The Apartment / Brooklyn

The best box.

May 15, 2013

doorsixteen_ikea_kvittrabox

Have you been sitting around wondering which box is the best box? Probably. Me too. Guess what? I figured it out! This box is the best box: KVITTRA from IKEA (specifically the “red” design), designed by Anna Salander. I’ve been noticing Salander’s name on a lot of nifty IKEA stuff for the past couple of years, but this box is just the best. It’s made of a sturdy cardboard that’s coated with a screen-printed paper. The paper has slightly embossed texture to it, almost like fabric. And the colors! Perfect.

I actually have two KVITTRA boxes stacked on top of each other here. They’re only $9, so I picked up a couple when we first rented the new apartment without really having a specific purpose in mind for them. Last night I finally put them together, and now they’re holding all of my extra buttons, pouches, cables and so on — all of the little things that have sort of just been floating around looking for a place to be stored. I could put them in a closet, sure, but they’re much nicer just sitting on the living room floor.

And yes, there are a few other things to talk about here, like the new rug (!!!), the credenza, the lion head…and the fact that I can’t stop painting walls with that Deep Space paint. I’ll get to all of that soon enough, but I just couldn’t wait to share this box! The best box.

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Turning an ugly backsplash into something that’s quite nice to look at (and temporary!).

Apr 12, 2013

Handmade
The Apartment / Brooklyn

107 comments

backsplash before & after

Remember the ugly kitchen in the my new apartment? The one with the kale chip counters, the cherry-colored doors and the backsplash made out of what are very clearly floor tiles? Yeah, that’s the one. Check out what I just did with the backsplash, though! This was a weekend project that I put very little planning into, and I am really, really happy with the result.

apartment backsplash

This is light years better, right? I kind of don’t even hate the kitchen anymore. Don’t get me wrong, if the landlord suddenly asked me to do a gut renovation I’d start this weekend, but in the very likely event that he doesn’t, I’m totally OK with how the kitchen looks now. It’s pretty amazing how well that color (yes, it’s Benjamin Moore Deep Space again) neutralizes the red tones in all of the wood in this apartment. The cabinet color is actually tolerable now! When we picked out the paint we made sure it picked up on some of the gray undertones in the countertop, too. They look more black than green now, which is a very good thing.

So basically all I did here was cover up the tile with plywood that I painted a pattern on. It’s held in place with Velcro, so I can remove it anytime with no permanent effect.

Here’s a step-by-step…

backsplash step by step 1

1. I used 1/4″ pre-sanded baltic birch plywood (not luan). I needed 3 2×4′ panels to do this backsplash. They were about $8 each. I chose ply over masonite/MDF primarily because it’s much lighter weight.

2. I measured out the panel dimensions, then did all of my cuts with a jigsaw. I’m sure I could’ve gotten more perfect lines with a circular saw, but ours is up at the house and I just wanted to get this done. I have a pretty steady hand, so the jigsaw really was fine.

3. To cut out the opening for the outlet, I drilled a hole first so I could get the saw blade in.

4. I test-fit the panels to make sure everything lined up right.

5. I gave the plywood a coat of primer. It’s really important to prime BOTH sides when you’re dealing with flexible stuff like beadboard, molding trim pieces and thin ply, otherwise you’re going to have a lot of warping. Trust me, it’s worth the extra time.

6. One coat of my base color was enough. I let it dry for about 3 hours before getting started on the pattern — I used that time to figure out what I was going to paint! There aren’t any progress photos of the pattern-painting, but I just used primer and little foam brush to paint it on freehand. (And yes, it took forever.) You could certainly use a stencil or stamp or whatever, but I didn’t want any repeats in my pattern. Every little line is unique.

backsplash step by step 2

7. This might sound crazy, but I was a little worried about the original white backsplash showing through the seams of the dark panels, so I put some strips of painter’s tape on a sheet of aluminum foil and…

8. …I painted them to match the panels. Yup.

9. See what I mean? I knew it would drive me crazy to see a sliver of white, so it’s just an extra little bit of insurance.

10. And finally, Velcro! I used almost one full roll of Velcro Ultra-Mate. It cost about $17, which seemed insane to me, but I guess that’s how much Velcro costs unless you’re smart and buy it online first. I just put a few inches in each corner, plus a few extras along the edges for the bigger panels. It’s SUPER secure.

