A Whole Mess of Staples

1,250, actually. That’s how many staples I mercilessly shot into my poor IKEA FJELLSE bed frame, who’s feeling a little sexier these days because of it. I PROMISE all my posts won’t be this wordy, but this one’s important. Settle in, party people.

Usually when we buy new furniture, we do so because we like it. We can imagine it so clearly in our homes, making our tokhes more comfortable or garnering compliments with its good looks. But when Ikea decides to go and sell the plainest pine bed ever for the sweet, sweet price of $49.99, then we just buy it because it’s cheap.

To review, here’s what she looked like before.

So, so naked. How rude.

Unfortunately for FJELLSE, I really like upholstered beds. They’re awesome. I needed one. Only problem? Damn, they’re pricey. I searched high and low. Even the moderately priced offerings from CB2, West Elm and Ikea were more than I was really willing to pay, but more importantly not what I wanted to sleep on. Sleeping’s a very important activity for me. And I can daydream all I want about the beds I actually like, but that’s not going to get them into my apartment any faster than it’ll get Oprah to come over for dinner. And I’ve been dreaming about that one for years.

he Ella bed from Room & Board, the Tate bed from Crate & Barrel. Both $1,399.

So I realized pretty quickly that, barring an impressive lottery win, I’d be DIYin’ it. Once that epiphany registered, I scrambled my way to the internet looking for something cheap that I could immediately destroy without feeling guilty. My only requirement was that it be fairly solidly made and have decent looking legs. Incidentally, this is also my criteria for friends. Then, bingo. FJELLSE. Cheap, solid pine, with not-unattractive angle-cut legs. I went to the store, looked at it for about 10 seconds, kicked it lightly to test the sturdiness, and added the aisle and bin number to the list. Easy-peesy.

Little did I realize at the time, upholstery fabric is very, very expensive. I’ve recently been loving anything and everything upholstered in wooly, fibery felt, so that’s what I wanted. I had clear, inflexible ideas in mind. Dark charcoal grey felt. Yes. I went to a big fabric store in Chinatown and found the most beautiful, thick charcoal wool fabric you or I have ever seen. It was perfect. It was even organic. Of course, it was also $60 a yard. At 54″ wide, I needed four yards. This was absolutely crushing. Fabric store after fabric store, that actually ended up being the least expensive. My cheap and easy DIY bed was turning into a massively expensive shit show and I was pissed.

Filz Felt. Really nice company. Really expensive $89.50/yard felt.

So I did more research. I exhausted Ebay and the online fabric shops. Knoll felt is actually surprisingly well-priced (I mean, it’s Knoll) at $36 a yard, so since I was feeling desperate I trekked down to Chelsea to the Knoll Showroom to see it in person.

Man, that place was fucked up. There’s no signage anywhere, so you just have to know it’s there. It’s on the 11th floor of a building that you need a visitor’s security pass to get into. Once upstairs, there’s a front desk where the incredibly kind receptionist calls a sales associate by picking up the phone and saying shit like, “There’s a gentleman here requiring assistance with Knoll Textiles for use on furniture by another manufacturer.” I think if I had mentioned Ikea, they might have shattered a perfectly good Noguchi Cyclone table and fashioned one of those metal rods into a switch. Oh, and the felt was kind of a huge let-down.

Then, whilst moping, I realized: blankets. Wool blankets. And who makes the best, cheapest wool blankets around? The US of A Army, that’s who. God bless America.

So I hauled it to Kaufman’s Army & Navy Surplus in Midtown. I had my doubts about what would happen when my skinny-jeaned, child-sized frame entered such an establishment. Would I be greeted by a spirited, crew-cutted Hoo-WAH and then tackled to the ground for a testosterone injection? When the employee would inevitably ask me what in hell I wanted with a wool blanket in the middle of July, my plan was to lean over the counter, look him in the eyes, and clearly state “I want to cut it into little pieces.” I don’t like liars.

In reality, they were more than friendly. I found the blanket immediately, it seemed nice enough, and it was $25. P-E-R-F-E-C-T. When I signed the receipt and the cashier noticed I’m left-handed, he gave me a left-handed Kaufman’s pencil. No, seriously, the writing on the pencil reads correctly when held by lefties. Then he gave me a right-handed one too, “so people would believe me.” Good call, dude.

Read it and weep.

Here are the collected fabrics. The dreamy organic wool swatch is laying on top of the blanket. I know, it looks exactly the same. Cue happy dance.

