Archive for: March, 2012

Manhattan Nest is Two!

Posted: Mar 25 · Comments: 65

Alright y’all, pack your ass in this stretch hummer limo and let’s break out the champagne and the strippers, because Manhattan Nest is officially two years old today! Ah, takes me back to my own 2nd birthday party. Good times.

Back to regular stuff in the soon and very soon, but I’m feeling mushy. It feels a little weird for me to take up some kind of sustained activity and keep doing it for an extended period. For instance, when I was 14 and starting high school, I vowed to keep a diary everyday, and reliably did so for all of 3 days. Even my middle school scrapbooking craft phase only lasted about 10 months, and my efforts to be good with technology basically started and ended with mastering the user interface of a Tamagachi.

So it feels pretty exciting that I’m even still doing this same thing I started doing two years ago (as infrequent as it may sometimes seem around here) let alone enjoying it. I think what started as a place for me to document has become a great place to share, and that’s been fun. This blog has—directly or inadvertently—affected my life in so many ways, so I just wanted to pause and say thank you. For whatever bizarre circumstances have led you to reading this webpage, I offer my deepest gratitude.

This time last year, I opened up the comments to a free for all Q&A. It was fun the first time around, so let’s do it again? Maybe you’re dying to ask me a question about something but just haven’t found the right time? This is the right time. Because why shouldn’t we talk about me a bit more? I can’t find a reason. I’m a fabulous topic.

So go ahead, hit me with your best shot. I’ll publish all the answers in a week!

PS- I know The Apartment Therapy homie awards are old news at this point, but since I haven’t blogged since then: thanks everybody! I know I didn’t win, but still: I was in that? People actually voted for me in that? Like, lots of people? Does not compute. Thank you to everyone who took the time to vote, you’re too kind.

Life
Tagged:

One More Kitchen Thing, One More Homies Thing.

Posted: Mar 9 · Comments: 60

I know I posted yesterday all about the kitchen, but I totally spaced (or strategically spaced? We’ll never know, will we!) that there was actually one more notable thing I’ve done in there that I’m super pleased about. It’s been slow-goings around here what with school/midterms/dog/remembering to sleep and shower, so I’ll take what I can get in the way of small victories.

I’ve gone back and forth a lot about what to do with the five original cabinets in the kitchen (six if you count the corner base cabinet, which is really just a face-frame tacked onto the two surrounding cabinets). I could paint them, but then I’d be left with mis-matched white finishes (even if I got the IKEA doors color-matched, they’d still never look quite right), not to mention the horrible routed bevel “detail” on the doors. I don’t know who designs these cabinets, but I would vote in favor of having them sent to an island populated only by their own monstrous design creations. We’ll see who’s laughing then.

Of course, replacing the cabinets is kind-of-sort-of an option, but that can get pricey really fast.

In search of some kind of happy medium solution, I’ve spent a lot of time staring at these cabinets. Pondering. Becoming acquainted. Taking measurements. Stroking them softly such that they might surrender and decide to play nice. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that the original base cabinet to the left of the stove was essentially the exact same dimensions as the one I added to the right side of the stove. And that got me thinking: what if I just took off the doors and the drawer front, and replaced them with matching IKEA doors/drawer front?

Having nothing to lose and everything to gain, I carted my ass to IKEA and got 2 doors, a new drawer front, and four hinges. Which is really half the battle.

Of course, the face frame of the cabinets is very different than the IKEA ones, meaning that I had to cut away sections on the sides to accommodate the hidden IKEA hinges. I just measured where they had to go and used a regular handsaw to make two horizontal cuts, and a sharp chisel to bang out the vertical cut. BAM. DONE. SEXY DOORS HERE WE GO.

Of course, the cabinet was still a little wide, so I mounted the hinges on 1/4″-ish pieces of shims, and just used longer screws to secure them to the cabinets.

The drawer was super easy, I just unscrewed the existing front and put the new one on, very carefully making sure that it was centered.

PROGRESS! I still need to affix matching hardware, and I’ll take everything off at some point just to paint the face-frame white. It’s so hidden anyway, but it’ll make a difference in making it look nice and polished.

Check it out! They match! Fuck yes!

Of course, that’s one out of six. But it was super easy and shouldn’t be too hard to replicate with a couple of the other cabinets—and combined with a couple of new cabinets, we should be able to get everything matching without totally ripping out and scrapping everything.

NOW, back to business. I know I’ve been relentless about the Apartment Therapy Homie Awards, but I swear, I’m done after this. Because voting ends TODAY AT 3 PM.

That’s two hours from now. I never thought I could actually win this thing (on the heels of giants like Remodelista, Design*Sponge, and Young House Love), but I’m only about 300 votes behind the lead and…LET’S GO PEOPLE. If you voted in the nominations round last week, but not in the finals, go vote again!

So Let’s pull an upset. Let’s make home design blog history. Together. GO VOTE YOUR SEXY LITTLE HEART OUT.

Dear Kitchen: It Gets Better.