Total cost = $42. Soooooo worth it.

A few things I didn’t do, but that I still might do…

✚ Put a coat of matte polyurethane over the whole thing for extra protection.
✚ Add a bead of clear silicone caulk where the panels meet the counter.
✚ Switch out the cabinet knobs. OK, I’m definitely doing that. The current knobs are cheap-o brassy things that most of the finish has rubbed off of. I think I’ll just go with simple, small black knobs.

EDIT! ALSO! HEY! READ THIS!
Reader Jenny questioned the use of combustible material around a gas range, which is definitely a valid concern. You should check your range’s clearance requirements and local code before doing something like this around a burner/stovetop. In my case, because this is not a high-powered or backless range, the wall in back of the stove is not a concern. The sidewall to the left of the range is another story, though, and I will probably replace that piece with stainless steel upon further thought. I did kind of dismiss it because the range is already actually TOUCHING the wood casing around the window right next to it (that seems bad, right? But my brother lived here for 5 years without setting the place on fire…), but hey, a little extra safety can’t hurt.

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An unexpected side effect of working on this project is that I really feel like painting. Not painting houses, but painting stuff. I feel like designing wallpaper, too. And pillows. And blankets. And everything, really. I wish I had time! I have so many ideas. I do write them down, at least.

Quick + cheap: Frameless frame.

Apr 9, 2013

Music + Movies + Books
Nerdstalgia
The Apartment / Brooklyn

73 comments

Morrissey in a frameless frame

For the past 22 years, I’ve been dragging this giant Morrissey poster around with me everywhere I’ve lived — and I’ve lived in a lot of places. It’s done a few stints rolled up in a closet (not for any loss of love for Morrissey, mind you), but it always winds up back on the wall again. One of the first things I thought about when we rented the new apartment was, “Where is Morrissey’s head going to go?”

I’ve never had it in a frame, and the damage it’s incurred as a result is really starting to show. When you’re 15 years old and sticking up a Morrissey poster with Fun-Tak and pushpins and taping the back when it inevitably falls a million times, you’re not thinking about someday being 37 years old and still having that same poster on your wall. At some point I made the switch from tape and tacks to Jørgen Møller’s Posterhanger, which did work well for a few years. It’s a good design, but I think this post is just too big and heavy — it’s about 4×5′, which is pretty darned large and unwieldy. Morrissey started falling again, so I rolled him up and vowed to be a REAL GROWN UP and get him framed properly once and for all.

There’s a very well-rated frame store right near the apartment, so one evening Evan and I popped in to get a quote. I had braced myself for it to be around $600, thinking that if I prepared for the worst I’d be pleasantly surprised when the quote came in lower.

Well, the quote did not come in lower. For the most basic framing option in the simplest frame, the quote was — wait for it — $1300. Yes. I guess I’ve been spoiled by years of cramming stuff into cheap RIBBA frames from IKEA, but I was totally caught off guard. I glazed over immediately and tried to politely listen to the rest of the spiel from the framer before I apologized for wasting her time and left. The other thing I learned was because my reckless teenage self fixed the poster’s tears by putting tape all over the back, it’s not a candidate for reinforcement options like dry-mounting or linen backings. Boooooooo.

At that point, I figured I had four options: (1) Learn how to frame stuff, buy the necessary tools and materials, and frame it myself; (2) Become really good friends with someone who owns a framing shop and then put them in a horrible position where they owe me a huge favor; (3) Order a cheap framing kit online that I’ll never really be happy with; or (4) Slap something together with spare parts and call it a day. I chose option #4.

So here you have it! A couple of lattice strips cut to size, two thumbtacks (inserted through the back of the poster and into the lattice — one at the center top, and one at the bottom) and four binder clips. Done! No, it’s not fancy, and yes, someday I’d still like to have the poster framed by a skilled framing professional who knows what they’re doing, but for now this is totally fine. It’s not going to fall, rip or sag, and that’s all I really care about.

frameless frame

Side bonus! Here’s a quick review of me and “Our Frank” over the years. I wish I had more pictures of my bedrooms in the ’90s, but such are the realities of life before digital cameras and iPhones. Despite the passing of years, my love for Morrissey remains as strong as the cut of his 30″ jawline. (He’s even in my bio now!)

