When I left the new apartment today, the whole of the furniture was a comfy chair, a couch, an old coffee table and a couple of wicker chairs we put out on the balcony.

When I got back?

The Ikea Fairies had come!

The new place was transformed.

All the things we bought a week before (23 items, total, to be shipped) arrived and were built by a couple of guys, from the Abu Dhabi Ikea store, over the course of about four hours.

And when I returned from work … a place that was so empty it echoed, when I left, was almost too crowded.

The most eye-catching of the stuff, I think, is the wall unit for the living room (above) — a stand for the TV, and then all sorts of storage and display space around it. Taking up nearly the whole of the wall in the “living room” half of the main area. It gave instant shape and focus to the room.

The most important item delivered and built was the king-size bed. We were ready for that, after two nights of sleeping on the couch and/or on a folded up mattress pad. Admiring the view from the eighth floor wasn’t going to be enough to make the semi-camping comfortable.

Now, it’s about putting things away, and figuring out what goes where.

Kind of a remarkable event. To leave a couple of near-empty rooms and come back to a mostly decorated and furnished home.