Furnishing a house from scratch

It may seem silly to you, but figuring out what you need for a complete bed in the US is not as obvious as it seems. In Europe, you buy a bedframe and a mattress, whichever quality you can afford, and that’s it. Here, it took us a while to understand the concept of a “box spring” and to find a combination of all the parts that we needed to make a complete bed. The boys’ beds were easier, as they could be purchased just like that: frames, slacks and a mattress. We also got a few cheap chairs, a desk, a lot of kitchen ware, and in the As-Is corner we found a perfect couch and a rug for a bargain.

We were done just as IKEA was closing, and had thus missed our chance of a same-day home delivery. In fact, we could not get anything delivered until the beginning of the next week. So we stuffed what we could and things we absolutely could not live without (mattresses, for example) into our van, and went home. Since our king size mattress did not fit in the van, I spent the next four nights sleeping on a pile of soft materials, such as our rug, an extra blanket, a mattress cover, etc. which was fine, but when our furniture finally arrived, and it turned out the delivery company had forgotten one thing – our king size mattress – and said they would bring it the next day, I was not fine. I made many phone calls that day, some in a little more agitated state, and had almost given up when at around 9 pm that night, a truck pulled up outside our home and delivered the lost mattress.

Over those first few days, we also managed to find a table and chairs at a consignment shop, which we fixed up with sandpaper, stain and new upholstery for the chairs, another arm chair, an ottoman on craigslist, some shelves and a few other small things at a yard sale. 

There are still some things missing but nothing that can't wait until we run into it at a good price.