Our Frank

Turning dead space into a functional entryway.

Apr 2, 2013

Scavenged
The Apartment / Brooklyn

52 comments

doorsixteen_newapt_alcoveBA

One of my favorite things about the new apartment is that that the last set of stairs — it’s a 4th-floor walkup — is just for us. Our apartment door is at the bottom of the stairs, and you walk up directly into our living space. That means that there’s no hallway noise, which in turn means that Bruno and Fritz are less stressed out (like most Chihuahuas/Chi mixes they are excellent watch dogs). That was a huge problem in our last apartment with its hotel-like corridors. When you get to the top of the stairs, there’s a small landing and a little wall that backs up to the refrigerator. It was pretty much dead space before, but over the last couple of weeks I’ve been turning it into a cozy little alcove-ish entryway.

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This is what you see first walking up the stairs into the apartment. And yes, that is an outdoor gate functioning as a railing, and yes, it is hideous. But we can talk about that in another post.

You might recognize that bear print from, oh, every other apartment I’ve lived in. It’s a silkscreen print from Banquet Atelier & Workshop, and I love it very much. It’s hanging off-center because I wanted to cover up the ugly electrical panel, and I figured that since the door buzzer and the light switches are all herky-jerky and crooked already, what’s another thing being off? If you ask me, three wrongs make a right.

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We’ve been trying to find a place to put the walnut Hang-It-All for more than two years! FINALLY!

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Shelves for dumping mail, keys, coins and jewelry! This is what they like to call a “landing strip” over at Apartment Therapy. I don’t like to call it that because it makes me think of bikini waxing, so let’s just call this the alcove. “Hey, where are my sunglasses?” “Oh, they’re in the alcove.” Works fine for me.

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One thing I love about having a blog is that I can marvel over how much time passes between when I get an idea for a project and when I actually wind up seeing that project through. I bought this mirror for $5 on the street in Philadelphia in 2007 (our hallway looks so plain and sad, and I look so skinny…sigh), and since then it’s been sitting in a closet waiting for me to do something with it. It’s pretty badly damaged, and someone tried to fix it with what I think might be drywall compound, but I’ve stopped caring. I’m just happy to have it up on the wall finally! It’s really perfect in this spot. I don’t even mind the damage. See? If you hoard stuff long enough, eventually it pays off.

The little neon pink triangles are wall stickers from Ferm Living’s kids collection. I have a billion of them, and I have to force myself to not put them EVERYWHERE. So cute.

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I could have put more shelves in this space, but since most of our books are kept at our house and we already have shelving in the bedroom, I kept it to a minimum. I’m sure over time more stuff will accumulate here, and I definitely need to add flowers. I also need to paint the shelf cleats to match the wall, but I’m all out of Deep Space — I’ll will myself into going to the paint store soon for more.

Shelves like this are really easy to make, by the way. This took me all of 30 minutes to do, including cutting and sanding the boards. I had a few $3 TRYGGVE shelves from IKEA in the basement at the house, so I just used those. It would be nicer to have deeper, chunky old wood shelves, but I didn’t want to wait. If I ever want to swap them out for different wood, it’ll only take a minute. No biggie.

doorsixteen_easyshelving2

For light-duty shelving like this, you can get away with using a simple cleats on either edge instead of using brackets. I dug through my scrap pile and came up with a broken RIBBA frame (yes, I keep everything) that I thought would be perfect for the job! You can use anything that’s thick enough and drill-able, though — furring strips, scrap lath, a 1×2, whatever.

doorsixteen_easyshelving1

Mark out a level line on the wall, drill pilot holes through the cleats, put anchors in the wall (or drill into studs), screw in your cleats. Done! So easy. If you use heavier-duty wood and run a third cleat along the back wall, you can make very strong shelves. This is how we built the shelving in our pantry at the house, and it’s strong enough for huge stacks of dishes! Just make sure the shelf isn’t too deep and that you’re not using chipboard or MDF for cleats if you plan to use your shelves for heavy stuff.

Working on the apartment kitchen.

