Back to Ikea
When I was in college and law school I was obsessed with Ikea. Almost all of the furniture and accents in my apartment were from Ikea. The first time Andy and I went to the Ikea in Houston we spent about 7-8 hours there. In case you've never been, the beginning of the store is organized into individual sample rooms, decorated completely with Ikea furnishings. If I could have afforded it I would have just picked out one living room, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, bought everything and replicated the rooms in my apartment. Almost everything there matches so it always looks so put together. The lure of the birch and the Swedish names for the products was too much for me to resist. The day after we moved to NYC, while we still had our U-Haul we made a trip to Ikea in New Jersey and got a few pieces of furniture but we haven't been back since.
So, in the past two and a half years Ikea sort of slipped from my mind. There is a bus that goes there from Manhattan but otherwise, no real way for me to get there. I look on their website every now and then but my dreams of an Ikea filled apartment were over. When we bought our dining room table I looked online at Ikea briefly but settled on a table from Crate and Barrel. I think I felt like I had outgrown Ikea, so that was that. Until yesterday....
Due to the fact that our basement, also our living room, is about as well lit as a dungeon we rented a car and trekked out to Long Island to visit our old friend, Ikea. Lamps are grossly expensive so I figured we would take a chance with the old standby. Ikea did not disappoint. I feel a little guilty for thinking that we were through. We found two great floor lamps, some table lamps, a great plant for the dining room, and curtain panels to cover Andy's closet. We did spend a little more money than I would have liked, but that's just because I'm cheap.
Things did hit a snag when we got home. We were assembling the track and panels for the curtains when I saw on the instructions sheet in the "tools needed" section, a drawing of a needle and thread. Then I realized that the panels have to be SEWN! A strip of velcro has to be sewn to the top and then hemmed to the correct length at the bottom. Wish me luck.
Labels: apartment
Wake Up Call
One of the things that mystifies me about living in New York is what people actually do for a living...what are their jobs? This question comes up because it seems like there are always a lot of people of employable age out on the street at all times. I've noticed this not only in Manhattan where it could be attributed to tourists or people on their lunch breaks, but even in my neighborhood where neither of those things is really prevalent. I know some of it can be attributed to students but it really seems like a lot of people. Anyway, I bring this up because of how I was awoken this morning.
I was laying in bed, sleeping off my Valentine's Day bottle of Cote Du Rhone when I hear people screaming and laughing, namely my neighbor yelling, "Don't worry about the mess, I have hardwood floors, I'll just mop it up later!" This was followed by their apartment door opening and closing about 50 times and then loud music. Usually our neighbors are pretty quiet, other than their recent puppy purchase, so this was really unexpected...especially at FOUR in the morning on a Thursday. Andy and I start complaining to each other and I was like, where the hell do these people work that they would come in from somewhere at 4 in the morning and then just start partying it up at someone's apartment? Aside from the oddity of a party at that hour, it is really inconsiderate. Not everyone has your schedule...most people have to get up and go to an office in the morning. I thought the whole thing was just plain rude. At one point another neighbor knocked on their door and asked them to keep the noise down which only stopped the yelling, not the music. I just kept saying over and over "Where do they work? how are they up partying right now!" It's the middle of the week!Needless to say, this was a pretty shitty way to start the morning.
As we walked to the subway Andy and I started plotting all of the home improvement projects we will need to take care of early next Saturday morning. We've decided there are lots of pictures that need to be hung and that all floors will need to be repeatedly vaccuumed.
Labels: apartment
Formal Poll
OK..per Megan's request...excellent idea by the way...here's a formal poll about the wall...even if you left a comment please still vote and continue to leave comments with your ideas!!
Labels: apartment
Question for the Readers
OK....I used to ask the readers for advice a lot, most notably during the whole grilled cheese v. grilled cheese sandwich debate and now we need your help again. This is the dining room that we just painted. It is still not quite complete...that trim at the bottom will be off white and we haven't gotten shades for the windows yet. Anyway, the strip that's still white is where the wall juts out..so it's on a different plane from the walls that are orange. One of us wants to leave the strip white and one of us wants to paint it orange. I'm not allowed to say who wants what.
OK, so vote...leave it white or paint it orange. Please. Thanks.
