So here it is, in all of its glory!
I absolutely LOVE it! Finally, I can see what I look like in the morning from the waist down! Other pros: it fits with most of the decor I currently have, (although I am aware that my apartment is starting to look like an Ikea showroom...damn them for being so affordable!) and it brightens up the room! Since the mirror sits exactly opposite from the large windows on the other side of my studio, the light reflects off the mirror and completely changes the feel of the place.
As an example, here is what my apartment looked like on a sunny day before the mirror, and then what it looks like now:
Pretty cool, huh?
And now the fun part of the story, the saga of how I got this large mirror into my apartment!
Originally, the plan was that my dad and I were going to do a massive run with a car when he arrived the day before we left on vacation. I reserved a nearby Zipcar for 5 hours and had the errands all planned out so we could get them done in time. That got all blown to hell when his flight got cancelled and he wasn’t re-scheduled to arrive until the late evening.
When my dad called to say it had been cancelled, we did our freaking out, then got him re-booked. We decided I would run all of the errands myself and that way, he could at least help me put up some things when he got here that night. Thankfully, our flight out of the country didn’t leave until the next evening. Go me for proper exigency planning!
So I go to Ikea alone, grab a few other things, then head down to the bottom level to find this mirror. Problem: it is huge and in a large box. I try to get it on the cart, but the cart keeps running away from me. Try holding on to something with WHEELS while simultaneous lifting a 70 pound awkward box! Thankfully, there are nice people in the world. After seeing my struggle, a friendly couple came over and helped me heave it onto the cart. The same thing happened when I tried to stuff this thing in the trunk of the car. I put down the back seats, moved up the front seats as far as they could go, and attempted to lift the mirror up in there. A man walking by with his wife eyed me and came over to help. What nice people! Ikea staff were nowhere to be found during these struggles, however.
Then there was the saga of actually getting it IN my apartment! Thankfully, I could just slide it on the floor most of the way, but getting it out of the car was quite the struggle. Someone should have had a video camera during all of this to capture the insanity!
But it was worth it in the end!