Mar 28, 2013

The Apartment / Brooklyn

79 comments

doorsixteen_aptkitchen_island

The thing about owning a house and renovating it very, very slowly — and with no one’s taste in mind but your own — is that you really start to feel like every tiny detail matters after a while. I don’t mean that you spare no expense or that everything has to be perfect (I pity the fool who buys a 125-year-old house and expects perfection), I just mean that there’s nothing stopping you from spending 7 years trying to find the perfect light fixture. Trust me, I know. We’ve been working on the kitchen at our house since 2006, and it is gradually becoming exactly what we want it to be.

It’s different when you rent, though. Things tend to happen faster because you don’t know how long you’ll be living in one place, and depending on how lenient your landlord is, you may not be able to do all of things you’d like — not to mention the hesitancy to invest time and money in someone else’s property. As someone who is currently an owner and a renter, I’ve found that all of these rental issues get amplified when they’re contrasted with the benefits of ownership.

So, on that note…the kitchen in the new apartment! I spent a few hours working on it over the weekend. All I’ve really done so far is paint the back and side wall with Benjamin Moore’s Deep Space (the same paint I used in the bedroom), changed out a light fixture and hung up a rail above the sink, but even with just a bit of effort it’s starting to look better.

doorsixteen_aptkitchen_before

I very stupidly forgot to take a series of “before” pictures. BOO. All I have is this one! You can see, though, that I’m dealing with the same orange wood-overload issues as in the bedroom, but with an added tragedy: Cherry-finished cabinets. Now, I know there are plenty of people out there who love cherry cabinets. I am not one of those people. In fact, if you had to ask me to describe my WORST kitchen nightmare, it would probably involve a collapsing ceiling, cherry cabinets and forest green countertops.

Which brings me to the following…

doorsixteen_aptkitchen_kalecounters

Yeah. Forest green quartz. With a beveled edge. The words alone are like locusts screeching in my brain. I swear the universe is laughing at me for being such a jerk about kitchens I think look dated and tacky, because now I have one just like that. Womp womp. I’m still going to be a jerk about it, though, because otherwise the countertops will have won.

doorsixteen_aptkitchen_longview

Here’s a long view of the kitchen, which is completely open to the living space. I know this picture makes it look like our apartment is a dark, miserable cave (not that dark miserable caves are a bad thing — some of my best friends are cave-dwellers), but that’s just because I took it at 7PM last night. In reality, this place gets a TON of daylight even though it’s an attic conversion. Between the skylight in the bedroom (north side) and the full-length windows in the kitchen (south side), it the brightest, sunniest place I’ve ever lived in.

The interior architecture is weird, though, and the ceiling in the kitchen area is pretty low…about 7′-ish. I like that more than I thought I would. I’m not usually a huge fan of open kitchens, but the height differential makes the space feel distinct from the rest of the room.

I still can’t get over the ginormousness of this place, and it’s amazing to me that it hasn’t been carved up into 2 or 3 smaller apartments. The layout of the kitchen is kind of silly considering the size of the room — I can’t understand why they chose to install that island (peninsula?) on the left 6 miles away from the main wall of the kitchen on the right. It does have an overhang on the window side, though, so we’re going to get some stools and make it a nice place to sit and eat.

doorsixteen_aptkitchen_main

Sigh. The uneven cabinet heights, the weird floating microwave, the cabinet boxes that are a different finish from the cabinet fronts, the fluorescent light…it’s just not cute. I’m not even sure that painting the cabinets would make me like it more, because the installation was so poorly executed. I kind of just want to live with it as-is and then eventually (like in a couple of years — Evan and I both LOVE this apartment!!) propose a complete renovation of the kitchen to the landlord. We’d do all of the labor, of course, and I know from experience that I can get the job done for under $3000 easily. Who knows, maybe he’ll go for it. Right now, though, I’m not sweating it. The appliances work well, there’s a ton of storage space, and it definitely does look better with the walls painted. Maybe I’ll cover the backsplash with something temporary and less glaringly high-contrast, too. That would help.

doorsixteen_aptkitchen_sinkdetail

Speaking of the backsplash, I wanted to take a moment to mention those tiles. See how big they are? Not only are they too big for the area they’re covering (12″ tiles are never going to look right on a backsplash that’s 18″ high, come ON), but THEY’RE OBVIOUSLY MEANT TO BE FLOOR TILES. This is a huge pet peeve of mine. It’s even worse when the same tiles are actually used on the floor elsewhere in the house. Ew, man. I don’t want to think about floor tiles while I’m cooking food. Yes, there are some tiles out there that can do double duty, but these 12″ marble contractor specials (they cost $1 each, which is why you see them everywhere) don’t cut it. Subway tiles are just as cheap, and it’s not that much extra labor. Stop being lazy.

