Millet Cinnamon Bread from Sami’s Bakery, coffee with soy milk, place mat from Chilewich.
Evan is sitting across the table, looking dapper.
I have shiny black nails and a giant, green ring. And a clock from IKEA.
I apologize for how quiet it’s been around here lately. Work has been particularly grueling this season, and I’m left so drained at the end of the day that I don’t have the motivation to assemble quality posts. Spring is coming, though.
Do you ever forget that you know how to make stuff? Like, with your hands?
My first impulse when I need something that’s sewn is to look on Etsy, so I suggested as much to Evan when we decided we need a draft snake for the front door to our apartment (we installed a door sweep already, but the dogs still obsess over the sliver of light that creeps in at night). He quickly located a cute one, made sure it was long enough, and placed an order.
Then the snake arrived, and we filled it with rice. All was grand until we put it down in front of the door and discovered that a rice-stuffed snake is shorter than a snake skin. It was also so skinny that it wouldn’t reach over the threshold to actually cover the gap under the door. Oops.
I was all set to hop back on Etsy and look for a replacement snake in a large enough size, when I remembered that Hey! I actually have a ton of fabric and a sewing machine! And I know how to sew! I’m no master seamstress by any means, but I can certainly sew a flat rectangle when the need arises.
And so, I got to work on the World’s Largest Draft Snake. It’s 38″ long, 16″ around, and filled to the fangs with 7 pounds of rice. It’s a DRAFT PYTHON.
I used a piece of my precious linen Grea fabric (previously seen acting as a curtain in the dressing room at my house), designed by Maria Vinka for IKEA’s 2007 PS line. This fabric makes me so happy. I don’t mind that it took me almost three years to find the right use for it!
No, I’m not going to post instructions. Okay, yes I will: (1) Measure fabric. Cut. (2) Fold in half, good side in. (3) Stitch on three sides. Invert. (4) Fill with dried rice or beans. (5) Stitch open end. DONE.
As I write this, the dogs are sleeping peacefully, draft python in place, hallway light sliver obscured. 60 miles north of here, the too-small-for-the-apartment draft garter snake is doing a great job blocking the gap under the door to the attic in the house. Everyone wins!
I’m a sucker for a bargain, and the DWR Annex in Secaucus (almost) never fails to disappoint. This Saarinen side table looks totally fine, right?
From this angle, too! I can’t see anything wrong with it. Why would it be marked down EIGHT-FIVE PERCENT??
Ah-ha! I see why now—there’s a chunk missing out of the edge. Oh well. Doesn’t bother me! It’s near a wall, anyway. You have to really look hard to see the damage, and even if it were more visible, who cares?
I’ve gotta say, I highly recommend that anyone who thinks IKEA is somehow inferior to so-called “high-end” goods in terms of overall durability spend an hour at the DWR Annex. Trust me, a $430 laminated side table chips just as easily as an $80 (for two!) version (and looks just as bad afterward). You need to look at the quality of individual products. Don’t worry about the brand name!
(Also, tulips. They make everything more beautiful.)
Our little apartment has three closets, all quite generously-sized. Since we don’t have lots of clothes or need excessive amounts of storage space, we decided to turn the largest of them into an office. We don’t watch much television these days, but this setup meets our needs in that area as well (no need to miss episodes or Project Runway or American Idol just because we’re in the city!). We have a Slingbox connected to our cable box at the house, so anything we watch up there can also be viewed through our computer in the city. Nice, huh?
Plus, when we’re not using the computer (for work or TV-viewing), we can just shut the doors, return the chair to the kitchen, and the whole thing disappears. It’s nice to be able to shut out technology sometimes.
Check it out—I have a white painted floor in my apartment! Okay, so it’s just the closet floor, but still. All of the closet floors are painted white. They had already been painted previously (the same grotesque shade of flat mayonnaise yellow as the walls, which was badly chipped and extremely dirty), so I’m not breaking any “rental rules” here. (Hah.)
The desk itself is cobbled together out of 3/4″ plywood that was already in the apartment (the building super had attempted to build some sort of closet divider with it). I painted it black to match the wall (that’s the same color as in the kitchen: Benjamin Moore ‘Soot’ (Aura Matte finish). It’s resting on two plywood cleats attached to studs on either end, and gets extra support in the middle from two diagonal braces (pieces harvested from these IKEA trestles). A $10 pull-out keyboard shelf completes the desk. It’s a bit of a Franken-creation, but it works, and the total investment was less than $30.
