Mission Accomplished: Clothes Storage

Ever since cubes and I moved into our Mission SF apartment, we've been meaning to replace the hodge podge of nightstands we're piling clothes and files on top of and in. This weekend we did something about it. 

We went back to Room and Board to look at dressers and armoires/wardrobes. One thing that I've always liked about Room and Board is that the pieces are made by American craftsmen from materials sourced responsibly in the United States. Besides this the design is clean and modern - just what we like.

We came armed with the limiting dimensions of our apartment - specifically the height and functional width of the bedroom door frame (31 inches). This dimension ruled out double or triple-wide dressers, so we focused on chests of drawers. We also had a firm budget in mind.

We wanted to take a look at the furniture lines we'd bookmarked from the last time: the LaSalle and Sherman collections. 

The San Francisco store is good sized - 3 entire floors. So we started on first floor and went room from room. It was hard work.

OK - not really. It was a lot of fun. One thing that would have made shopping a little easier is if Room and Board would include the options selected on an item's tag. In the example above, the pulls selected, the base, and the stain.

We snapped photos of the pieces we might be interested in along with their dimensions so that we wouldn't have to go back and forth between rooms or up and down stairs trying to remember what we saw.

When we narrowed down our options to the Calvin and Grove collections, we sat down to figure out if the pieces would work in our bedroom with windows, doors, and radiator constraints.

Once we doublechecked that both pieces would make it through our front door and into our bedroom, we decided on the 5 Drawer Chest and Armoire from the Calvin Collection. We weren't entirely sure of the finish so we decided to take another look at the two finishes - the Mocha Stain and the Ebony - and ask our sales person for advice.

We selected the Mocha Stain over the Ebony as we were worried about dings on the Ebony stain, and chose the natural steel pulls to coordinate with our bed (Parsons Collection from Room and Board). 

So what do you think? We can't wait for them to arrive. In the meantime, we'll be cleaning and selling the mismatched nightstands.

Of course we left with another item on our wishlist for our entryway: 2 Drawer/3 Cubby Storage.