About two days before we left, Max floated the idea of giving his childhood bedroom a “quick and easy” makeover while we were going to be there. Trying not to act too excited, I accepted the assignment with grace and class, as I had rehearsed many times whilst daydreaming about this moment. And then I assembled my emergency DIY-superhero traveling toolkit.

I have a lot of tools and bits and bobs I’ve accumulated over the past couple of years, but this is the stuff I see as essential when embarking on a quick-n-dirty DIY job. From left to right: all my assorted drill bits, two types of pliers, lightweight quick-drying spackling compound, the best screwdriver ever with a million different heads, coarse-grit sandpaper, E-Z anchors, my drill, and two spackle knives.

I need to give a serious shout-out to those E-Z anchors, by the way. They are the shit. I only really like the metal ones (they also come in plastic, but I’ve had mixed results with those), but they hold a ton of weight and are just all-around phenomenally easy to use and strong and awesome. Basically you just screw the big metal piece into the wall, then screw a screw into the metal piece. Done! No drilling, nothing. These things are seriously lifesavers for crumbly plaster walls and basically hold my entire apartment together and I trust them with my life.

Anyway.

Max is perhaps the most nostalgic, sentimental person I know, so the suggestion of even touching or moving a single thing in his largely unchanged shrine to angsty adolescence is more than a little out of character. But a combination of getting older, maturing, and—I like to think—living with the controlling lunatic nightmare that is myself, has changed his taste a little, and I think he was ready to appreciate his former bedroom as a thing preserved more in memory and photographs than something that needs to actually exist in real life. It also helps that we stay in this room when we visit, and a twin bed pretty much sucks when occupied by two boys and a 12 pound muppet named Linus.

Additionally, Max’s wonderful mother, Sue, wanted to use the space as a comfortable guest bedroom for the 49 (give or take a few) weeks a year when we’re not staying in it, but not every guest wants to be transported back to Max’s worldview circa 2000-2006.

Twin bed: check. Beaded floor pillows: check. Beaded floor lamp: check. Beaded table lamp: check. Second beaded floor lamp (out of frame): check. Tapestry thing: check. Tiny plastic busts of famous composers: check. Martha Stewart Living casually laying on the floor like it’s an accident: CHECK.

Even though I’ll admit to hating staying in this room, there’s something so adorable about these pictures that I feel a little nostalgic, myself. All those magazine boxes on the shelves are full of Martha Stewart Livings, the little woven basket next to it is full of knitting supplies, and the bottom shelf is occupied by about a dozen Harry Potter books—American and Canadian editions. I mean, come on. 

Up above, this weird candelabra chandelier number from IKEA hung from the ceiling, as well as an artsy photo wall of mostly naked people. There are SUNGLASSES HANGING FROM THAT CHANDELIER THING, PEOPLE. 2006 Max is so weird and cute.

The less cute side of this makeover is this wall of graffiti that Max had all of his friends contribute to with Sharpie over the years. Mostly, it is composed of penises, vaginas, things that look vaguely like penises and vaginas, angsty lines of poetry, drug references, and penises. There are also some penises.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Ani DiFranco lyrics GLITTER PUFFY-PAINTED to the closet moldings, and more glitter puffy paint ON THE CEILING that has something to do with eggs and some dude named Ernie?

Interestingly, Max has never been into drugs.

I always thought that my parents allowed us to be pretty free-spirited when it came to our rooms: we got to pick all our own furniture, paint colors, layouts, and how big of a mess we lived in. But Max’s parents kind of took this to the next level and basically let tiny crazy angsty Max run wild and this is what happened. Take heed, people.

All I can say after sanding glitter puffy paint off a ceiling is that if I ever have children who try to pull shit like that, I will drown them.

As you can see in the above floor plan, this room is really tiny, which made our single-day-makeover plan seem pretty feasible on the surface. In the morning, we cleared out the entire room, then went to do a little shopping. Then I got dropped at the house to commence with the painting, while Max and his mom went to buy a mattress and a few other things we’d need to finish the space. It was some crazy Trading Spaces madness, which is how I like things. Once I get in to projects like this, I’m the sort of person who will basically forego food, sleep, water, and bathroom breaks until it’s done. I get into a zone, push through pain, and annoy every single person around me with demands that they work harder.

Imagine me as a werewolf. Then imagine that a big DIY project is a full moon. It’s like that.

So here is the paint arsenal, in case you’re curious. I started off by prepping the walls, which basically meant scraping old sticky-tack, sanding glitter puffy paint, and spackling about a thousand nail holes. In some areas, the plaster was in really rough shape, which normally I’d get all anal about and repair properly with joint compound and mesh tape and whatnot, but I had to learn to let go and just paint over everything. It was oddly liberating, and matte paint has a way of making uneven fucked up plaster look kind of awesome, anyway.