(And yes, we have wires just like anyone else! They’re all running through this nifty cable organizer which hangs on the back of the desk, and are then attached to the wall with cable clips completely out of sight. I loathe visible power cords and wires, especially in a working environment.)
Oh, and did you notice the Componibili storage unit? That’s the same one we scavenged for $29 back in August 2008. It gives us all the storage we need here. Perfect.
The cute Asteroid bud vases are designed by Koray Ozgen (the creator of our matching Asteroid lamp).
I’m still trying to find just the right place for them, but right now Martha McQuade’s beautiful “Dipped Horizon” and “Marfa Path” prints have taken up temporary residency in the closet office.
My desktop wallpaper is made from a picture of Michael Jackson in photographer Todd Gray’s INCREDIBLE book Before He Was King. (Raindrops added by me, of course.)
As you can see, I am upholding the grand NYC rental apartment tradition of painting over wires and cables.
The bed is the now-discontinued green wool GRIMEN from IKEA. Also from IKEA is the enormous-yet-outrageously-well-priced HOVET mirror. The floor lamp is an Asteroid by Koray Ozgen for Innermost.
The long-haired Chihuahua is from Mars.
You know those brass-and-glass sconces that always wind up in apartments? The ones with a cluster of grapes etched into the frosted, fluted shade? Like these. Gross, right? Well, there are four of those suckers in our apartment. FOUR! You can see two of them in this photo.
Not wanting to get too spendy with hardwired light fixtures in a rental (but being completely unable to live with the sconces as-is), I did a little brainstorming and came up with a solution. I removed the shades and put them in storage (we’ll put them back when we move out), then spray-painted the brass glossy white. Happily, they came out looking like porcelain—very much like the ceiling fixture in our bedroom at the house.
Rather than mess around with shades, I ordered four silver-tipped round glass bulbs and called it a day. Not bad for a total investment of less than $20!
And before anyone asks, NO, I don’t feel badly about painting the sconces. They were grimy and had multicolored spatters on them from years of sloppy paint jobs. They look a million times better now. As I’ve said before, the day I encounter a landlord who puts care into their own renovations and maintenance work is the day that I start caring about whether or not I’m “allowed” to make my own real improvements to the space I’m paying to live in.
Yes, we’re still working on the apartment! Everything takes three times as long as you feel like it should, of course, but we’re getting there. The little dining area in the kitchen is now complete, and last night we ate our first dinner (roasted red pepper soup, tiny boiled potatoes with dill, and a salad) at our new table.
Two and a half years ago, I mentioned swapping out the original stacking bases on these vintage upholstered Eames shells for dowel rods, and I just now got around to it. (I bought the bases on eBay.) They look great. I should have done this sooner instead of just relegating the chairs to the basement for so long.
The flip-down table is the NORBO from IKEA in birch. I had originally planned to paint the entire thing black, but the wood is nicer than I had expected it to be. I opted to just paint the bracket to make it blend with the wall so that the table looks like it’s floating.
p.s. For those who like to know, the paint colors are Benjamin Moore ‘Soot’ and ‘Simply White’ (Aura Matte finish). The Stendig calender is by Massimo Vignelli, and the ceramic ‘Fire’ candle holder is by Nathalie Lahdenmäki.
p.p.s. Here’s a before photo of the same part of the kitchen, taken when we first visited the apartment:
We bought Luca Nichetto’s Hook Box several years ago, without any idea of where we would install it (we did consider it for the downstairs bathroom in our house, but it didn’t fit nicely). We just both loved the design, and knew we’d eventually put it to good use.
Anyway, I finally hung it up last night! It’s in the entryway to the apartment, and will work perfectly for hanging dog leashes and stashing keys, sunglasses, and mail when we walk in the door. There’s no room for a little table since there are doorways everywhere (five of them in the tiny entry area!), but this is just right.
(Oh, and by the way? I refuse to use to term “landing strip” in reference to anything in my home. It’s right up there with “water feature” and “window treatment” on my list of cringe-inducing décor-speak.)
The Alexander Girard canvas is from Urban Outfitters. I was a little twitchy when UO released their line of licensed Girard good last year. He’s one of my longtime design heroes, and, well. You know. But then I got over myself and ordered this canvas, and I must say…the quality is very good, and I’m happy with it.
Wait…it’s 2010?! Wow. I completely missed entering the future while we were busy cleaning and caulking and making trips to IKEA and painting. And painting. And painting. And painting.
Last night was my first night sleeping in the apartment—not really a cause for celebration, considering the present lack of a bed or shower curtain. I was up until 3:30 AM (yes, more caulking…and more painting), then curled up in a little ball on the floor to sleep for a few hours. The magical part of the experience was leaving for work at 8:40 AM, though! Normally at that time of the day we’re already an hour and forty minutes into our commute.
