Manhattan Nest: Portland Edition

Meet my friend Chandler.

While we’ve technically known each other since we were about 4, in elementary school Chandler was a little too cool, and proudly so, to give me the time of day. So we pretend that first decade or so of our relationship didn’t really exist. It wasn’t until the summer of 2006, after two years at separate high schools, that we serendipitously reconnected while attending the same one-month summer program in Paris. Since then, we’ve been two peas in a proverbial pod. Clearly she’s hot as hell and super hilarious—basically, my two qualifications for a long-lasting, meaningful friendship. This is only bolstered by the sometimes all-too-apparent fact that we’re essentially the same person, which tends to alienate others. Brotha from another mother, if you will.

The above photo was taken in 2008 as a part of our joint senior project in high school: a self-published book we created about, essentially, all our favorite things. The title pretty much speaks for itself.

Maybe I’ll talk more about it another time when I’m in the mood to relive the glory days, but it’s one of the physical masterpieces of our friendship. Just in case there was any confusion, that huge t-bone steak Chandler’s poised to chow down on is actually a red velvet cake. See? We’re creative geniuses.

But I digress. The point is, we’re besties. Here we are with some privateers at a war reenactment, just because I think this photo is magical. That man’s day-job? A realtor. You’re welcome.

Anyway, as you might have guessed, I’ve been home in D.C. for the last couple weeks for winter break. I’ve seen my family. We exchanged presents for Hanukah. Good food has been consumed. I’ve become newly obsessed with Glenn Close after catching up on the last three seasons of Damages. Overall, it’s been generally uneventful and as relaxed as I can really handle without getting twitchy to do something drastic.

ALL THAT’S ABOUT TO CHANGE. Because later today, I’m headed off to Portland, Oregon! For two full weeks. This isn’t just some jaunty winter break vacation, though. This is business. The business of getting Chandler’s new apartment set up, since she goes to school out there and is moving back after a summer abroad in Berlin and a fall semester in Rome. She’s a little like Carmen San Diego.

And I’ll be sharing it here! I’m aiming for daily posts, but given my commitment issues and the possibility of shoddy internet, we’ll see. Keep in mind it’s taken me months to get my apartment looking less like it’s inhabited by fugitives, but I think watching spaces progress and evolve is really exciting. And we’re aiming to do a lot of work in a very short period of time. Chandler’s also rented the apartment sight-unseen, so we basically have no idea what we’ll be working with.

And it’s going to be great. Chandler and I mutually, and genuinely, love to clean, organize, make lists, craft and decorate. I love to buy furniture. We’re both a little obsessive and have a hard time cutting ourselves off from finishing projects, and we both set unrealistic goals and then talk ourselves into thinking they’re totally possible. When homemaking is your drug of choice… talk about a toxic relationship.

Another thing about Chandler that should make these next two weeks interesting? I swear, probably more than anybody I know, weird shit just tends to happen to her on an admirably regular basis. I’ll leave you with this dazzling and seductive photo that she completely randomly received on her cell phone last night from an unknown number, much to the surprise and glee of everybody around. A roaring fire. A man clad in loungewear. Mimosa (or screwdriver?) in hand. A big-ass TV. Chandler’s response: “what are you watching?”

Manhattan Nest: Portland Edition. It’s going to be great. Stay tuned for the updates.

And Happy New Year everybody!!! Sorry I never chimed in for the holidays or to bid farewell to 2010 (I feel like I’ve violated some unspoken blogging rule), but know that you were all on my mind and I wish you the very best in 2011.

Portland Day 1: Foiled Again!

When I touched down in Portland at around 7 on Monday night, I was gearing up for a trip to IKEA to pick up the couch that Chandler had preemptively selected before even seeing her apartment. This was a high priority since, otherwise, I’d have nowhere to sleep. We had big plans for trying to squeeze in a million errands before the stores closed, after which we’d clean her new place into submission and pass out surrounded by bottles of Lysol and in a noxious puddle of bleach. Oh, to dream.

Not so. Turns out, her landlord didn’t realize she actually wanted to move in on Monday, so we were both homeless and, more importantly, without any projects. We love and thrive on projects. Womp-wah. Luckily, Chandler’s roommate from freshman year, Petra, let us crash at her campus apartment since she and her roommate were home anyway for winter break.

Artwork by Petra Lesser.

This was, of course, lucky news for us. But even luckier news for Petra’s cat, Boris.

