Reading chair; IKEA

Trying to find a smaller chair + ottoman I can kick back in for listening or reading. As much as I’d love an Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman, it’s a bit out of my budget and takes up a lot of space in my somewhat constrained floorplan (I’m trying to keep some open space for the pups...). Amazon has a slew of ~$75-120 offerings but they’re all kinda sus. (Not to denigrate the good corporate name of the venerable KOMFOTT, but, y’know...)

So I stumbled across the IKEA POÄNG chair, which apparently is a long-standing classic, available in a bewildering array of color and cushion combinations. 

POÄNG pages from 2002 IKEA catalog

The cushions at least have been helpfully summarized by a redditor:

• Knisa - cheapest and thinnest (“The Knisa is noticeably thinner and less padded than the rest, still comfortable but will wear out faster ...”)
  
• Lysed / Vislanda - thicker than knisa, medium durability, kind of a middle ground
• Hillared - as thick as Lysed, but more durable fabric
• Glose - leather, most expensive, white color gets dirty easily and will need to be cleaned

(Apparently now it goes Knisa, Skiftebo, Hillared, Gunnared, Glose?)

So, to get a decent cushion with an ottoman, it’s looking like $129 (POÄNG Armchair, birch veneer, Skiftebo dark grey, to match my sofa) + $60 for a matching ottoman), $190 isn’t too bad for this little luxury. If I’ll fit. I’m almost all torso... 

(Or do I go black? The brown wood wouldn’t really match the rest of my wood (walnut (?) Pottery Barn coffee table with drawers; walnut A/V credenza; walnut desktop on my UpLift), but the black would match, e.g., my speaker stands, the legs on my UpLift, the monitor and speaker stands attached to my UpLift, my Aeron chair...)

After initially furnishing my first apartment with IKEA, I may be going back to the Swedish font. Thinking KALLAX (plus DRÖNA cubes) for closet taming and maybe to stack some organization next to my white built-in bookcases in the living room. And of course there’s the propensity in the keyboard community to use SKÅDIS pegboards to store and display builds. Finally, replaced my old well-worn sofa and loveseat with an inexpensive FRIHETEN Sleeper sectional (Skiftebo dark gray), which, while clearly cheap, is surprisingly comfortable including as a bed, as long as you’re laying down in the right direction 🙃:

IKEA illustration showing proper bed orientation for FRIHETEN

I’ve crashed on it in sofa mode and had a good night’s sleep, but for guests I added a Lucid 2 Inch Mattress Topper Full XL - Memory Foam and a Lucid 2 Inch Mattress Topper Cover Full XL, and of course added sheets and pillowcases, a comfy blanket, pillows and throw pillows). It’s not the be-all end-all but it’s much nicer than the expired pieces it replaced, takes up way less room (paving the way for my living room workstation redo), and more than does the job for now. It’s functional, both dogs and I can stretch out comfortably (a requirement; my senior street stray seems to be feeling more and more displaced by her younger “brother”), and, just, yeah.

Then there was the EFFEKTIV office desks we had in our loft office at a startup I was at ~18 years ago. 

Meanwhile, I’m still using the GLASHOLM glass desktop from a 22(?) year old IKEA desk (the ARTUR trestles are long gone, replaced by filing cabinets) ...

IKEA GLASHOLM glass desktop with ARTUR trestles