Okay, thanks. I needed to get that off my chest.

doorsixteen_aptkitchen_radiator

doorsixteen_aptkitchen_windowbox

Two things I love! The weird/creepy industrial radiator that’s supposed to be enclosed but isn’t, and the VIEW. The guys that own our building also own the empty lots behind it (they rent them out for parking), and since they’re not interested in selling them to developers, we have a clear view of both the beautiful block next to ours and the rest of Cobble Hill beyond that. The sunsets are amazing. Also, there are a couple of built-in window boxes for me to plant stuff in when (if?) the weather warms up a bit. I’m thinking ornamental kale and cabbage.

doorsixteen_aptkitchen_cloudlight

doorsixteen_aptkitchen_hektar

I replaced the fluorescent light over the island with the smaller HEKTAR light from IKEA. The entire HEKTAR series is really good-looking and very nice quality. I wish I had a place to put the big pendant, because it’s sooooo nice in person (and huge). I still have to fix the ceiling where the old light was…I’ll get to that before I paint the ceiling Moonlight White.

I’m not sure what to do about the other fluorescent light, though. At first I thought I’d hang another HEKTAR but just shorten the cord, but I misjudged just how low the ceilings are — and how close that fixture is to the sink and stove. Anything lower than the existing fixture would be a head-bonking waiting to happen. I really only have about 7″ of clearance. I’m not sure what kind of light is that small and will look good with the HEKTAR hanging a few feet away. Maybe I need to just hang two of the same but swag the one on the sink side so it’s closer to the center of the room? I don’t know, I guess that would look dumb. Maybe I should just cap the other fixture and get by with one light. The microwave has a light, and I could install the undercabinet lighting I used to have in the kitchen at the house. Hmmmm. Ideas?

New light fixture in the bedroom!

Mar 19, 2013

The Apartment / Brooklyn

29 comments

doorsixteen_aptbedroom_nelsonbubble3

OK, first of all (and I know I’m always saying this), I’m sorry about the quality of these photos. I was half-asleep when I took them this morning, and I didn’t realize my camera was on the wrong setting (the unpopular “grainy and dark” setting, apparently) until I was about to jam my boots on and run out the door. I’m too impatient to wait to take new photos tomorrow morning, so I’m calling these good enough.

Last night I pretty much bolted home after work in order to beat the sunset and get this light wired up while I still had some daylight left. All of the lights and outlets in the apartment are on the same circuit, so when I kill the power it’s pretty much everything…unless I leave the refrigerator open and rely on that to see by, but that seems like a bad idea somehow. Anyway, I managed to take the subway back to Brooklyn, stop in at the hardware store for some masonry bits and pick up a vegan pork banh mi sandwich from Hanco’s (my fourth in four days, OMG…but that’s a whole other post) in time to make it to the apartment with an hour of daylight left. YES!

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I knew as soon as we moved into this apartment that I was going to want a Nelson Bubble lamp either in the bedroom or the living room. I’ve always liked them, but I couldn’t find the right place for one in our narrow house. The apartment is much wider and more open, though.

We did our usual jaunt to the DWR Annex to see if we could get one in less-than-perfect condition for a discount, and we lucked out! They had several in stock and marked down considerably. This one was actually in perfect condition—according to the shipping label on the carton, it was returned by someone named Eileen in Rye, NY, who must have decided she didn’t want it after all before so much as taking it out of the box. Suit yourself, Eileen! Your indecision, my gain.

(This is the Nelson Ball pendant in medium, by the way, in case you’re trying to get a sense of scale. It’s about 19″ in diameter.)

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Perrrrrrrfect. I hate saying stuff like this because it sounds so cheesy, but it really ties the whole room together. I’m not a huge fan of stuff that looks super-retro-y or “atomic” or whatever, but I’ve always thought the Nelson lamps transcend that look and stop on the right side of gimmicky. They really kind of do go with everything, too.

doorsixteen_bedroomlight_UGLY

I couldn’t bring myself to put these photos higher up in the post, but why don’t we do a quick look back at the atrocity that this lamp is replacing? That thing on the left…oh man. I took it down and put it in storage last week, and it even worse up close that it is in a photo. I think the “metal” parts might actually be plastic? I’m not sure, but I’m glad I don’t have to see it anymore. Well, except for the matched pair that’s still hanging in the living room, haha.

