swedish wolf's paw on the rocks

Yesterday was our designated vanity day.  No, we didn't stare at ourselves in the mirror all day but rather made the trek up to Round Rock Ikea for our first major purchase.  It was a very exciting day for us although there was kind of an odd sort of feeling buying vanities for bathrooms that didn't yet exist.  We planned on getting out fairly early so we could make a couple of stops in Austin and really enjoy the whole day.  The early escape we had planned almost immediately got side railed when we got a call from our contractor saying that he was meeting with the plumber at 12:30 out at the property.  Since this seemed like kind of an important meeting and we want to be as involved as possible in every aspect we delayed our Alamo City exit.  The meetup only lasted about 15 or 20 minutes but we were glad that we decided to go.  The plumber seemed knowledgeable, motivated, down to business, and like an all round nice guy.  There were a couple of decisions that I'm not sure could have been made had we not been there.  One was the location of the septic tank and the other was running an extra water line for future construction.  Feeling quite confident plumbing was headed in the right direction, it was onto Austin without anymore distractions!  Well, a few traffic delays and an irritated sciatic nerve later we decided to make a pit-stop in San Marcos at the Restoration Hardware outlet store.  What trouble could we possibly get into?  Well..................it turns out that among all of the very cool and very overpriced things that were in the store there were some very cool and very underpriced metal dining chairs that have been on our radar for awhile.  Here's RH's description of the chairs:

Early-20th-century café chairs from France served as the inspiration for our industrial-style seating. Its classic, simple design, light weight and compact proportions make it indispensible in a host of milieus.

And those exact words escaped my lips when I saw the chairs in the store, "indispensible in a host of milieus."  Except that when I said it it was with "indispensable" spelled correctly.  That's right, yours truly found a typo on the RH website.  I wonder if I could argue for an extra 10 or 20 percent off if I brought that little factoid to their attention.  So anyway, the Remy chairs which are normally $139 ended up in our hand for $40.  We ended up buying 8 chairs so that's $320 instead of $1112 (before tax of course).  The cool thing about the chairs is that they can be painted if we want another color.  We're not sure if these are going to be the interior or exterior dining chairs.  The important thing is that they are comfortable, virtually indestructible, stylish, and we got them super cheap.  So once again we got on the road feeling very good about what had just transpired.

So a toll road and some "amazing deal" banter later we arrived at the Round Rock Ikea.  We were slightly disappointed that we missed our Austin time and it was already around 5 o'clock.  We talked about stopping into a bar to have a drink or glass of wine but we were also anxious to wander IKEA.  We didn't want to go far so we drove around the parking lot just seeing what was there.  It was pretty much a big shopping center and things looked bleak until we came upon a Specs (the alcohol superstore).  All it once it made sense, spiked lingonberry cocktails.  So a bottle of Tito's vodka and two lingonberry fountain drinks later we concocted what turned out to be an actual drink, Swedish Wolf's Paw.  Who knew?  By the time we reached Småland we were feeling quite relaxed.  I won't say that Ikea is the best place to have a drink but I won't say that this wasn't a genius level move either.  Add in some Swedish meatballs and we are talking true enlightenment, "meaning of life" sort of stuff. 

So after the cafeteria transcendence we moved on to the bathrooms section, proceeded to find the items we came for, and mark down the warehouse location numbers with our IKEA provided unendowed pencil.  We did make one decision on the fly.  We had originally planned on having a 55" double sink/cabinet in the master bath.  After a short discussion we decided that two 31"  single sink/cabinets might work better and give us a little more flexibility with the leftover space.  It was a fairly quick trip through the warehouse even though we needed two of the flat industrial carts and a little help from the IKEA worker with the mohawk.  In the end we ended up with the following items:  one 39" Godmorgan/Odensvik sink cabinet combo, two 31" Godmorgan/Odensvik sink cabinet combos, one Godmorgan 39" mirror medicine cabinet, three Dalskar faucets, and nine Godmorgan legs for a grand total of $1313 with the 20%.  That saved us $303 which is almost the amount we spent on the dining chairs.  It's like it was meant to be.  Yes, I'm saying that a higher power wanted us to have discounted dining chairs.  So the sinks/vanities are officially taken care of coming in at almost $1700 under what we have budgeted..................not a bad Friday.

I should say that the modern home san antone blog does not advocate shopping and drinking unless it's Friday, you devote your entire day to it, and there's an amazing sale going on.................