Now, I learned a lot about wool through this, so I know there are a couple big differences between the super nice stuff that would have cost $240 and my $25 blanket. Firstly, the blanket is 30% synthetic. I don’t really care. More importantly, the nicer fabric is pressed wool, which I gather means it’s been pressurized to the point the the fibers magically bond to each other. The blanket, however, is woven, so when it’s pulled tight like I did, it does develop more of a texture. I actually quite like the texture though.

So here’s how the construction went down:

The original FJELLSE design has a shorter headboard than I really wanted, so I went to Home Depot and got a piece of 1/2″ plywood cut to be 4.5 inches higher than the original headboard. This was done by the same asswipe who cut my desktop, and I still don’t like him. Then I just screwed it onto the front of the headboard with four screws on either side and a few along the top and bottom. Yes, my computer’s open to my own blog. Subliminal messaging, duh.

Since I wanted the depth to look consistent from the side, I rigged this shoddy-ass structure out of cut 1.25″ square trim from New York Paint and Hardware and little L-brackets I had lying around. Good enough for me. Then I stained the legs (after testing a few options on one of the soon-to-be-covered rails).

Then cut the tops of the legs at the end of the bed down to the level of the rails. I should have done this before batting, but I didn’t think about it.

Like a damn cloud.

Cover the whole thing in batting, except the legs. I used fairly thick stuff from Joanne’s. I did three layers on the headboard and two on the rails. I wanted the bed to be cushy, but not so stuffed that it would lose its shape. The best advice I can give is to buy an automatic staple gun. Mine was $25 at Home Depot, which was only $5 more than the manual one. Seriously, do yourself a favor. Unless you like bruised and blistered palms. I also used 1/4″ staples, in case you’re curious.

Sorry I’m super messy and make no effort to clean up for pictures. Cutting the blanket was really easy, I just cut three 10″ strips length-wise (they’re about 85″) and used the rest for the headboard. Upholstery can be pretty simple, but it’s important to go in with a good plan to make sure there won’t be any exposed staples when you get to that final piece of fabric and realize you’ve done it all in the wrong order. Write it out. Figure out how to get it done without having to pick up a needle and thread. My plans were on sticky notes, which I subsequently spilled water on and then lost, but try to keep your plan handy and organized if you can. Or just read this.

Next comes the front piece. I wanted the front piece to be continuous, but I was okay with having seams on the front ends of the sides.

Of course I forgot to take a picture, but staple the backside of the fabric to the front corner, butting up against the edge of the underlying leg (this might be more clear in the final pictures). Then pull the loose end tight and staple onto the back. Then just go along the sides, stapling the fabric on the inside of the rails. Apologies for the woefully confusing wording, I should have taken more pictures but it’s really not too complicated.

I decided to leave the back open, which saved fabric and gives me the option of adding tufting later on. I like it just fine without it, but who knows when I might find awesome buttons. And that was it! Pretty easy, totally doable in a day, endlessly customizable. And one entire box of staples.

Here’s a pretty good view of how the corners are finished. I don’t mind mixing wood tones, so I used Minwax Fruitwood 241 since I thought it looked the best with the fabric and the rug.

Oh, and don’t forget. Wool fabric does shed, but I vacuumed the whole thing and it seems to have stopped.

So how much did all this nonsense cost? Here’s the materials breakdown:

1/2″ Plywood: $17.50

Fabric: $25

6 Yards of Batting: $36

1.25″ wood trim for frame: $9

Minwax stain: $6.50

TOTAL: $94

But I try to keep it real, so remember I also bought an electric staple gun ($25) and a box of staples ($5).

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a naptime appointment I really can’t reschedule. Have a good weekend, y’all.

Opinion Time!

Stately moldings, wood floors, big windows, nine-foot ceilings, and a variety of pests: some of the splendid features that come standard in New York City pre-war apartments. But those charms tend to come with some trade-offs. It’s hard to tell in the photos, but our floors are conspicuously slanted and none of our windows are quite square. The transom windows above the doors are long gone. Sometimes the exposed pipes get disconcertingly hot. But if loving our apartment demands loving all of our apartment, I suppose we can look past the flaws. Hey, if we ever literally lose our marbles, we’ll know which corner to find them in. Thanks, gravity.

Our lighting is something I both love and hate. When we first saw the apartment, we got ourselves all worked up thinking that the light fixtures in my bedroom and the living room were original, or at least the original electric ones (the building is old enough that the original fixtures might have been gas). Then I went through a phase of thinking they were some kind of bad 70s replicas. Now I really don’t know. More than one person has walked into the apartment and immediately asked “are you going to change out the lights?” But fuck the haters, I think they’re interesting. In any case, I’m not sure what to do with them.

