First of all, how was everyone’s weekend? We had great weather here (better than all summer, I think) so we had a dinner party in our patio on Saturday to thank our friends for their awesome gift. And we made lasagna for dinner! With homemade pasta! So stay tuned for recipes sometime this week or the next (since I still don’t have my own computer, and I’m blogging from a borrowed one, sharing pics is a bit difficult).

Anyway – remember that I shared a picture of a furniture piece I was putting together on Friday? Well, I’m finally telling you what it’s for (although the title is a dead giveaway). We have a lot of small tools and hardware around the apartment – they’re necessary for the projects we do around the house, obviously. The problem is that we don’t have a designated place to store them in, and so they’re always a disorganized mess. So I started looking online for tool storage systems but they were either a) ugly or b) expensive. Then I realized that I just needed something with lots of drawers – preferably small/shallow drawers, since we wanted to store our small tools only.

That’s when I accidentally stumbled upon this chest of drawers at Ikea. And I fell in love with it, because:

• It has six small and shallow drawers.
• It has wheels so it can be moved around.
• It is made of metal, so we can keep it outside if we need to.
• It comes in three colors, red, cream or silver. I initially wanted red (who doesn’t love a red “toolbox”?) but ended up choosing the cream because it’s the same color as the other metal furniture we have just outside the kitchen.
• Each drawer has a tag so we can write what’s inside and be even more organized.
• It is only 30€!

So, off to Ikea we went, and picked one up. (We also picked up a few plants, a frame, and a bunch of other stuff on the way – but that’s another story for another day).

This was last week, on Wednesday or Thursday. As soon as we got home, I wanted to put it together – but my boyfriend was tired (I also think he doesn’t like putting together furniture as much as I do). So I decided to put it together myself the next day. Which I did. It just took me a whole two hours, or maybe even more. For a tiny piece of furniture! I tell ya, deciphering Ikea instructions is never easy – and putting together something with this many drawers is a pain. Thank goodness I had music and TV to keep me company while I built it. My laptop started screeching towards the end of it, though… (but of course, stopped screeching as soon as I took it to be repaired).

I’ll stop blabbering now – here’s how it turned out:

We decided to keep it in the spare bedroom next to the desk, at least for now. It’s still empty though (just a few screwdrivers inside it), since we’ve been too busy this weekend making lasagna to fill it up. I love that it’s small and can be used for paper filing if I ever get tired of using it for tools. What do you think?

Oh, and since I realized I haven’t shared a proper house tour yet, here’s a few other shots of the spare bedroom to start:

As to where I got all the stuff: the daybed is Ikea; the cushions are Ikea and Zara Home; the bedspread is from Zara Home; the red chest drawer is the one I had growing up (although we painted it red); the desk is also the one I had growing up (we painted it white); the red filing cabinet is Ikea; and the curtains and picture ledge holding the license plates are also from Ikea. Oh and the chair is actually from the living room, but we got it at Ikea as well (we’re replacing the chair with another one hopefully this month). The elliptical machine is an eyesore, but necessary. And the My Goodness, My Guinness poster is a birthday gift from my friends from a few years ago, although the frame they gave me broke during the move so I replaced it with this one from Ikea. The placement of the poster is very odd, I know, but I swear it made more sense when I had a desktop computer. Now I’m just waiting to see if I can recover my desktop or I’ll center it behind the desk. The ceiling lamp, I made it myself from Ikea materials; and the floor lamp is also from Ikea. (Are you sensing a theme here? We don’t have a lot of furniture/home stores in the area. So everything is basically Ikea, Zara Home, or Casa).

What do you think? Share your opinion in the comments.