PSA: never write on your walls with Sharpie. Just don’t do it. If you do, someday your boyfriend will have to come in, paint over all of it with shellac-based primer, which is both expensive and very smelly. He will have to do it twice, all the while losing brain cells and going crazy. Sharpie bleeds through, like, ALL PAINT IN THE WORLD EVER in the most amazing/annoying way, so it really all has to be sealed in with a serious primer. The good thing about the shellac primer is that it dries REALLY fast, but it smells terrible and is super thin, so you have to be extra careful of drips and off-spray.

Max wanted a really dark black/navy color for the walls, and after seeing it both on the outside of Chezerbey and at Anna’s house, I demanded that we use Benjamin Moore’s “Soot.” We used the Aura paint in matte, which is pricey but is basically like painting with velvet and covers completely and easily in two coats. For the ceiling, we just used standard off-the-rack flat white ceiling paint, and for the trim we used off-the-rack white in pearl finish. Usually I do trim in semi-gloss, but I’ve been leaning more toward something a bit less shiny and pearl is a really beautiful, slightly more subtle alternative. All of this action happened so fast, I literally have ZERO process pictures…but really, we all just want to get to the afters, right?

BOOM. Hello super dark, super cozy, super awesome tiny bedroom that I totally love. With cute dog.

So obviously this isn’t really my normal taste, but I really do love this room. It was so much fun to wake up in on that first morning, and I actually didn’t want to leave Buffalo because I loved sleeping in it so much. Maybe it makes me want a black bedroom?

I’m sorry for the low-quality pictures, by the way. The one thing I didn’t pack in my emergency DIY-superhero traveling toolkit was a decent camera, so unfortunately I had to document with my iPhone. This room gets basically no natural light, so a very dark space combined with very dark paint combined with an iPhone camera makes for some subpar photos. Sorry!

Part of the fun of creating this room was reusing things that were already around in the house, including this lamp, the bedside table, the rug, the bed, the flag, and that amazing vintage Hudson Bay blanket. The bed belonged to Max’s mom’s parents (also known as Max’s grandparents), and I believe was a wedding gift in the late 40s-early 50s. It’s mahogany colonial-revival, which is usually not my thing, but I love it for this space. It was sitting in the attic, broken in a few joints, but I was able to repair the whole thing in about half an hour with some J-B Wood Weld, which is an amazing epoxy that cures really quickly and is SUPER strong and awesome. Max’s mom was really excited to see the bed all put back together and looking amazing, which was really fun for me. Aside from repairing the bed, we also got new pieces of 1 x 4 cut at Home Depot to replace the old slats (we got ten new slats for under the mattress, which was perfect).

Also, the flag is pretty amazing. Normally, I’m not a fan of using American flags in home decor, but this flag is old (it only has 48 stars!) and has just the right amount of wear to be super cool and perfectly vintage without straying into hit-you-over-the-head-patriotic territory. It’s being held up by E-Z anchors. Duh.

The vintage Hudson Bay blanket is also from Max’s mom’s parents, and it totally makes the room. I mean, of course it does. I’m a huge sucker for a point blanket.

One of the other projects I really loved in this room was the curtain, which I just made out of a canvas drop-cloth that was inexplicably sitting in the trunk of my car. I hung the curtain rod (this cheap-o one from Target) about 7″ from the ceiling, and made the curtain all the way to the floor, using iron-on hem tape for the side and top (I used existing hems for the side facing the room and the bottom). The iron-on tape worked surprisingly well, and the canvas was a perfect warm neutral color and texture to balance out the bright whites in the room and was also FREE. Free is always good. The curtain rod is hanging with E-Z anchors.

Another HUGE, HUGE improvement in this room was finding and re-hanging the closet door! The closet just had a curtain hanging on a tension rod before, but Max and I managed to find the original door hiding in the attic (it had been removed at some point, I have no idea why), harvest a black porcelain knob from another outcast door in the basement, and hang and repaint the thing like it never left the room. Love me an old door with a couple fresh coats of paint.

Again, normally I’d get a bit more detail-crazy and strip all the old hardware, but there was no time for that. Instead, I just coated everything with a fresh coat of white, and guess what? Nobody died, which makes me question my entire worldview, basically. Sometimes its OK to just take the easy route. Huh.