When I first moved in, they looked like this. I’m all about sustainability, but I just refuse to accept those exposed CFL bulbs, and the frosted incandescents are just wrong. I know, I’m all sorts of evil, single-handedly causing global warming, but they’re ugly. I’ll use them in the lamps.

So that’s the first challenge, the bulbs. Ideally, I’d have fancy moody bulbs like this:

But I don’t live in a swanky restaurant or a haunted mansion, nor am I about to spend a small fortune on lightbulbs. So in an effort to add a mod spin on the old fixtures, I replaced all of the bulbs with clear round incandescents. A big improvement, but I can’t shake the feeling that they’re not right either.

Also, the flaky gold paint just isn’t my style. I was the first person to actually take down the lights before painting the ceilings in a long time, so the edges are also adorned in various shades of white-ish paint.

Requisite fire escape shot

So I took the one in my bedroom down, gave it some attention with a wire bush, and spray-painted it the same Rustoleum matte black as the door hardware, figuring it’ll be super-duper easy to just take them down and repaint them gold when we move.

I don’t even dislike the black, but I still feel like I’m missing something here. I’m not constitutionally against silver spray paint, but I have a feeling it would look tacky in this application. High-gloss black seems sort of dramatic glitzy-glam, for lack of a better explanation. Sometimes I think white is the answer, but that just doesn’t seem right either. Or am I crazy and the black-paint-clear-round-bulb-combo is a winner? Consequently, I’ve been holding off on doing the living room light until I have some sort of epiphany, but I’m losing faith that it’ll happen. That, and I can’t put it back without a second set of hands (coming soon!).

The suggestion box is open, don’t be shy.

Orange Glow

Motivated by a frighteningly short countdown until school starts and Eva’s rapidly approaching arrival (she moved yesterday!), I kicked it into high gear this last week. Small projects turned into big projects, big projects begot more smaller projects, and I wrote enough to-do lists to fuel a bonfire for days.

So the bathroom isn’t quite finished. Not picture worthy, yet. The weather conditions just haven’t been right for spray painting. BUT, amidst my mad dash to finish the bathroom, I actually got a couple things done in the kitchen as well.

For instance, new knobs!

Old on left, new on right.

I know, dramatic. But those old pulls were just so nineties and really put a damper on my fantasy 1960s cooking sessions. And seriously, the shiny chrome makes a big difference, at least to me. Like glitter. No, they aren’t exactly what I wanted, but they were only $1.29 each at Home Depot. $20 for 16 new shiny knobs… can’t beat that.

More importantly, I also installed this glam-ass light:

Yeah, I need to caulk around the new plastic Home Depot medallion and paint the ceiling, but DAMN, I think it’s sexy. I found it at a thrift store in (of course) Brooklyn for $20– talked down from $30, thank you– and put in another few bucks into the new medallion and re-wiring and replacing the crappy old chain. I call it the Orange Glo fixture because at night, everything is bathed in bizarre orange light. Which I think is hilarious.

Sure beats this snoozefest:

Oh, and as an added little bonus, I picked up aluminum switch plates to replace the grungy old beige ones. There are only two switch plates in the whole kitchen, but I can’t express what a relief this is.

As you can see, the toadstools haven’t moved, they still make me giggle.

And just in case there was any question that this is all I’ve been doing for a week, here’s a disgusting progress shot of the bathroom makeover, just for shits and giggles.

And that’s why I was rushing to finish. Because if Eva walked into her new apartment and it looked like this, I really couldn’t blame her if she decided to turn right back around. Luckily, I can accomplish a lot on very little sleep.

Colors are Hard.

There’s this thought I have sometimes. Painting’s not so bad, I tell myself. In fact, it’s kind of fun. It can be relaxing. Just put some music on the old iPod, change into those paint-splattered jeans, and you’re liable for a good time.

What I always seem to forget is that painting is awful. It’s boring, repetitive, messy, and just generally sucks. If somebody tells you they like painting, they’re lying and you shouldn’t trust them. I know– once the tape is down, the touch-ups are completed, and the perfume of volatile organic compounds drifts through the air like a fresh summer evening’s breeze, it’s nice. But I always forget the bummer-fest of getting there. Which is why, while cracking open a can of paint for Eva’s room, I piped up, “Hey, why don’t we just paint the kitchen too? I mean, while we’re at it.”