As you can see from the photo on the right, I had to do a pretty hasty swag-and-coil in order to hang the new lamp in the visual center of the room next to the skylight. I still haven’t painted the ceiling, but when I do I’ll obviously repair the area around the canopy. This morning while I was in the shower I had a really good idea about how to make the swagging look better (I’ll cut the cord to the right length once I’m positive about the height, too), but you’ll have to wait and see! Unless it doesn’t work, in which case I’ll never mention it again.

And finally, here’s the indoor full moon lit up in the bedroom last night…

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Some progress in the apartment bedroom…

Mar 5, 2013

The Apartment / Brooklyn

70 comments

The bedroom in the new apartment is coming together much faster than I thought it would, and it’s looking pretty cute. Well, at least I think so. I haven’t hung anything on the walls yet because I still have to paint over the existing glossy white paint with a softer, flat white, but it’s definitely getting there.

The only new thing we’ve bought for this bedroom is the dresser in the corner. It’s the gloss tall chest from CB2, and I’m super happy with it. The cutout pulls (which are actually backed with a recessed metal panel, though that’s hard to tell from these photos) and proportion are reminiscent of Asplund’s classic “Snow” dresser, but with a much glossier finish and a much lower price tag. This is the first thing I’ve bought from CB2 that required assembly and has movable parts, and it’s made a good impression. The quality is much better than I’d expected it to be.

Also, can I say how nice it is to have proper clothing storage? We have a really nice setup at the house (Holy cow, that’s an OLD photo! The dressing room looks like this now, but you can’t see the PAX wardrobes—I guess I should do an updated dressing room post…), but in the apartments we’ve alternated between stuffing our clothes into a fauxdenza in the old studio, and stuffing our clothes into a couple of tiny RAST chests inside of our closet since there was no space for a real dresser in the bedroom at the last place. Wow, that was a long sentence. Shorter version: YAY DRESSER! YAY SPACE!

Check it out, there’s a SOFA in our BEDROOM! I can’t get over how huge this room is. Our last two apartments have been pretty tiny, so we’ve been using a small KARLSTAD loveseat from IKEA in lieu of a full-size sofa. It’s perfectly fine, but two people plus two dogs on a loveseat gets a little too cozy after a while! Now that we have a bigger living room (pictures to come, I promise), we decided to put the loveseat in the cavernous bedroom instead. I’m not sure how likely we are to actually sit there, but it looks nice and the dogs are always excited to have another place to nap. Bruno sometimes gets annoyed by how much space Evan, Fritz and I take up in bed at night (I know, how dare we!), so now he can walk off in a dramatic huff to sleep on the sofa without even having to leave the room.

I love this little arrangement. That neon pink-toppped vase from ¿adónde? has been on my wishlist for a while now, but for $250…I just couldn’t do it. I hit the jackpot at the DWR Annex last week, though, and brought one home for $50. Yay! That little black vase is from CB2 (discontinued), the little “Fire” candle holder (a gift from my mother) is by Iittala, the perpetual calendar (also a DWR Annex score) is by Massimo Vignelli, and the cross vase is the most awesome thing I’ve ever found at the Goodwill for $3. I love that thing.

The last bit of bedroom updates is the addition of bookshelves. We don’t keep many books at the apartment (I SWEAR I HAVE MORE THAN 20 BOOKS! They’re all at the house!), but inevitably a few do wind up not making the journey to Newburgh. This is really all the space we need for that kind of thing. When I mounted these shelves in the last apartment, I predicted IKEA would discontinue the wonderful steel EKBY OXIE brackets, but it appears they still carry them! I still think I should stock up. They’re good-looking, strong and cheap. Like me! No, not like me. I’m just cheap.

Still on the apartment bedroom to-do list:
✚ Replace that horrible light fixture we’ve agreed to not discuss
✚ Paint the white walls and ceiling BM Moonlight White
✚ Hang art
✚ Make the closets nice inside (FLOR tiles?)
✚ Figure out if I want some kind of window covering
✚ Obsess over finding the right rug

New bedroom sneak peek. Painting!