Along the wall between the entry door and the closet, I hung three plain cheap brass hooks (also held up by—you guessed it!—E-Z anchors), which might be my favorite thing about this room, oddly. Hooks are perfect for small spaces, and we used them for everything from bags to shirts to our jeans at the end of the day. The hooks keep clutter off the small amount of floor space, and the little bits of brass make a really nice complement to the deep blue paint color. And the E-Z anchors mean they have no trouble holding a ton of weight.

One thing we didn’t do anything about was the floor (except scrub it). It’s the only original wood floor in the house, which I think is oak but was painted a rusty red at some point. About half of the old paint has worn off and the wood is in really rough shape, which I’m pretty sure means it needs to just be painted white? I’m looking at you, Christmas break…

OK, I take it back about the dumb hooks because my favorite thing about the room is definitely this amazing art deco pendant light that we picked up at The Antique Man. It was kind of a steal at $75 and is just…so beautiful. There’s no electrical in the ceiling in this room, so I converted it into a plug-in fixture, which is pretty easy to do with the teeniest, tiniest bit of electrical know-how or advice from that old guy at the hardware store who knows what’s up. Basically you can just cut the end of an extension cord off, wire it into the original socket, and it’s a plug-in light. One of the electrical outlets in the room is circuited to a light switch, so we just ran the cord down to the outlet as neatly as possible and now it turns on and off like a real light and everything. This room was in dire need of a good main light source (with no real natural light, a few little lamps just don’t cut it sometimes!), and I can’t really think of a better-looking solution than this sexy vintage 20s thang.

So where did the money go in this space? Here’s how it broke down:

Mattress/comforter/duvet/sheets/pillows: $676
Bed repair/new slats: $56
Paint/paint supplies: $215
Light Fixture/new wire: $78
Curtain Rod: $10
Hooks: $15

TOTAL: $1,050

Realistically, we probably spent about $50 or so more than that on various supplies and little things that aren’t springing to mind, but in any case—an entire top-to-bottom  room makeover for right around $1,000 including a new mattress? Not bad.

As Mekko clearly demonstrates, this room is super comfortable and a great place for guests (and us!) to stay. Aside from getting to enjoy the final product, I can honestly say that this was one of the most fun, satisfying vacations I’ve ever had, which is pretty much all you need to know to understand that I’m sick in the head and need professional help and guidance.

A big thanks to Max’s mom for letting us have our way with this space. I hope you love it, Sue!

One of the first things Daniel Vosovic (read more about this here) wanted to address in his studio was this wall. He wanted tons of storage space for all the fun accoutrements that come along with a growing company and a nice place for the interns to work and prosper.

This wall is about 17 feet long. It is also 10 feet high. It is huge. It is brick.

Daniel had mentioned loving the industrial-ish feeling of the pipe and wood bookshelf I made for my bedroom. Having only built a teensy little wall-mounted version of the ridiculously awesome and legendary Ace Hotel-inspired shelves that Morgan made at The Brick House, I might have been undermining my better judgment when I pompously suggested that we do something like that here. Except bigger. Lots bigger. Oh, and we had about three weeks to design and build the whole thing.

I thought it could be done in a weekend. I was wrong. I am obviously not right in the head.

But we did it. Oh, did we ever feel manly. Weighing in at a mammoth 15.5 feet long by 9 feet high, this shit ain’t playing around. Here, let me tell you about our struggles.

First we had to buy all of our 1/2″ black pipe. Because I designed the unit around the different functions Daniel and I had discussed, we needed pretty specific lengths of pipe for everything to come together correctly. I thought this would be easy, seeing as Home Depot sells a nice selection of pre-cut pipe (they call them “nipples,” but I refuse to) and can cut and thread pipes to size as if by magic upon request.

Of course I was wrong about this, because Home Depot stores in NYC are ten kinds of useless. Turns out that while other parts of the country might be more privileged, Home Depot in good old New York can’t cut a pipe for you. They can’t cut a piece of wood for you. They can’t tell you where to find anything or help you in any way. They are evil hellholes.

After calling about 30 different hardware and plumbing supply places, I finally found a shop in Brooklyn that was willing and able to cut pipes. It was called TMB plumbing. It was charmingly sketchy and the employees were endearingly frightening, but they did the job.

After washing all the pipes down in some soapy water, we went about spray painting them on the roof like a bunch of rowdy rebellious teenagers except with less vandalism. Ignore those lights, they’re for something else. We used matte black Rustoleum, about three cans all told.

Next we got all of the wood cut and delivered by Prince Lumber. Even though I had drawn the thing so many times and checked and rechecked the measurements, a continuous 11-foot board of pine is still terrifying when you’re actually faced with it and compelled to think about suspending it eight feet in the air on top of something you built.

