making space without taking space

I bought a two drawer (side by side) dresser the other day from Value village. It's originally an Ikea Product. I had been eyeing this thing for a whole week..okay maybe three days or so. There is nothing really special to it, it's not even of any value. But here is what I did with it:

we need to stain the leg raisers still 

I've always wanted a high bed. they look so much more expensive and feel more expensive. At first I wasn't sure if this thing would fit under the bed. However, when I brought it home, I found out that it actually didn't. Not to fear, we right away began thinking of things around the house to place under the bed on the other end. I originally had one of those big plastic Tupperware things at the foot of my bed. it was the same height so we placed it under the bed and it held...until we sat on the bed. There was a loud crack and then a big thud as the bed came crashing to the floor. It's a good thing I got that tub for free! We ended up making raisers for our bed for each foot....which brings me to a side story:

we were in Home Depot ( that store smells sooo good!) looking for 4X4's to make the raisers. we found them in the lumber section (of course...it's not like they keep them in plumbing...that would be weird), had them cut to the length we needed, and took it to the cash. The price ticket attached to the skid of the 4X4's said $12.39. The cash registers told us $21.99. THERE IS NO WAY THAT I AM PAYING THAT MUCH FOR THIS PIECE!!! turns out that the price attached to the skid was not for the stuff on the skid but rather for the stuff on the skid below it. How stupid is that! any ways, we told them, you can either keep the wood that we just had cut and not be able to sell it for full price, or they could give it to us at the price labeled on the skid....of course we got it for the price we thought it was.

Anyways so yeah we now have a fancy bed with extra hidden storage...or at least storage that doesn't take up space...cause you can obviously see the drawers...they are not that well hidden. Of course it doesn't look as fancy as the real deal you would find in the furniture store, but a higher bed in my opinion looks great homemade or store bought...though store bought would look pretty fancy...but you get my point.


Another addition that we recently made to our humble little home is a tiny bookshelf. Now I know you are thinking "BOOOORING! everyone has a bookshelf" But I made mine out of a discontinued Ikea product I found on Kijiji. I am quite proud of this accomplishment because I normally get Fritz to make the purchases off Kijiji for me. I get too nervous making the phone calls to people who prefer to be called. so I have him do that. But I did it all by my self this time. I even picked it up.... side story:

I picked up this item in Burlington, which is maybe a 15 minute drive away for me. on my way back, because of rush hour, instead of taking the 403 I took Lakeshore road. I think I had a long line up of annoyed drivers behind me, because I was going about 30km/h gawking at the houses along the lake! those places are incredible!!!! WOW!!

Anyways back to the bookshelf. It started out as a discontinued Ikea cd tower. My plan was to slide out some of the shelves so that books can fit on it. But lo and behold, the shelves are all firmly stuck in place. so I had to search on line for the assembly manual for this specific item, to figure out how to unassembled it. any ways after going through all that this is what I got: