So after joining in on the Pinterest Partayy with the other awesome home/DIY bloggers( What the Graham?!, Design Build Love, Hernando House, Merrypad, Mrs. Priss  & The Stucco Bungalow), it quickly became clear to me why I’m a “Mom Blogger” and not a DIY blogger.

I started this project with high hopes. I was going to make a faux mudroom and pinned several awesome projects onto my Mudroom board. It seemed so easy and doable. Then as soon as I sat down to figure out the logistics of the project I realized I was in WAY over my head. My garage mudroom project turned into a “let’s get real, I’d be happy with a bench at this point.” Life has been crazy the past few weeks and I’ve been very busy planning a fundraiser for our friend whose brain tumor hemorrhaged in December.

I figured an “IKEA hack” mudroom was realistic. Then I realized our lack of tools and time. OK I decided, this Mom blogger was going to at least make a comfy place to take our shoes off and hang our coats. I settled on an Expedit bookshelf turned on its side, complete with cubbies for every family member (including the dog Rex). To all the negative nellies, I know this bookshelf turned bench isn’t sturdy enough to hold Jabba the Hut, but we aren’t big people and won’t be sitting on it for longer than taking shoes off. No worries, there will be no leisurely lounging on the bench in our freezing cold garage.

While my husband was off last week, I took a trip to IKEA, sans kids. My first mistake was going on a Sunday. What am I, an idiot?! I was wondering if the place was on fire the way people were running through the showroom. Nope, people just go crazy in IKEA. I had a plan going in and everything was in stock so I loaded up my cart and pushed it through the warehouse, trying not to run innocent bystanders over because every cart I always choose seems to have a bum wheel and I totally look under the influence while pushing it.

I paid for my bookshelf, coat rack, coat hooks for the wall and baskets and made the 45 minute trek back home. I’ve never made a trip to IKEA without having one item be broken or missing and this trip was no exception (more on that later). A few days later I decided to start putting everything together. I took out my nice camera, had some music playing in the background and was on a damn roll.  I took careful pictures of every step of the process, even documenting my bleeding finger after I managed to slice it open on a cardboard box (because it wouldn’t be a home improvement project in our house without an injury).

I completed the project in a few hours, because honestly that’s all the time I have to spare with a newborn, planning a fundraiser and the other miscellaneous family crises going on right now. I plugged in my camera tonight to upload the pictures when I realized that DAMN IT I formatted my freaking memory card before taking the silent auction pictures for the fundraiser. It’s confirmed, I’m a MORON. I should have learned my lesson about formatting memory cards when I did this on my HONEYMOON and lost all my pictures.  Thankfully, this isn’t as serious as a once in a lifetime honeymoon and I can give you my iPhone pics from the IKEA adventure and the “after” pictures I just took. Putting together everything was relatively uneventful besides the paper cut. I lost a few screws from the coat rack and was crawling around looking for them before one of my kids ingested them and one of the bottoms of the wicker cubby baskets was missing. Rex gets that cubby. I’m pretty sure the only place my “after” photo of the faux-mudroom-turned-bench would be pinned is on a “don’t want this” board.

I apologize for my complete party-pooper of a post for the Pinterest Partayy. I am totally the geek who shows up to the party with a book while everyone else is doing keg stands. I guess that’s what happens when a Mom blogger shows up to a DIY/home improvement party. Oh well, lesson learned! I’m thankful I met some really cool women in the process and have some new blogs to stalk when I have a little bit more time (and patience) to work on DIY home projects. Please take a look around at the other host’s Pinterest Partayy posts and please link up below if you participated. In my eyes, if you did any Pinterest projects in the past two weeks, it counts! Seriously, I don’t care if you decorated a cupcake, I’d love for you to link up!

Behold, the best damn bookshelf turned bench you’ve ever laid eyes on:

This entry was filed under blog hop, home decor, house on Saturday, January 14th, 2012.