My usual reaction to animals is to squeal and promptly go about sucking up to them. It’s not so much that I want them to like me, it’s that I need them to like me. I’ll shape my body into awkward positions to satisfy the whims of their physical comfort, straining my joints in directions they don’t bend in order to pet them just so. I’ve never owned a cat, or really even spent much time around them, so my basic knowledge of how to properly treat a feline comes from this insane woman (who I adore, by the way).

So I attempted to apply my knowledge. I’d always been under the impression that cats were a bit finicky and hard to win over. Not Boris. This chubby little fur-nugget was all up in my business— quite the, er, aggressive lover. Cute kitty cuddling quickly turned to weird kitty paw-kneeding, which progressed into filthy little love-bites. Eventually, that little fucker nibbled on my lower lip while I was trying to fall asleep—not hard as if to cause injury, but more like he was going in for some romance. I’ve never felt more violated.

4:30 a.m.

Aside from being sexually molested by a member of another species, I’m also sick. Like, might-have-plague-sick.

Seriously, body, why?! I’m almost never sick, especially when I have important things to do. I’ve decided that this is all about willpower, so with enough over-the-counter medications and a healthy dose of denial, I’m willing myself into tip-top shape. There is work to be done, and there’s no time for weakness. Period. End of story.

We did get one important thing done on Day 1, however. Chandler had her car shipped from D.C. to Portland by a bunch of sketchy, disorganized Russian dudes, so after about three hours of phone-tag and confusion, we finally met them on the side of the road to pick it up. It was all very clandestine and creepy. We’re also pretty sure he pulled a slight of hand and finagled us out of $150, but we can’t confirm or deny. Either way, sketchy.

11:30 p.m. Shady times.

Portland Day 2: The Apartment, Before

Around 3 p.m. on Day 2, Chandler signed the forms and got the keys to her new apartment. I drew up a super rough, poorly-scaled floor plan for your viewing pleasure and navigational ease. I know I’m not winning any prizes for my drawing or penmanship, but until I figure out Google Sketch-Up this is about as good as it gets without Anna’s professional intervention.

Chandler rented this place totally sight-unseen, so we were a little nervous about what we’d find on the inside. So what did we find? Well, it’s huge, as you can see. And it’s also pretty nice! Lots of workable space with potential for good stuff to happen. But it definitely has its challenges. Allow me to show you around.

This is the kitchen, obviously. One of the main reasons Chandler wanted this apartment was because it had a dishwasher. Do you see a dishwasher? Me neither. What vicious lies! But everything else is pretty nice—the cabinets are original (recently painted, like everything else) and in totally decent shape, and the appliances are all clean and orderly. Next to the sink there’s a hook-up for a washer and dryer, but there are laundry facilities on the property so buying her own seems a bit excessive. Anyway, it has good bones and we’re going to make it cute if all goes well.

Living room. From my perspective, far and away the worst thing about this space is the carpeting. Oh yeah, and the vertical blinds. Those have to go. Honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever understand the appeal of thick, plush wall-to-wall carpet, especially when the pile is a combination of beige and poo brown. It’s like an 80s rec-room up in here.

The first thing I did after the landlord cleared out? I started tearing up little corners of the carpet just to see what might be underneath. And, what do you know, there are wood floors under all that carpet. Who would do such a thing? Now, don’t get too excited. It’s a good thing this is Chandler’s apartment and not mine, because you know I’d do something idiotic like rent a floor sander, attempt to do the whole thing myself in the dead of night, and get shot by a disapproving landlord. Of course we wish we could do everything, but sometimes you have to know when to say when and there really isn’t room in the budget to make my beautiful wood floor dreams come true. Chandler isn’t nearly as bothered by the wall-to-wall as I am anyway, so we’re working around it.

Off the living room, there’s this little hallway that leads to both bedrooms and the bathroom. The door at the end is a closet, one of FIVE in the apartment. Oh, the things I would hoard with that much storage space.

This is Chandler’s bedroom, which is also large and has an ENORMOUS closet. Another room, another set of dusty old vertical blinds. They make me sad.

There’s a second bedroom, too, but Chandler’s not totally sure if she’s going to live here alone and use it as an office/craft space or if she’s going to get a roommate and rent it out. So we’re probably mostly going to leave it alone.

