A Different Kind of House Tour

Yes, this is me and Mr P at the Tampere IKEA ... and me a sworn IKEA dissident, I know! The whole 'force you to walk through every inch of the store'  thing has always put me off. But alas, when you must ...

fully furnish an apartment in 3 days IKEA is a must ...

We are the Housing Missionaries here in Finland, serving our church, The Church of Jesus  Christ of Latter-day Saints.  When we have more missionaries coming than we have leaving, we rent new apartments and furnish them. 

As you see it's a fairly bare bones furnishing, which I admit is hard for me to walk away from ...

But a fun orange rug still makes me smile. I used to go garaging with a friend who loved orange. She's fun and has great style. One tender mercy for me, here, was running into a young Sister Missionary, who grew up down the street from Dyan!  I asked her if Dyan still loves orange!  YES!  

We found this amazing couch at a thrift store here. Super comfy, but hubs and two younger missionaries had to haul it up three flights of stairs because it's too tall to fit in the elevator. Oops. 

Here's the study area for a companionship of missionaries, back to back desks. 

Did you know that IKEA furniture takes an hour and a half to assemble?  Yep, neither did I, and with five kits we ended up staying a day longer than planned. Yes, Mr P is a rockstar, must have been all those erector set projects when he was a kid!! 

When we were loading our cardboard to take to a recycler, an older man in our parking garage asked if we were moving in ... he was so friendly and had a twinkle in his eye. We were a little sad to admit that the apartment was not for us. I'd would have loved to have had him as a neighbor. (This is not actually him, Finnish law prohibits publishing pics of people without their express permission) 

... and we drive away ... another first behind us!  It was a lot of hard work, but we've always loved doing projects together... and for the first time I've come to appreciate Ikea, and their meatballs!!