So off we went to the hardware store, where a color (Benjamin Moore’s “White Rain” in eggshell) was hastily selected and a gallon of paint was bought. I think of choosing paint colors as less of a question of basic ability and more as an acquired life skill, like drag racing or choosing the right jeans for your thighs. Sure, anyone can drive fast or buy a pair of pants, but only some people can do it with warranted self-confidence. It’s something you have to learn through a difficult process of trial and error. So I’m not going to beat myself up about doing this to my wall:

I could pass this off as that thing responsible people (liars) do where they paint samples before springing for the whole gallon, but I’m not going to do that. The only color I actually bought is the one on the far left. I painted one coat on one wall before deciding that it wasn’t something I could live with. It’s not a bad color for an asylum or an androgynous nursery, but it was a bad color for our kitchen. Not wanting to pay for a new gallon, I did something I never thought I’d have the guts or occasion to do: I started mixing. I put various proportions of white ceiling paint and wall paint into a bowl until something better emerged. That “something better” was the second to last color on the right. It’s about 2/3 white paint, 1/3 (not-so-)White Rain.

And after! I like it, I don’t love it. It’s not quite a baby blue (phew), but it’s sort of similar. A little bit greener (the darker hues on the White Rain paint chip are definitely of the green persuasion), and a little bit grey. I wanted something a little greener/greyer without crossing into minty or sage-y territory, but I’m not sure that color actually exists outside of my mind. Also, the Orange Glo light, when illuminated, lends the walls a much greyer tilt (this picture is just sunlight), so that’s something to consider as well. The trim is Benjamin Moore “Simply White” in semi-gloss, in case you were curious.

I’ve talked about it before, but just to be clear: I’m usually all about white paint and more modern colors, but the fugly 80s pink-ish floor, countertops, and cabinets sort of betray any possibility of the kitchen being cool and gorgeous. So the game plan in here is more 50s-60s-70s-mod-and-kitsch. Happy, fun, and sort of cute without being a kitschy mess. If you catch my drift.

And yes, I do have a step ladder hanging on two hooks in the kitchen. I know it’s not the most attractive thing, but I’m really short and our cabinets were built for giants– they go all the way up to our nine foot ceilings, and because it’s a small kitchen we can’t just pretend those top couple of shelves don’t exist. There’s really nowhere else to put it where it’s out of the way, so in plain sight it sits. How postmodern.

I also painted the ceiling, which looks way better, even though it just went from a poorly slapped-on coat of semi-gloss white to a smooth and expertly applied eggshell finish (BM’s off-the-rack “Super White”). It’s always shocking what a difference a fresh coat of paint can make, even if it’s just a variation of the same color.

The Orange Glo ceiling medallion got all caulked up and painted in the process. Also a big difference from before. I love that damn light.

P.S.- Sorry for the lame “after” pictures, but there’s a little (like, teensy) DIY on the other side of the room that I figured warranted its own post. Keep your eyes peeled for that in the next couple days!

Kitchen Curtain

Question: What do you do when you have an old twin-sized duvet cover but no twin-sized bed?

Answer: You chop it up and make a curtain!

Even though it’s a veritable mecca for hipsters everywhere, once in a while Urban Outfitters does something I like. For example, the BDG V-Neck Tee. But more importantly, that awesome line of Alexander Girard textiles they sold for a while last year. You remember, don’t you? Well, I do. As soon as they went on sale, I snagged one of the Rain Cut-Out Duvet Covers, a pattern that Girard designed in the 1950s. iPone dorm picture for evidence (complete with the old nightstand before it was a desk! It’s like seeing a ghost.):

I loved that thing, but knew I probably wouldn’t have a twin bed for too long. It’s like I’m psychic. Up until now it was a cheery thing to break out for overnight guests who crash on the couch, but in my experience drunks don’t seem to care terribly much about their linens. So Eva and I went off to IKEA and bought a curtain rod.

I don’t really have a good how-to to offer since I didn’t do the greatest job, to be perfectly honest. This was my first experience with the magic of iron-on hem tape and I accidentally ended up making all of the hems pretty wide and stupid looking– my fault, not the tape’s. But regardless, I’d totally recommend the stuff since it does produce a very smooth hem and spares you from having to deal with things like needles and thread. This is good for people like me, who jam up sewing machines with admirable reliability and historically wrap up any sewing project  with a long nap and a good cry.

Aside from the unattractive hems, I’m really enjoying getting use out of this fabric again and the amount of color it injects into the kitchen.

I’m starting to like the way the kitchen’s coming together. I think the combo of the Orange Glo lamp, the curtain, the wall color, and the shiny chrome knobs is a winner. We actually chose the paint color because the chip looked like a lighter hue of that blue in the curtain, but it actually ended up being a little darker. So the self-mixed color is much closer to what I wanted all along (even though I still think it could be slightly greener). I usually don’t worry about matching shit like that, but I feel like retro kitchens are all about coordination and I’m finding it kind of endearing in there.