We decided to go with 1.25″ thick x 12″ wide boards, which keeps the whole thing looking and feeling pretty substantial since the thicker boards allow the shelves to span for longer distances without bowing.

Since the shelves are knotty pine and the desktop is made of Canadian birch plywood (the lumber yard didn’t have pine in wide enough boards for a desktop),  it took some fiddling to get the stains to match. Eventually it was decided that all the pipe would be stained in Minwax “Dark Walnut” and the birch ply would be a mix of “Dark Walnut” and “Yellow Pine.”

Even with 2-3 people, staining all that wood took several days and a generous helping of boredom. Here, Daniel presides over our setup and clutches the playbill of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, wistfully recalling Daniel Radcliffe’s performance.

After we’d done all of the prep work of sourcing the pipe and wood, spray painting, sanding, staining, and pre-drilling all the holes, the actual construction really only took a couple hours and the helpful hands of four people. Here, Daniel double-checks measurements while his lovely and incessantly-harrassed interns provide physical and emotional support.

A good time was had by all. The top of the unit is attached to the wall with some super heavy duty metal masonry anchors and screws. It’s not going anywhere, don’t worry. But still knock on wood for me, cool?

The whole thing ended up taking about three weeks and many many hours. But it’s kind of awesome, am I right? Check out that floating 7 feet of desktop! The back of the desk is held on with short pipes and endcaps, keeping it from tipping forward, and it’s supported underneath by a couple of 14″ cheap wall brackets in the middle that keep it from bowing. Intern workspace, check!

So shelfy!

What’s that, you say? Cute industrial drawers that hold a bunch of magical fashion-building supplies? Daniel picked these up for a song at a flea market right before we built this thing, so the width of the central section of the unit was dictated by fitting these snuggly into it. All custom n’ stuff.

The left side of the unit was all about creating a manageable storage situation for bolts of fabric, so the shelves are more narrowly spaced and exactly 60″ long (the length of the longest bolts). In case, er, you couldn’t see that.

There she is. Take it in.

In other news, I’ve finished my sophomore year of college! Huzzah! Posting on the ole bloggity can now resume to a more frequent rate. Thank you for your patience and distressed comments and emails over the last few weeks regarding whether or not I had died. Your concern flatters me more than I should probably admit.

By the way, new featured blogs in the sidebar! They’re super cool this time around, I swear, so you’d better go check them out.

So when I spotted one of my favorite Project Runway contestants, Daniel Vosovic, walking through the High Line Park, I knew to keep my distance. I would not embarrass myself. I would neither speak nor gesture. I had seen him, and that was enough to make my sister sufficiently jealous.

Photo from Terrific Magazine

At the end of the High Line was an odd parking lot estate sale, evidently the result of a wealthy nightclub owner’s passing and some young, annoying entrepreneurs trying to make a buck off of his crazy-ass furniture. Prices were outrageous, but I found myself drawn in because it never hurts to look. Suddenly Daniel and I were inspecting the same piece of furniture and “areyouDanielVosovicfromProjectRunway?” just kind of slipped out. Almost as if I were an anxious creep.

Daniel asked if I was “in design.” By this, I gleaned, he did not mean the Adobe computer program, but instead whether I worked in the design field.  I immediately responded “no,” but sheepishly added: “well, I have this…blog.” When it turned out Daniel had actually read my blog, I might have let out a little whimper of excitement. I might not have. I don’t know.

As per his suggestion, I went home and hopped on the internet  to catch up on what he’d been up to in the years since Runway. Turns out, he’s been one busy bee—writing a book, staring his own line, and putting out gorgeous collections for the past several seasons. So I did what any nerd would do and sent him an email praising his work. Then he sent one back praising mine and asked if I might be interested in coming over to his new work studio to bounce around ideas.

So that’s how I ended up standing around in Daniel Vosovic’s sweet studio, droning on about painting walls and building things and pushing his desk back ten feet. Some of which we’ve spent a lot of time doing in the time since. I’m blogging a bit on delay with this whole business, but I’m psyched to show you guys some stuff we’ve been up to. For now, check out these before pictures of the space. Note: these pictures were taken for my own reference and were not intended for blog use. That’s why they are so terrible and at night. Sorry.

This is the main work area in the studio, where Daniel and his staff design and cut and sew and all that jazz. The windows are awesomely huge, and Daniel painted the window trim black before I got there. Black paint, I like him already. One of the big problems in here we need to address is lighting over the worktables. The wiring and lighting situation is one insane crazy hot mess up in this place.

Across from the window is this corner. Sweet inspiration board and sewing machines and stuff.