Feb 26, 2013

The Apartment / Brooklyn

94 comments

Benjamin Moore Deep Space

It’s been just over a week since we moved into the new apartment, and I can tell you two things with certainty: We’re going to be holding onto this place for a good, long time, and we’re also going to be working on fixing it up for a good, long time. Both of these things make me happy.

Now that all of the deep-cleaning is done, I’ve started in on painting the bedroom. I knew I wanted to use a dark charcoal gray with a little blue in it, and after spending a while looking at paint chips in natural and artificial light, I went with a color I’ve had in the back of my mind for a long while: Benjamin Moore Deep Space (matte finish). I think I first saw it in this sneak peek…or it might have been this one. I really like how soft it looks, and that it reads as a true charcoal in daylight. It’s definitely not black, but it doesn’t go green or brown or anything, either. It’s just right.

before and during

Yes, the bedroom is enormous—about 500 square feet. Seriously! It’s bigger than our last apartment was in its entirety. It’s stupidly large, and it’s kind of a weird space. I dig it. The apartment is a converted attic, and that jog in the front wall is where the original building façade ends. The clerestory windows are part of the vertical extension of the attic, and are not original to the building. (Does that make sense?) Also: SKYLIGHT. Yes. Love.

One of the biggest challenges I’m up against is an enormous amount of wood. Shiny, orange-toned, unpainted, stained and varnished WOOD. Wood floors (no complaints there), wood baseboard moldings, wood windows, wood window casings, wood cabinets and lots and lots of wood doors. Sigh. At least the moldings are wide and the doors are solid.

Now, if I had my druthers, I’d be painting all of that wood (OK, maybe not the floors) white in a hot second. I don’t own this apartment, though, and as much as I believe in doing what you need to do to make a rental your home, I also believe in respecting other people’s property. There’s a fine line between improvement and destruction depending on your point of view. I’ve rented a lot of apartments over the years, and I take pride in the fact that I’ve left every one of them in better condition than I found it in—by anyone’s standards. No landlord in his or her right mind is going to complain about me stripping the paint off of old door hardware, tiling a backsplash or recaulking a bathtub, but painting unpainted woodwork is another story.

In other words, once we’ve been living here for a while, I’ll ask the landlord if he minds if I paint the woodwork. Haha. In the mean time, this deep charcoal paint really does a good job of taking the edge off of all that wood by making it way less high-contrast.

painted bedroom walls

Pretty nice, yeah? Scroll up to that before picture again to compare. It’s like night and day! Har, har. Jokes aside, the dark paint makes a HUGE difference. I really couldn’t be happier. Isn’t it amazing what a $50 can of paint can do? I wasn’t sure how much of the room I wanted to make dark, so I just took it one wall at a time. Once the window wall was done, I realized I had to paint the side walls in order to de-emphasize the jog, so I kept going right up to the side of the chimney. I’m 95% sure I’m stopping there.

I still need to paint the remaining white walls and the ceiling in my favorite white (Benjamin Moore Moonlight White), so please ignore the harsh white semigloss that’s there now! It’s awful.

Speaking of awful, ASKJALKSJFLKSDJFLKS LIGHT FIXTURE NOOOOOOOOOOOOO. It’s bad. So bad. I know. Trust me, once it comes down it’ll go in a bag in the closet and stay there, untouched, until the day I leave. Let’s never talk about it again, OK?

Yes, we need a dresser and we need to put things away and that desk looks too tiny and we’re going to put a sofa in there and NO I am NOT planning to leave all of my tchotchkes on the window ledge like an old lady.

wood overload

In case you thought I was kidding about the wood overload, take a look at this! Oh boy. I mean, the upside is that we have 20′ of closet space along that wall (!!!), so that’s great, but wow. That is a lot of shiny, orange wood. New, non-brass doorknobs will help, as will going over the damaged areas of the wood with Restor-A-Finish. And averting my eyes.

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The best box.

Turning an ugly backsplash into something that’s quite nice to look at (and temporary!).

Quick + cheap: Frameless frame.

Turning dead space into a functional entryway.

Working on the apartment kitchen.

New light fixture in the bedroom!

Some progress in the apartment bedroom…

New bedroom sneak peek. Painting!

My name is Anna.

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