Finally, the bathroom. It’s pretty decent, with a new toilet, but could definitely use a little help. Getting the bathroom in good shape is a high priority for Chandler, so it’s the first project we’re tackling after all those initial first-apartment-oh-my-god-I-have-to-buy-so-much-stuff shopping trips are taken care of.

So there it is! There is a lot of work we’d LOVE to do, but given a super-duper tight budget and a short amount of time, we have to pick and choose our battles carefully. How far will we get? We’ll all have to wait and see.

Portland Days 3 & 4: Neverending Shopping Spree

The latter half of Day 2—when we got our hands on the keys—and all of Days 3 and 4 in Portland went by in a very busy, yet somehow pleasantly Robitussin-fueled haze. Essentially, they were full of shopping. And shopping. And shopping.

Wait, more shopping.

Not for anything terribly exciting, mostly just collecting all the basics. Even though I did this myself not too long ago (although I came to my apartment with the vast majority of my kitchen stuff, hoarded from my last apartment), I kind of forgot just how much stuff it takes just to get a new home up and running. Cleaning products. Bathroom organizers. Kitchen tools. It all adds up to a whole lot of running around. These shopping trips were fun for me, as I got to role-play as my mother. Trying to remember that this is Chandler’s apartment, and she needs to make her own decisions, it’s my task to gently give unsolicited advice to guide her in the right direction. It’s a delicate job, but some drugged-up-tissue-toting best friend’s got to do it.

There was Fred Meyer for cleaning supplies, where we bought a beast of a vacuum, marked down $60. There was the first shopping trip to Bed Bath and Beyond, then the second, then the third. There was Sears and Target and Walgreens. Oh, and Ikea. Twice.

Chandler hates IKEA, which is something I’ll never quite understand. Not the merchandise, necessarily, but the experience of IKEA. She loathes the trek through the showroom, what with all its tediously modelled rooms, and the way it’s generally organized. She gets grumpy about the other shoppers and becomes overwhelmed in the chaos of the Marketplace section. Getting her to go is like pulling teeth. So you can imagine how thoroughly exciting it was when we got to the KARLSTAD sofa section at the end of a very long Day 2 and discovered no available sofas. Apparently, the Portland IKEA only receives 4 KARLSTAD sofas every couple of days, and we were told they’ve been popular. I mean, no shit, they’re always popular. So we decided to go back when they opened in the morning, bearing looks of staunch determination lest the need arise to intimidate any competitors. We had to slip by the “Welcome to Ikea!” person at the entrance and head in the back door, leading straight to the enormous flat-packed furniture section. That couch was ours, and we weren’t fucking around.

Sweet success. Another KARLSTAD sofa with the Sivik Dark Grey cover and aluminum legs. It’s just like home! After Chandler went through all the same painstaking affordable-sofa-that-isn’t-ugly googling that I did, we ended up at the same conclusion. The KARLSTAD really is a great couch, and the price tag really just can’t be beat. Oh, and I put this thing together in just under an hour. It might have been the cold meds talking, but I felt like a superhero.

The other super-duper-exciting shopping trip was to the Container Store. Chandler and I both love the Container Store, even knowing that realistically most of their stuff is overpriced and comparable items could be picked up cheaper elsewhere. But that doesn’t stop it from being amazing. We could spend days roaming those aisles. Even better? Chandler had a very generous gift card to spend… so you can imagine. Talk about a high you’ve never had before.

We got this cute little paper towel holder. I’m generally not a fan of Umbra stuff, but we both kind of liked the retro style of this. And the little sponge tray thing.

We also got this tension shower organizer, which was actually the same price as the cheap over-the-shower-head caddy but a lot more out of the way. I can’t decide if it’s ugly or not, but it’s in the shower anyway, it holds a ton, and it’s nice to not have shampoo bottles falling over in front of the shower head and spraying water everywhere. The new shower curtain rod came from IKEA (the LILLHOLMEN), the rings and liner are from Bed Bath and Beyond. Still looking for a shower curtain to go over it.

On Day 4 we went back to IKEA (trip #3, for those who are keeping track) and picked up the very pretty STENSTORP kitchen cart to fill up the hole where the washing machine used to be in the kitchen and to hold the microwave.

We left off the top front panel so that the microwave can open, but I think it looks fine without it and it seems just as structurally sound.

The other thing we’ve been doing a lot of, besides shopping, is planning. I really want to replace that kitchen floor (it’s up in the air right now), and Chandler really wanted to paint her bathroom. So off to Home Depot we went, totally exhausted, to price out a new floor and pick up some paint chips and a few assorted tools.