On the opposite side is this wall, which is huge. One of the big challenges in this space is a lack of usable or attractive storage and no nice place for the interns to work. We’re going to change that, I swear.

Walking from the front of the studio to the back, you pass Daniel’s workspace. Part of the fun and the challenge of this space is the need to create different “zones” within a very open floor plan while still keeping things flexible and uncrowded. Not only does the apartment need to accommodate Daniel and his staff, it also needs to be a place where he can do model fittings and hold meetings and events. All that fun stuff.

Daniel had painted the front door and doorframe black before I came over, and I liked the idea of continuing the black to the adjacent walls, which were a weird architectural eyesore before. We have plans for this area, too, but I think painting it all black was a good start.

This is from the back of the studio, looking towards the front. Those bookshelves have since collapsed in what sounds like a terrifying and chaotic episode, so imagine that big black wall blank. Eventually this area will hold more permanent and substantial seating and new book storage.

Here’s the entrance to the bathroom, which is what’s inside those black walls. It’s a weird renovation with 7.5′ ceilings and general strangeness. It needs some storage and some beautification.

And the other part of the bathroom. Next time you see this, it will look better.

And here’s the kitchen. We have some plans, but they aren’t the highest priority right now. But we’re working on it.

If you watched the show, you’ll know what I mean when I say Daniel is really just like you’d expect him to be. Super hardworking, really creative, and a genuinely nice person. He also gives me a lot of creative freedom with the space and is great at picturing what I mean when I try to sketch ideas, a skill I perform with all the advanced technique of a drunken toddler. I like that. He’s been a great person to work with and is now a good friend, too.

I’m excited to show you what we’ve been up to! Hooray for fun new projects!

In actuality, things moved along as they had most days. We looked around and realized we’d done pretty well. There weren’t too many things to do on the apartment that were urgent or pressing or calling out for completion. A light to hang here, a bead of caulk there. And Winnie. Lots of kitty playtime to fulfill.

Some folks asked to see pictures of Chandler’s bedroom in the comments, so I figured I’d comply. Chandler already owned everything in here (with the exception of the dresser), so we didn’t have to do much work, really. The curtains haven’t come yet for this room either, so excuse the totally-bleach-out-by-camera-exposure vertical blinds.

I covet those American Indian needlepoints. I know 90% of my needlepoint collection is sitting under my bed (no where seems right to hang them, but I just don’t want to give them up!), but I’d buy these in a second if I ever saw them.

Yes, the dresser is in front of the sliding door. This is all part of Chandler’s security system. About the door, she had this to say: “I’m never going to use it. Might as well treat it like a wall.” Fair enough.

I like Chandler’s bedroom. I rarely even went in there to be honest (my domain was the living room couch, which is roughly the size of my apartment anyway), but I like that it just kind of came together in this un-fussy, cozy and casual way. Like a little Chandler den.

I think my favorite room, though, ended up being the kitchen. Even though I never could convince Chandler to let me replace the kitchen floor with VCT (it would have cost about $100), a cool rug, some lighting swaps, and a few finishing details made the space about a million times cuter. Let’s review the before pictures:

When we found the kitchen, it suffered from an enormous hole to the right of the sink where a washing machine used to sit and some very grungy lighting, exhaust fan covers, and switch plates.

The one over the sink is on the left, the thing in the middle of the ceiling is on the right. Gross.

The upper cabinets on the left side of the room were missing hardware. Why? Who the hell knows.

And then, because projects beget more projects, we went and bought these chairs (for FIVE BUCKS EACH. I still can’t get over that. Like, a chair. For the price of a Starbucks coffee.) that needed a big makeover of their own.

Overall, the whole thing was bland, boring, dull, and their seedy friend, icky. Soooooooo….

We quickly realized that the cabinet hardware in the kitchen was the same size and shape as in the bathroom (and the exact number we needed!), except the bathroom hardware was chrome and the kitchen was bronze. All of the metal was in really bad shape, so we didn’t feel bad about painting it. I probably would have gone with black, but Chandler picked silver spray paint and it looks pretty good. I don’t like silver spray paint in general, but things like this are just small enough that I think you can still get away with it.

The brass ceiling fixture was just too small and dark for the hallway (where it was originally), but it works perfectly for over the sink. The wine rack is originally from IKEA, but we thrifted it for a couple dollars.

I couldn’t talk Chandler out of reupholstering the chairs in vinyl—I would have done fabric—but I think they came out really cute regardless (and the vinyl does pick up the dark blue in the rug nicely). And can I just say, after upholstering an entire bed, upholstering two chair seats felt like child’s play.