Anyway, the kitchen! It’s coming together, and definitely starting to look as I had envisioned it. (What was that about finishing the whole apartment in six days? Um. No.)
The SNODD knobs from IKEA are so cute I can barely stand it. They really make the kitchen. I love the cabinets, by the way. I was overjoyed to find an apartment with a kitchen that hadn’t been renovated in about 20 years, and with frameless doors. Solid wood with a maple veneer, too. Nice.
I love how perfectly the microwave fits in the VÄRDE shelving unit. If I have to have a microwave in my life at all, I need it to be below my line of sight. We still have to hang the shelves above the unit—that’s where I plant to keep all of our pantry-type goods in glass jars.
(Do you like how the entire food-related contents of our kitchen currently consist of two cans of coffee, a jar of raw sugar, and a hilariously over-sized pepper mill? Oh, and I think there’s an apple and a little carton of soy milk in the fridge. This says a lot about us.)
Uh-oh. You can see my grubby paint brushes! And the Chinese delivery menus on the fridge, the vacuum cleaner, paper towels, and caulk. (Yes, and my beloved Keep Cup!) Are you happy now? I didn’t have the energy to move them for the photo. The important thing to focus on is the black wall! It’s painted with Benjamin Moore ‘Soot’ (Aura Matte finish, for those of you who like to know these things). The white walls and trim are are Benjamin Moore ‘Simply White’ (Aura Matte and Satin Impervo, respectively).
We’re going to hang the Stendig calender on the black wall, right above our flip-down table for two (which I will be painting the same black as the wall).
One more thing! I need to sing the praises (again) of IKEA’s ENJE roller blinds. They are inexpensive, well-made, look great, and they really do filter light beautifully.
WHEW. I am totally exhausted. Evan and I have been going back and forth between our house and the new little apartment all week, and it’s wearing me out fast. I think this is what happens when you take time off from home renovations for a while—you lose your swing.
We started with the kitchen yesterday (my incredibly patient and determined mother came along and spent the day cleaning the filthy kitchen cabinets inside and out—and then spent an hour stuck in traffic with us en route to IKEA), and I’m hoping we’ll wrap things up tomorrow. Today we got a first coat of paint on the walls, new knobs on the cabinets, and assembled a butcherblock that we’ll be using for extra counter space and storage.
Do you think it’s possible for us to finish renovating and decorating the apartment in six days? I actually think it might be, despite the fact that we seem to be on the six(ty)-year plan when it comes to our house.
p.s. IKEA TO THE RESCUE, OMG. What do those of you who live in places without IKEA do when you need something beautiful and cheap and you don’t want to thrift for it? I have no idea.
It’s not very cute right now, but it will be.
I feel a little bit like Evan and I are getting ready to go away to college. There are piles of pillows and blankets, dishes and kitchen gadgets in a corner of our dining room, just waiting to be loaded into the car and transported into the city.
It’s a funny thing, suddenly buying metal steamer baskets and ladles and garlic presses and measuring cups at this stage in my life. (Again.) It’s been 17 years since I left for college for real, and 15 years since I moved into my first apartment. I never expected to shop for these little things a second time. You forget how much you need.
It’s fun. Overwhelming at times, but fun.
I’ve been storing up a big secret for a few weeks now, and it’s finally time to let the cat out of the bag: Evan and I have decided to rent a small (400 square feet) studio apartment in Manhattan!
No, we’re not selling our house, and no, we’re not moving away from Newburgh. We’re just giving ourselves another option throughout the course of the week. Evan and I both spend a lot of time in the city, and having a little place there will allow us to do things like go to museums or concerts or dinners with friends without having to think about taking a long train ride home afterward. (Bruno and Fritz will always be in tow, of course.)
Having a pied-à-terre in Manhattan is most definitely a luxury (though our apartment in decidedly no-frills), but as with the ongoing renovation of our house (work is currently on hiatus until February, by the way—we needed a break!), we’ll be doing everything on a supertight budget and with a lot of careful planning. And, of course, I’ll be blogging about all of it here!
I’m excited to be taking a new direction with Door Sixteen. Renovating and decorating a rental is a very different kind of undertaking than working on a house that you own—not to mention the challenge of making life work inside of much smaller place, and in one room to boot!
I hope you’ll follow along in this new space. Sunday the 27th will mark Day One of cleaning, painting, and planning. I can’t wait…