We’re contemplating VCT. The guy explaining VCT to us at Home Depot made it sound really high maintenance, telling tales of having to buff and polish and wax and strip the finish every two years, which is making us think twice (I’ve gotten over it after being reassured by Anna at Door Sixteen, but Chandler’s still skeptical). It would cost about $100. Any thoughts, y’all?

We also picked up a bunch of paint chips for the bathroom. Chandler knew she wanted a light sea foam green bathroom from the get-go, so that’s what we’re doing. These were the contenders (just the lighter hues).

Yay. Painting. My fucking favorite.

P.S.- We finally got internet today (Day 8!), so hopefully I’ll be posting much more regularly from here on out!

P.P.S.- Portlandites! Where’s all the good thrifting at? Tell me everything you know. READY, GO!

Portland Day 5: “Live-in Fairy”

While I’m still not quite 100%, by Day 5 I was feeling much better. Let this be a lesson to you: running ten thousand errands and self-prescribing several different over-the-counter medications totally helps you snap out of a cold pretty quickly. Sitting down, taking naps, drinking tea—these are things for the weak. The less you tend to your illness, the better. All that common wisdom mumbo-jumbo just encourages it.

On that note, I’d like to thank my friends for this recent bodily triumph. I couldn’t have done it without you guys. Cepacol, you taste almost as awesome as you smell. DayQuil, you’re a star, only upstaged by your funner counterpart, NyQuil. Neti Pot, you are a disgusting but effective invention whose benefits outweigh even the humiliation involved in trying to describe you to the pharmacist at Target (“you do what with it?”). To my buddy Mucinex: apparently, you should not be taken at the same time as liquid Robitussin DM, but I love you both and I think I love you even more together. Even if I couldn’t coherently express my thoughts that one funky night (night 2? I think? It’s all a blur.), I could still put together this coat rack—totally by instinct and without instructions—that Chandler pulled out of storage. I can only assume that my liberal use of these groovy capsulated wellness-aids had something to do with this feat of construction, so I tip my hat to them.

But I totally got Chandler sick. I’m telling you, this bug is like playing a congested, phlegmy game of hot potato. So after the past few days of running around this city like crazy people, we needed to dial down the intensity a few notches. We took a trip to Home Depot to pick up a gallon of Behr’s “Dinner Mint,” the paint color Chandler chose for the bathroom (the lightest color on the chip furthest to the left from yesterday’s post).

When we got home, Chandler laid down for a nap and I channelled my guilt over getting her sick into painting the bathroom. In this case, the prep wasn’t the hardest, most time-consuming part of painting… but it was, by far, the nastiest. If I were a nicer blogger, I’d spare you. But keep in mind that I had to actually clean this heinous scummy disaster. Imagine the horror in my eyes and in my heart when it was uncovered in the first place. It was like stumbling upon a crime scene. Avert your eyes if you have a delicate stomach.

Disgusting, right? Chandler wasn’t a fan of the old mirror at all, and while I didn’t totally hate the retro style of it, it’s pretty filthy and rusted and painted, so it’s not going back up.

Then I just painted, painted, painted. Since we’re trying to keep our budget down, we went with the cheap-o Behr paint in satin. DIY tip o’ the day: If you buy the cheapest paint rollers at Home Depot, run your vacuum tube over the roller pads before you use them. Otherwise, cheap rollers always leave little fibers that are a bitch to get out of your paint.

It’s hard to get wall colors totally accurate in pictures, but here’s a preview that looks right to me. The color isn’t really my cup of tea, but it’s cute and Chandler likes it, which is what’s important. A few people expressed some concern in the comments yesterday about painting the bathroom green (it has quite a lot of blue in it, too, but it’s definitely green), but it’s light enough that it doesn’t make us look sickly or weird, I swear! Then again, we’re both kind of sickly anyway right now… so maybe the jury’s still out.

Later, continuing with the theme of not taking care of ourselves (soup? hah!), we got our nom-nom on at Reo’s Ribs, a soul food barbecue restaurant where I had what was possibly the most extravagant and decadent meal of my life. To give you an idea, I distinctly overheard someone at the table next to us say, “Would you like some butter with your barbecue sauce?”

More importantly, it’s owned by Snoop Dogg’s uncle. Ah, to be in the presence of royalty.