The table is the NORBO from IKEA, which was probably the easiest thing I’ve ever assembled. Oh, and that light. That huge, gloriously bright (we only had 100-watt bulbs on hand, which is definitely overkill) vintage light. It’s cute, even though it looks a little washed-out and weird in this photo.

I also think we did pretty well on budget in here, considering we had to buy EVERYTHING. I’m not including the stuff from the Container Store because it was all bought on gift cards. Or dishes and silverware and stuff because I have no idea.

The big splurge in here was obviously the kitchen cart. It wouldn’t have been too difficult or time consuming to just build in some shelves in that space, but the cart is really nice, it fits super well, and it’s something Chandler can take with her to her next apartment when the time comes.

Ultimately, my last day in Portland was mostly about this little peanut. Because how can you work (or eat? or sleep?) with that walking around?

We finished off the day with some delicious takeout from Tom Yum, wine, relaxing, and admiring our handiwork. And guess what? Somewhere Chandler found time to expertly craft this cake for me. What a pal.

And everything comes full circle. We’ve come a long way from spreading out Marlboros and vintage cigarette ads across my kitchen table for our senior project. And yet, we really haven’t. I like that about us.

Thank you, Chandler. I had the best time and I already miss you like crazy, BFF.

Thus ends the Portland saga. Allow me to cue a collective sigh. 12 posts, 9,100 words, 300+ comments (we both loved reading every one), and we’ve reached the end.  Thanks for coming along for the ride, everybody. Have a stellar weekend.

P.S.- Wanna read about Portland from beginning to end? Just click the entire month of January in the archives!

More than anything, living alone seems, to Chandler, to come with a renewed set of security risks. While a criminal might enter a home occupied by any number of people, something about quivering in fear on the floor of your closet is just so much less intimidating when you’re accompanied by a friend or family member. There is safety in numbers, especially ones bigger than 1.

So we needed to beef up security before I left. We installed a motion-activated light outside. We frosted some windows. We left the yard a janky disaster area so nobody would suspect that the inside held anything worth stealing. But we needed more. We considered buying a Guard Duck, but eventually decided that it might freak out the neighbors. What we needed was something on the inside— a beast so magnificently terrifying, so thoroughly menacing, and uncompromisingly vicious that it could ward off all evil spirits, living or dead.

Enter Lady Winifred; Winny for short.

To get a sense of just how enormous this monster is, check her out next to that drill:

And get this. She’s only four months old. Terrifying.

While she’s not on duty guarding Chandler’s fortress, which in reality is 100% of always, she moonlights as an adorable, completely darling kitten. She enjoys playing and falling asleep stretched out on her back in your arms. Her hobbies include cuddling up and sleeping next to you in the middle of the night, purring, and begging shamelessly for food. You guys, she’s the cutest.

Aside from bringing home Winny, we got as close to finishing the living room as we were able to get. One of the things about only having 13 days in an apartment is that not everything gets quite finished, obviously. But I think this is a good start.

Here’s the view from the front door. Originally we put the couch against the paneled wall (the one with the framed poster on it), but I moved it out here when I was painting the trim and we liked the layout better this way. Plus, putting furniture too close to walls in Portland is a problem because mold can grow, so it’s better this way.

I really love that brass touch lamp. And look! I made pillows out of that table cloth, and I think they came out pretty cute and girly and whatnot. Tasteful floral.

Chandler bought this fun and informative Minerals poster on Amazon. It’s in a RIBBA frame from IKEA, double-stick taped to the matte.

This is the view from the kitchen door. I think the way the couch divides the spaces and sort of defines and elongates the hallway is nice, and it made a perfect little gallery wall for Chandler’s awesome art.

Cool, right? Chandler went to Berlin over the summer and made this fantastic photo project using pictures of various balconies on apartment buildings around the city. They’re strung together using these little key rings that we could only find at Home Depot, and obviously she needed about a million to put it all together, so it’s not quite finished in these photos. I think she cleaned out the supply of about six different Home Depots and is still on the prowl for more (read: if you’re in Portland and you were hoping to purchase one of these shiny little key rings, good fucking luck). Anyway, it’s going to look amazing when it’s all complete.

After Anna at Door Sixteen posted these pictures of her beautiful hallway, I had to get Chandler the Grand Taxonomy of Rap Names poster from Pop Chart Lab as a house-warming present (also in a RIBBA frame). She nearly died when she saw it and decided to hang it in the entryway. One thing we didn’t get around to was replacing that awful light fixture (there’s a better view here), but we ordered a new one online that will be a massive improvement. I’ll snap a picture next time I’m in Portland when we do our reunion episode.