Labels: apartment
painter's anonymous
On TV shows or in books I've heard a lot of people say that plastic surgery is addictive...you get one thing fixed which leads to another thing looking not quite right, and before you know it the whole thing snowballs and you look like that human Barbie lady. Anyway, that's how I feel about my home improvement efforts. We painted the bedroom and I thought that would be it for a while but then the dining room needed something because the new table was nice so we did the orange wall, which I LOVE, and all the trim upstairs. So we pulled the tape off last night and one of the first things Andy said was "It makes me want to paint the other walls" Yeah, me too...now the other walls look like crap...they're begging for a new coat of paint. Just like if I ever got the fat sucked out of my cheeks like I've always wanted then I'd definitely have to get my ears pinned back too....it's a viscious cycle.
Labels: apartment
Football Wrap-up
Well it was a very good week for all of my football teams:
LSU won easily over Kentucky. Apparently all of their games are either blow outs or losses...we don't do in between. I don't know if that's a good sign for the rest of the season.
The Saints won! Another surprise. Let me explain something about the Saints since Kelley chastized me for not congratulating them on their win last week. When we lived in LA I was a Saints fan..I watched most of their games and it was upsetting when they lost, which was often. They were terrible most seasons. Plus, I am a very superstitious fan so I couldn't help but feeling like I was part of the "Saints jinx" I remember when they won their first and only play off game against the Rams, watching the game on the tiny TV in my parent's kitchen...the Saints had a huge lead and then it started slipping away after my Dad came in and started watching. We were yelling at him to go back outside otherwise the Saints were going to lose. Also, there are no Saints games on TV up here. I think this is a good thing b/c I'm pretty sure that if I started watching they would start losing.
The Vegeenas also won yesterday...it was a big relief b/c I was playing the team that last week offered to trade me Carson Palmer for Kevin Jones and I turned the trade down. Good thing b/c Kevin Jones had 22 points! Going in to last night I was ahead by 30 points and I had the Bears defense and my opponent had Rex Grossman so I was pretty safe but then I looked at the score this morning....The Bears defense scored 3 touchdowns and ended up with 33 points and Rex Grossman had -3 so I ended up winning by 60+ points!!! GO VEGEENAS!!! Also, Da Skillz, the only other team under female management defeated the only unbeaten team in our league...nice!
....and we're still painting.
Labels: apartment, football, vegeenas
More paint
Who wants to hear more stories about painting?
Well good because that's what I did for most of the weekend. After getting up at 6:45 on Saturday morning (after only 5 hours of sleep) to watch Manchester United (who won!) and Liverpool (who tied)..Andy and I headed over to the Home Depot to pick up paint for the dining room. If you remember from a post last year, or if you've been perusing the archives, I wanted to paint the living room orange. Well, the living room is now the dining room and I scaled the idea back from the entire room to just one wall..or two depending on how you look at it. Anyway, we picked out a color..Pumpkin Patch and just went with it.
I have to say that I love going to the paint counter at Home Depot. Everyone is nervously waiting for their paint and looking over everyone else's shoulders looking at what colors they've picked. Everyone asks everyone else for advice about colors even though the person next to you obviously doesn't know crap either. One woman next to me was asking me to help pick out a color to match her orange wall (pumpkin pie) but I'm sure that when she saw the color I had picked out come out she deeply discounted my advice. The paint was ORANGE...not just a little orange or bright orange..IN YOUR FACE
ORANGE. Way more orange than that. When we put the first coat on the wall Andy said we were going to have to become Tennessee or Clemson fans b/c that's the only way we could justify this wall.
The color darkened a lot after two coats and it needs probably two more so I think it will be toned down a lot but the color in the can is frightening.
In addition to the dining room it was also my bright idea to paint one of the walls in the entryway, the wall you see when you walk in. A couple of hours later, on the train on the way to Mike and Ting's apartment, Andy had a realization that it was a terrible idea. I threw my traditional hissy fit but then agreed that he was right. This was reinforced when we woke up in the morning and the entryway had taken on a hellish orange glow b/c the color was reflecting off of the other wall. It's already been painted over...it was terrible.
Pictures will be forthcoming if we ever get enough coats on the wall.
Labels: apartment
bedroom
OK, I talked enough about how my weekend and days were consumed with painting the bedroom and the bookshelves so I thought everyone deserved some follow up pictures. The boring white walls are obviously the before. Also, we had two bookshelves, one white and one black so I sanded those and repainted them off-white. We also repainted the dusty rose colored trim the same off-white as the bookshelves. The room isn't finished...we are going to add shades over the windows and we need something over the bed...any suggestions are welcome..PLEASE! Something that would give the illusion of a headboard maybe? We were thinking about just hanging four pictures above the bed...that looks like the most likely solution. Anyway...let me know what you think.
Labels: apartment
