Monthly Archives: November 2013

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All the dressers in Switzerland

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The market interest in Switzerland is low for dressers, so most stores here do not provide many options to choose from. Without a closet, most people have to buy wardrobes anyway and they often have everything you need – drawers, shelves, clothes rails – built in. With all that variety in one spot, most people find an additional dresser redundant.

With our drawer-filled wardrobes looking too expensive to order, we are on the market for some affordable dressers to go with Option 1 wardrobe.

Sadly, the biggest variety can be found at IKEA because they are international and already making dressers for other markets so it doesn’t take much effort to offer them in Switzerland. I didn’t necessarily want to go the IKEA route (yet), so we made trips to Pfister, Möbel Pfister, Micasa, and Interio to see what else was out there.

Not only was Pfister out of our price range (2-3k for a designer dresser? No way.) but we didn’t love anything there. Micasa was a boon, we didn’t even bother visiting Fly again because their quality is terrible, so this left me with Interio, which is a slightly nicer, more expensive version of IKEA.

Here are a the few options I found.

1. SCHRÄG Kommode from Interio for 699CHF ($762)

2. SCHRÄG Kommode from Interio for 799CHF ($871)

I thought these ones were slightly interesting but a little expensive for how short or narrow they are. The lower drawers in the taller one are quite slim and would only work well for things like undies and socks. I think on their own, each dresser is not enough and I wish the shorter one was at least wider or something for more storage.

3. HIGHLIGHT Kommode from Interio for 899CHF ($980)I really liked the Highlight series at Interio, but Kay and I both agreed that while this dresser is nice, the drawers are slightly too thin.

The wardrobe guys in Dogern warned us not to get too thin drawers or you are limited how much you can put in them. A few on top would be nice for under garments, but we need some big drawers for sweaters and pants. The drawers have a nice soft close though!

4.  Interio Kommode (discontinued)

These ones below were also at the store just a couple weeks ago, but are not available online at the moment, so I’m not sure on the price or if they are still available for purchase. They would also be around 900-1000 a piece.

I didn’t pay too much attention to the price because while the drawers are nice and deep, they have a closing mechanism that makes them slam shut with a loud snap. I definitely don’t want noisy dressers in the room if someone is trying to quietly pick out clothes while the other is sleeping!

5. HIGHLIGHT Kommode (discontinued) from Interio for 999CHF ($1089)

We just saw this dresser a week or two ago. I knew it was being discontinued, but as I write this, it looks like it’s already offline. I thought it was an interesting concept with a dresser and built-in cupboard. It is meant for use in living rooms as well, but I thought one could use the shelves for sheets and pants and things and the drawers for undergarments.

When it was closed, the shape was really cool. It looked a bit like a stacked dresser and the height was really nice for the cabinet part. There was also one more thinner dresser in this series (only in the very lower right of this photo) but it is also discontinued now I believe.

That was about it from Interio. They had a few other offers, but nothing else really fit our style or needs. I wasn’t totally in love with any of the dressers above either and couldn’t justify the price for what you get. The whole point of skipping the expensive drawers in the wardrobe is mainly to save money… so we have to save on what we spend on dressers as well!

After exhausting all our other options, we turned to IKEA, which has many dressers and price points. Without glossy white options for most dressers, we are leaning heavily towards the black brown colors because we already have several pieces of furniture from IKEA with this color and it matches our bathroom cabinets perfectly, which are visible from the bedroom.

1. Malm Six-drawer dresser from IKEA for 199CHF ($216)

It seems like every time a dresser is wide enough for the space in our bedroom, the designers cut it down in height a bit. This one might be OK, but I don’t like when dressers or sideboards are lower than my hips. It just makes them a bit awkward and it makes me feel like a giant.

2. Malm Six-drawer dresser from IKEA for 199CHF ($216)

This one is a nice height, but all of the Malm furniture is pretty darn basic. It’s just so simple. I like that there are two drawers at the top to divide for undergarments, but it’s not the most exciting design.

3. Hemnes Eight-drawer dresser from IKEA for 249CHF ($271)

Again, I’m not sure if this one is too short for my taste, but I like how it has more drawers than the taller options and unlike the Malm, the drawers are split on the top level. This would be easy to split between the two of us without making me nervous that I don’t have enough sweater and pant space.4. Hemnes Six-drawer dresser from IKEA for 199CHF ($216)

The other option from Hemnes is the six drawer version. It is pretty tall, which I like. The top drawers are a little thin and it’s maybe a little weird that the second drawer is bigger than all the lower drawers. If I designed it, I would have put the largest drawer on the bottom or made all the lower drawers equal heights.

Kay actually dislikes the knobs on the Hemnes dressers. They are too old-fashioned for him, but if we buy one we could always upgrade the knobs to something more chic like simple brushed metal knobs. Kay is just not a fan of anything not simple and modern! (No beveled molding, not a fan of lots of materials, textures, patterns, etc.)

5. Malm Six-drawer dresser from IKEA for 149CHF ($162)

I admit that ever since one of my first trips to IKEA, I have wanted this dresser because it has a flip up mirror and jewelry box type thing going on. Love the idea of having easier access to my jewelry!

If we buy this, we would put it in the small space between the windows in the bedroom, but I’m concerned that Kay will just pile stuff on top of it since that is his side of the bed. But you cannot pile things on this dresser or the flip top becomes inaccessible!

Well… decisions! To be honest I’m actually worried that if we get a shorter dresser with lots of counter space, Kay will also pile clothes on that. He can be really bad about leaving things out and it drives me nuts.