And O to the M-G remember those vertical blinds of yore? I couldn’t WAIT to rip them down, but Chandler finally let me (even though the new curtains, also ordered online, haven’t arrived yet) so I could paint the trim.

Excuse the crazy Portland window fog (nope, we didn’t frost those… I think somebody just took a shower), but the trim is painted and the curtain rod is hung! We thought about painting the door, too, but we never got around to it. Maybe next time!

Now, figuring out a curtain rod for a window that big was no easy feat. The window itself is about 10.5 feet wide, so the curtain rod had to be about 11.5 feet to allow for a little overhang on each side. Standard curtain rods just aren’t made that large, and ordering one would have been, like, hella expensive. So we went to Home Depot and got this wood dowel cut to size:

Then I stained it with Minwax’s Walnut stain. To hang it, we fashioned these little brackets using closet rod supports, a screw, a washer, a nut, and a 2″ L-bracket. Boy, figuring that out in Home Depot was a good time.

It’s not the most glamorous solution in the world, but it works and the whole thing was less than $20. I think maybe if the brackets were painted black they wouldn’t be as odd looking, but the ends would still be ugly. Any ideas?

I think someday it would be nice to switch the chaise add-on unit to the other side of the couch and put a lounge chair in the corner this picture is taken from (the left side of the window, where all the kitty stuff is now), which would further define the living room a bit and create more seating (because who can have enough places to plant themselves?). We didn’t come across any good options while out thrifting, though, so that’s another thing that might happen in time.

When the time does come, though, we bought this brass lamp for a few dollars to sit on a side table next to future-lounge-chair and spray painted it red. I think it came out cute, so I figured I’d share even though it’s just sitting around for now. The shade is from Target.

So there it is, the living room. As done as it gets for now.

Phew, still there? One more kitty picture? Okay. I’ll give you two.

While she was out running errands, I was painting trim. Still. It took one coat of primer and about six coats of white paint (I blame the off-the-shelf Glidden brand. Benjamin Moore would have never done me like this), but I finally reached the end of the road with Operation: White Trim. It was quite a battle.

One of the problems with this apartment is that it was really, really dark. Even though the living room window is massive, not a lot of natural light gets in because of the architecture of the building, surrounding trees, and Portland’s generally grey, indecisive weather. Since painting all the walls would have involved a lot more money and a lot more time than Chandler was really looking to put in, we decided to coat all the trim in white semi-gloss paint. It’s amazing just how much painting trim totally brightened up the apartment, even though we didn’t even paint the doors too.

Before:

And after:

A new, much brighter light fixture obviously helps, too, but things were already vastly improved even with the old light. I can’t even describe what a difference it is.

Another thing the white trim did, which was kind of unexpected, was it actually made the walls look better. Whereas before they seemed like a dingy white (since there wasn’t a true white-white to compare it to), the white trim made them look kind of creamy and warm. Crisp white paint does wonders, people.

And the light is super cool. I know yesterday’s picture wasn’t great (I was mostly trying to set the scene of that insane thrift store), but it has a really nice texture, and looked really great once Chandler’s friend cleaned it up a bit and hung it. The shade is held up by invisible thread. Nifty.

Between coats of paint on the hallway, I was spray painting outside because I multi-task like that. And I’m awesome.

The chair frames are white! The exhaust fan covers for the fans in the kitchen and the bathroom are white! Oh joyous day.

We passed this parking lot a few times before I was able to actually remember the general location, and a few more times before I realized that the lot belonged to a dumpy-looking thrift store not much bigger than a trailer. The promising parking lot, I realized, wasn’t really the store at all, but the store’s vomit. Its overflow. I know some people like slam dunks or field goals or holes in one, but for me, such a scene is essentially the most exciting thing in the world.

On the morning of Day 11, I woke up a few hours earlier than our normal regimen called for (wake up at noon, work n’ stuff, go to bed around 2, repeat), feeling restless. That thrift store was calling my name. So I threw on some clothes, stole Chandler’s keys and drove there myself, cackling maniacally on the way as the wind lashed through the car, wafting in the sweet aroma of going rogue.

I got there around 9:30. The sign sporting the name “Grandma’s Funky Furniture,” featuring a buck-toothed painting of an elderly woman, said they opened at 10. There were two shell chairs sitting in the fenced-off parking lot, both looking pretty rough but it was hard to tell from my distance. I parked the car across the street and walked the perimeter of the lot, scoping the place out a bit. Then I sat in the car and waited. And waited. And waited. 10 came and went. Then 10:30. Then I looked up the store on my phone, promptly called, and got connected to a super whacked-out answering machine. Around 11 my stakeout was getting boring and my bladder was about to burst, so I drove to Starbucks. Then I came back. Still no signs of life.

