This probably comes as no surprise, but I was so excited to start the thrifting extravaganza after we got all the essential basics in place. Portland seems like the promised land of secondhand opportunity, what with the enormous mega-thrift-stores all over the place (at least in SE, anyway) and more vintage shops than you can shake a stick at. Incredible.

One of the things I’m discovering more and more is how Chandler’s taste and mine is simultaneously quite similar and also very different. I always think it’s a little weird to put a bunch of labels on people’s personal taste, but I’ll try anyway. We’re both into vintage, with a similar mix of periods but generally gravitate towards mid-century. However, Chandler’s design sensibility is a bit more traditional than mine, much more feminine, a little more kitschy, and a bit more eclectic, all of which suits our budget well since she’s not quite as picky as I am. Discerning, yes. She definitely knows what she likes even if her preferences cast a wide net, but I think the challenge is keeping that sense of playfulness and variety while also making her apartment mature and grown-up.

Chandler and I both definitely went through a phase of just loving stupidly weird kitschy shit from thrift stores. Velvet portrait of somebody else’s pet? Yes please. Anything with a toadstool on it? Don’t mind if I do. But you can only collect so many holographic renderings of the Last Supper before you just regret all of it and want to start over. So she’s moving away from buying what she termed “janky space-fillers,” which I think is for the best. Just because it makes you laugh in a thrift store doesn’t always mean it belongs in your house—remember that, kids.

Since we’re relying largely on vintage to make this place pretty, schlepping around to a million thrift stores kind of goes with the territory. Instead of heading straight for the vintage shops where prices are higher, however, we decided to start with exhausting all the Value Village, Salvation Army, and Goodwill locations in the general vicinity. I can’t even count how many thrift stores we’ve been to. It was a whirlwind shopping experience. And now… stuff we bought! Enjoy.

The first thing we found (in our first thrift store!) was this nice little kilim runner that fits perfectly in the kitchen.  I’m not a big fan of the colors in this rug, but Chandler likes them and of course we both like the pattern. $30.

We cheated a little and went to House of Vintage, a big retro store on Hawthorne, where Chandler spotted this adorable light fixture for $45. I think it’ll look great hung above a kitchen table.

Chandler likes to keep flowers around the house, so she needed some vases and we thought this little orange one was cute for a couple bucks.

Or how about a set of six of these tumblers for a dollar a piece?

Chandler absolutely loves floral prints (the house she rented with a few roommates last year had an entire “floral room,” dedicated to all things flowers), so we’re trying to find a way to work that passion into her space without getting too insane with it. We thought this tablecloth could make some cool throw pillows for the couch. $5.

We also found this sa-weet Lane coffee table in a sort of pricey vintage store… but for $35. The wood’s not in the best shape and the drop leaves need to be repaired (the support brackets are missing), but for that price it seems worth it to put in the work ourselves to fix it up a bit.

We were really happy to find these little 50s dining chairs in Salvation Army for—get this—$5 a piece. They’re in incredible condition, too, almost like they’ve never been used. With a little makeover I think they could be pretty adorable.

In between all of our thrifting, I was painting and painting wood trim (it’s taking forever!) and working on finishing off the bathroom. Full “after” pictures coming soon, but for now I figured I’d show off the new shiny boomerang pulls we picked up from the Rejuvenation Store. We like the original hardware, too, but we have bigger plans for it so we needed to find a replacement that still played on the retro spirit of the apartment. I suggested these, and I’m so glad I did because that store is incredible. I actually never realized Rejuvenation was based in Portland, but if you live here and haven’t checked out the store yet, you need to. There’s a whole salvage section as well, so be prepared to get lost looking at beautiful old stuff for a while.

The days in Portland are winding down and there’s still SO MUCH TO DO. Wish us luck.

Since Chandler was still grappling with that nasty cold, we took things pretty easy on Day 6. After running an errand or two in the morning, Chandler took a nap and I got to work.

Chandler is an exquisite napper, much like a cat. Combine that with a mean cold and the girl could be out for a couple days. So while she worked on sleeping illness right out of her system, I got started with toiling over one of my passions in life: painting dark wood trim white. It’s one of those noble, time-consuming and satisfying tasks with semi-immediate results. Statistics show that white paint fixes most ugly things 99% of the time, so the odds are on my side here.

Before anyone even THINKS about jumping down my throat about painting the trim, I can assure you, it’s not pretty. This whole apartment was really sloppily painted, and the wood trim felt the brunt of it.

Since it’s all original to the apartment (probably built in the mid-60s), it was also full of gaps and gouges and separating from the wall. Grungy stuff like that.

It took about a tube and a half of caulk to fill all that stuff in (each corner of the door frames, where baseboards met door thresholds, basically anywhere with any type of gap). I can’t stress the importance of caulk enough. It’s really important. Like, really really. Use it.

I started with one coat of the Bull’s Eye 1-2-3 All Purpose latex primer (the guy at Home Depot recommended it over Killz, but I have my doubts about its superiority), quickly realizing that painting baseboards around shaggy-ish wall-to-wall was going to be hell. To work around it, I laid some painter’s tape next to the wall and went along like this:

See that? One hand holds a spackle brush to press down and protect the carpet (tape just wasn’t working, but it’s good for some extra protection), while the other hand sort of moves the brush up and down, making stabbing motions into the floor as if you’d murder the carpeting if you could. Not that I’m saying I would. Well, yeah I am.

Then you just go along the top horizontally with a more saturated brush and carefully get as close to the carpet as possible without touching it. I later picked up a 6-inch plastic spackle knife, which made this whole process much less obnoxious. After priming all the trim (just in the living area and hallway, but still, SO MUCH DAMN TRIM), I had to be done for the day. Painting walls sucks, but painting trim really sucks.

Oh, and a couple people asked about the conditions of the wood floors, so I figured I’d show a picture of the, er, teensy corner I pulled up to put the curiosity to rest. Yeah, definitely a refinishing job. Not happening. Boo-hoo.

Chandler had woken up by then, so she worked on addressing the kitchen window.

Chandler didn’t like the metal venetian blinds, the lack of privacy when they were open, or the view, but wanted to keep plenty of light in the kitchen (it definitely gets the best natural daylight of any of the rooms). So we bought vinyl window frosting from Home Depot, which is super easy to install—just a spray bottle of soapy water and a credit card to squeeze out the air bubbles does the trick. I haven’t gotten a daylight photo yet, but since we did this after dark, we immediately noticed how pretty this stuff is! It’s great in the daytime, but check out what it does at night:

Pretty, right? I can’t wait to get back to New York and use some of this stuff in my place. Definitely have a couple windows that could use some frosty love.

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.

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!

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.