I don’t want to have IKEA furniture forever, but you really can’t beat their prices here. We don’t have any of the cheaper brands here like Target, Kmart, Walmart (hate Walmart!) or Kohls, so with house things we are usually stuck with IKEA or paying $$$. If we move in another few years outside of Switzerland, I don’t want to invest thousands in furniture that we’d just have to sell, so I think it makes sense to stick with IKEA for now.

We just have to decide between a low and wide dresser with more storage or a more aesthetically pleasing taller dresser with a little less storage. In either case we will probably get the last option as an additional dresser because I really want that mirror option, so maybe another tall dresser would be fine. It would help me avoid the Kay-clothing-piling situation.

Where do you buy your dressers from? Is most of your house also furnished in IKEA and the like or have you been able to splurge for some nicer pieces?

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Swiss Wardrobe Quotation (Eeek!)

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Whelp, after I sketched up those wardrobe ideas, we received the offers from Dogern. They are so professional they also give you some simple renderings, which easily impresses me.

If you’ve forgotten, here is our bedroom floor plan. Our floor is darker of course. Two windows on the top wall, the bathroom door on the upper right wall and the door to the rest of the flat on the bottom wall.

We plan to make just one wardrobe now and possibly (depending on cost) supplement with a dresser or two on the other walls.

Frameless Doors:

These Noteborn doors are so nice. The frameless adds a very elegant touch and makes the whole wardrobe blend seamlessly into the wall. They are our favourites, but we weren’t looking forward to finding out the price.

Matrix Doors:

The Matrix doors are a little more clunky and have a frame running around each individual door, so if we choose white doors to match the walls, the doors will be broken up by the lines of the frames in each section.

Option 1:

The idea of option one is to save money on those expensive, expensive drawers and just go for hanging space and using drawers where we can’t fit any more space. The reason why I haven’t made it completely hanging space is that Kay’s clothes (shirts and pants) are all fairly longer than mine, so on his side (on the right) it’s not quite long enough for three rows of shirts and pants to fit. On my side (the left) I think I can squeeze one more row in for maximum capacity!

Option 2:

On this version we stick drawers in each section. It cuts down on the hanging space but in general should be as much or more space than we had with our old wardrobes in Zürich. And we have lots of drawer space for pullovers and pants and things.

Again I made Kay’s section (this time on the left) have more space for larger/longer clothes and on my side (this time in the middle) I put extra drawers in.

Prices:

  • Option 1 with Matrix doors: 7225CHF ($7871)
  • Option 1 with Frameless doors: 9458CHF ($10,304)
  • Option 2 with Matrix doors: 10049CHF ($10,948)
  • Option 2 with Frameless doors: 12420 ($13,523)

Yes, yes those are some crazy prices. But I’m afraid we’ve looked at almost every custom wardrobe place along the border in Germany and in Switzerland and this is way cheaper than a lot of other offers out there. It would have cost 20,000 or so to do two wardrobes, which is why we are either doing one or supplementing with dressers.

It costs an extra 2300CHF ($2500) or so to get the frameless doors, so as much as we love them… no. I just can’t. Not for a non-forever home at this point in our lives. It would add to the value of the house, but we really don’t have the money right now and I don’t want to live most of the time here with nothing just so we can get something nice for a year or two before we leave. That’s not smart!

As for the price difference between having tons of drawers or going for the supplemental dresser route, we are debating whether it’s worth it to save 2824CHF ($3076) and use some of that money to buy a dresser or two and have more storage. We would just need to find some dressers we like, which isn’t so easy in Switzerland!

Were you ever surprised how expensive it is to do something custom in your house?

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Organizing an unruly cellar

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Shortly after we moved in, this is what our cellar looked like:

BAM. Junk!

We sold our shelves from our previous cellar to the next renter so when we moved in, everything – including our broken bed frame – was dumped in the empty room.

After a couple months avoiding going in the basement we trashed the broken frame and the Styrofoam floating around, moved Kay’s bikes to the bike room in the garage, gave most of the moving boxes away and finally bought shelving! Now the place looks something like this:

The sink by the washer still doesn’t have any shelving, but it works for now. We bought a dehumidifier when we moved in and it has been running continuously emptying tons of water every day. We will probably let it run for at least two years.

Opposite the sink wall is our washing tower, which also doesn’t have any shelving yet, so I just store all the laundry items on the floor. The top of the dryer now just has a sweater on it that I need to dry clean.

On to the goods stuff…. look at all my hard work!

Kay and I put the first shelf together with a lot of cursing on Kay’s part, but while he was off skydiving one day I stayed home and painstakingly built all of the other shelves by myself, to the great surprise of Kay. He was really astonished that I could build them alone.

And of course after I built them I filled them up! (That’s my job anyway as I’m the organizer in this household.)

I was also really chuffed that we could stack ALL of our outdoor lounge cushions way up high on one of the shelves. So much space being utilized!

We’ve still got a fair amount of empty boxes and we still could use some more shelves, but this is a pretty good start. We also have things to get rid of like our old coffee machine, old microwave, old sewing machine, etc. that are taking up space.

On this wall we put up some wine storage that we never had before and actually have a fair amount of wine down there from our housewarming party. We are not big on saving wine, so I’m happy we are starting a little collection. 🙂

There’s all Kay’s army paraphernalia and motorbiking items. Lots of green in this cellar!

Kay was very impressed with the organization and he helped to condense his things further whene I was done. He has more random things here than I do because I still have things in storage at my mother’s house.

Cross another big project off the list. How do you organize your basement?