Some might say you know you’ve hit rock bottom when you’re practically holding vigil outside a thrift store, slurping coffee while your bloodshot eyes remain fixated on the door lest somebody should spontaneously appear, but I would urge them to consider that they should shut the fuck up and leave me alone. Which is essentially what I told Chandler, in gentler language, when she called wondering where the hell I’d gone and when I was coming back so we could go get some breakfast.

“But they have to open sometime,” I reasoned. “Sure their sign says 10, but loads of people are late to work everyday. That doesn’t mean they never come. They just struggle with punctuality.”

Eventually, the store owner’s father drove by, wondering if I wanted any help. After his calls also went unanswered, I convinced him to let me have the guy’s cell number, trying to look as sane and rational as possible as I programmed it into my phone with all too much excitement. A lead. After leaving a message and heading back to Chandler’s place, the owner called me back. We agreed to meet two hours later.

As Chandler drove me back to Grandma’s Funky Furniture later on that afternoon after we ran a few errands, I began to wonder if I was wrong all along. There I was, perched in the front seat like a spoiled child, so excited about the possibility of getting my grubby paws on things I undoubtably don’t need that I’d hardly considered that this thrift store might be terrible. Maybe my radar was off, and it would actually be as junky as it looked, like some glorified yard sale that had gone on for a few too many weekends.

Luckily, I am almost never wrong when it comes to thrifting. Put another way, I am nearly always right.

Chandler found this great little two-tone dresser for her bedroom for $45. It was filthy but is in pretty good shape under all the gunk.

We also found this cool woven shade that will make a perfect light fixture in the hall (we have other plans for the current light, don’t worry!) for $10.

And I found some treasures of my own. These babies are coming back to New York with me, even though they have to be shipped. I don’t care. I love me some shell chairs. Also, I’ve never had an armed one before and always wanted one, so I deserve it.

The kicker? I talked down the prices so we got it all for $100. Which puts my chairs at around $25 each. Sure they’re completely filthy and nasty now, but I’m so excited to clean them up and make them all sparkly and wonderful.

On the night of Day 11, with my two new shells sitting in Chandler’s second bedroom awaiting their trip to the opposite coast, suddenly painting miles of wood trim didn’t seem so bad after all.

Thank you, Grandma. Whoever you are.

Chandler really liked the idea of a sectional from the beginning, and since there’s clearly room for it, Day 10 found us going back to IKEA to purchase a few assorted items to finish up the bathroom and the KARLSTAD chaise add-on. So itty bitty (which is actually a healthy 81″ long already) sofa turned into hulking, awesomely comfortable sectional.

Oh, and see that big brass-i-licious lamp? Thrifted for $8. And it’s a touch lamp. There are no knobs or switches, you just lightly touch any part of it and it turns on and off. I sense witchcraft. Really fun to play with witchcraft.

We’ll be sewing some real pillows soon. The plastic casings they came in are a little too avante-garde for Chandler’s taste.

More importantly, the bathroom got finished, which was pretty exciting. We’d gone several days without a mirror and were starting to wonder if we even still existed. Or more importantly, if we were still pretty.

The before…

And after!

The mirror is the STAVE from IKEA, which I think is a nice size for this bathroom. I might have tried to thrift something vintage , but it’s a really good mirror at a really good price that works well in here.

Before…

The other side of the bathroom had a towel rod that hung awkwardly directly behind the door and dingy paint-covered switch plates. And see those three broken plastic hooks stuck to the door? Well, let’s just say they were holding on with a death grip and caused a little damage coming down.

So the door got spackled up and painted, switch plates were swapped for a couple dollars, and I just moved the existing towel rod over a couple feet. It makes about ten times more sense here, anyway, since it’s right by the shower instead of across the bathroom.

And I painted that rubber baseboard stuff! It can be done! Oddly, every wall in this room had a different color plastic baseboard, but I just lightly sanded them, primed with Bull’s Eye 1-2-3 latex primer and gave them about three coats of semi-gloss white trim paint. On one hand I think they look much better, on the other hand I think they might make the floor look sadder.

We also added a little SÄVERN towel hanger from IKEA, which is nicely designed and continues with the chrome theme.

The little art above the towel rod is this paint-by-numbers guide Chandler had already in a RIBBA frame from IKEA.

This whole bathroom didn’t cost too much, particularly factoring in that a couple of the pricier items (like the Simple Human trashcan and the shower organizer) were bought with a gift card at the Container Store, and the paint used on the door and trim was leftover from the living area.

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.

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.