like lunatics and changed many of our bulbs to lower wattages.  One of the biggest (and most relief-full... is that even a word?) changes was when Dave installed 40 watt-ers in the sconces outside our front door.  Because the lights are visible from the living room (due to the split-foyer layout and a huge window above the front door), if those lights were on for guests , I noticed how glare-y and annoying they were and rushed to turn them off once people arrived or left.  Now.... ahhhh, they have a much softer glow and still do the job of illuminating the door and front step.


Back to the living room, though.... I no longer had the interrogation light, which was fabulous, but now the room was even dimmer with the three lower wattage bulbs.  No getting around it...I had to have more lamps.  But, there wasn't floor space to add floor lamps and we have no side tables on which to set table lamps.  We couldn't add side tables, because our sectional is gigantic and takes up a lot of space.  To add side tables would mean blocking a hallway or losing a doorway to the kitchen, neither of which were options.  


The only viable option was to bring in a sofa table.  But, the table would have to span the whole length of the wall (since the sectional is actually a wee-bit longer than the wall)... this was over 100 inches.  Did you know that it is almost impossible to find a sofa table that is 100 inches long?  Well, at least not for the amount of money I wanted to spend.  We would have to build or rig up something ourselves.


I remembered Young House Love's custom-built sofa table from a little while back.  So practical, so pretty and tons of surface area to put things like lamps!  I toyed with the idea of building a similar table myself, until I realized that was psycho.  If my husband had more time (okay, let's be real, if he had more energy), we could probably build it together.  But, that isn't going to happen any time soon.  And I need more (low-wattage) light!


We decided to install Ikea brackets and shelving to serve as a pseudo-sofa table.  It would provide the horizontal surface area needed, but there would be no building at all.  Only installing a few heavy-duty anchors and Ekby Bjarnum brackets.  We would install four brackets to hold three shelves (they were unfinished/stainable wood planks) and could cut them to the exact length needed in order to span the wall.  We also wanted to attempt to hit as many studs as possible, so we cut the middle board to fit between two studs (about 3 feet apart), and then cut the two end boards to fill the rest of the wall.  Does that make sense?  The two outer boards are actually not the same length as the middle board.  But, it is absolutely impossible to tell and even if it was, it would not be a problem.


I stained the boards, which took approximately ten years.  


Fine.  It took like a few weeks because I didn't like how any of the stains looked, which meant I kept running in to Lowe's whenever I happened to be out.


Dave ended up installing the shelves while we were kidless during my tonisillectomy recovery.  When I started feeling better, I bought this tripod surveyor's lamp (and linen drum shade) at Target, and dug around my house til I found an Ikea Forsa lamp that sat never-used.



And here she is, the new shelf :

The lamps :

That evening, I turned on the new lamps, along with the rest of the room's lighting, for a total of FIVE low wattage light sources.  My anti-over-stimulation joy was complete.  And, the room felt whole.  It was cozy and perfectly lit.  I could use the Forsa lamp not only for ambient light, but also for reading or quilting in front of the TV.


I lowered the photo behind the sectional so that it is now about six inches above the shelves table and threw a few random framed pieces and books on there as well.  There is more styling to be done, but the most important goal has been realized... soothing but full lighting.






A couple of close-ups :

Close-up of one of the Ikea brackets used to hang the three shelves.

I want to add more old photos like this one I stole from my mother's house a couple of weeks ago.  It's me at a few months old, my pretty mommy and her handsome father.  

A really great lamp-related post from Nester... and there are links to more lamp posts from her at the end!  

An Adoption Update :: July 2012

To continue to our immigration application, Dave and I had to get our fingerprints at the Department of Homeland Security in Homewood.  I have a few thoughts on this process  :

• Homewood is a horrible place to drive if you don't know where you're going.  Especially via 280, where I happened to be starting from that day.  I took 3 significant wrong turns,  GPS notwithstanding.  

• We couldn't bring food (or kids, easily) into the office for our noon appointment, so Dave ran in to have his prints done, then sat with the kids in the swag wag eating Chickfila and watching a movie while I ran in.  Surprisingly, despite the pursuit of decent order in my life, this sort of scenario happens a lot.  Which is why I keep a little potty in the car.  For Calvin, ftr. 

• This was by far the best experience in a government office I have had.  Ever.  And I have been to a few government offices.  The staff SMILED.  And they were friendly and conversational.  And the lady who was printing me actually APOLOGIZED to make me wait, but she needed to excuse herself to the restroom.  Oh and the best part... it didn't take long. 

•  I am not totally sure how long from now it takes to get immigration approval... best guess is about 30-60 days.  

New files will be arriving at our local agency some time in "late summer."  These are childrens' profiles that were created by my friend Jennifer when she and 2 medical teams went to China in April to see about getting homes for orphans.  This will be an exciting day.... that's when we can peruse the kids' files to see if any of them are adoptable by us.  And then get a match!