Posted: Mar 8 · Comments: 80

Welcome to the longest kitchen remodel ever. Sit back. Relax. Have a drink. Have a Xanax. Here is a nurse to induce your coma, and maybe when you wake up in a year, I’ll have made some headway.

Is that even what I’m doing? Remodeling? Redecorating? Remecorating? Oh hey, Merriam-Webster.

This is what I do. I walk into the kitchen. I pull out a measuring tape. I measure a piece of countertop, or a cabinet, or walls, or distances to outlets. Then I step back, shut one eye, put my hand on my chin, and stare at something like I’m thinking. Then I realize I’m just using “measuring” as an excuse to stand around and have fret sessions over the fact that I want to tear my entire kitchen apart. This happens probably 1-4 times a day.

But we’ve already improved the kitchen’s functionality so much by adding all that cabinet space and counter space, and we just haven’t had the time recently to implement some of the other kick-ass changes I have planned for down the line in here. I know it’s going to go slow, but I really just want it to go right. I plan to live here for a long time, and I want to love my kitchen. I have these delusions that, if my kitchen is better—more orderly, easier to keep clean, bright and happy—that I might be better, too. Also, I might be more into cooking. The fancier I can feel, the more into it I will be.

I’m really growing to like the little dining area that’s occupying the space by the window and stretches the entire width of the room. It’s a small space, about 7.5′ x 4.5′, but it’s cozy and I’m so glad that it’s just big enough for a Stendig Calendar. We’ve actually started eating at the kitchen table, and I have to admit it’s pretty nice and civilized. It only took us nine months, too! This feels on-par with my Bar Mitzvah in terms of feeling like an adult.

Max bought those two prints from this Etsy shop, and we just put them in some IKEA RIBBA frames. We might need to put something else here eventually because these seem kind of awkwardly tall, but for now they’re nice.

And I finally finished painting the moldings! It still needs some touch-up on the inside of the frame, but the salvaged 120 year old moldings look super amazing all white. Yeah! I painted all that old wood! I am saying this while I’m in an Apartment Therapy competition! I am going to get shot!

In the other corner, I finally got around to moving the security gate thing back towards the window (the frame is about 6 inches deep, and it was mounted way at the front), which gave me a few inches to hang an IKEA ENJE shade which is re-cut and reused my old apartment. The shade is pretty translucent, so it doesn’t block the light and you can definitely still see the security gate behind it, but it softens it a lot. It’s nice, I swear. Well, as nice as it can really be with a massive metal accordion door.

In our house, there is constant bickering about lighting: Max likes no overhead light but instead just a delicate spattering of gentle lamplight, whereas I wonder if I’m going blind when I walk into a room he’s been in. The best thing ever, as far as I’m concerned, is the Patrick Townsend String Light from Areaware, which I bought on Fab.com. It’s kind of amazing, right? It’s on a dimmer, so Max can brood in the dark or whatever it is he does, and I can actually see what I’m eating. It’s such a great light source and is really beautiful lit up, but unfortunately exceedingly difficult to photograph. I feel like I have failed it.

It’s come a long way since I moved in, this little space. Damn it used to be so ugly.

In other news, I got around to putting a cover panel at the end of the base cabinet of the new kitchen built-in, which covers the huge gaping hole that was there before. Progress! I still need to put a bead of caulk down the side to make it legit.

I also installed these 6″ pine boards on the “completed” walls in the room, and now I can’t decide to paint them or not? I’m going to see how everything comes together and then decide.

And because I know how much it was killing everyone, I painted the buzzer! I just used the same wall paint, and probably did about 5 super thin coats so I wouldn’t gum anything up. It still works just as well and looks so much better. And check it out! I finally fulfilled one of my lifelong dreams to buy a label maker! I’m not really a huge fan of the new snazzy LED-screen print-out do-hickeys, but I love those “old-fashioned” ones that embosses each individual letter on that weird plastic tape stuff. I want to label everything in my life.

In other news: see this look? The one that Mekko is giving you? It’s concern. It’s sadness. It’s her saying, “please, tell me everything will be okay.”

You know why?

Here’s why. I am getting my ass spanked in the Apartment Therapy Homie Awards. My bare, white, pale naked ass is just getting the fuck pummeled out of it. Last week was nominations, when we came in first (WHAT WHAT THANKS ERRYBODY!), but this week is the finals…and just look at that. Take it all in.

This is a problem, because I WANT TO WIN. My inner competitive side will mourn for probably entire minutes if I lose this thing. And is that what you want? You want to cause me pain? Oh, I see how it is.

Voting ends THIS FRIDAY, so we need to up our efforts. Letter-writing campaign! Posters! Call your congressman! Send a letter to the President of the internet! Oh, it’s not that hard?

Plan B: go vote, you. Seriously, get your gorgeous self over to Apartment Therapy and vote for me. Maybe you need to register an account to vote? Easy, just click here!

So go on. Make me a winner. I’ll never know without the beautiful affirmation of a golden Homie Award.

Mekko wants to be happy. Make her happy. GO VOTE.

Back to Top