I’ve never totally understood the appeal of purchasing those standard-fare types of souvenirs when traveling—the trinkets and tchotchkes that people pick up while wandering around a market or near a recognizable attraction. It seems to me that if you go home, place a small bronze replica of the Eiffel Tower on your nightstand or a Barbie-sized Statue of Liberty on your mantel, you’ve missed the point of shopping while abroad. For one, you go places to see the real thing, so why the need to accumulate mass-produced, miniaturized renderings? More importantly, you’re being too obvious: when people see your artifact, it will be immediately clear to them that you want to be asked about your trip. “Oh, I forgot you went to Australia!” you imagine your guest exclaiming, motioning towards a Lilliputian-sized Sydney Opera House resting somewhere near the TV. “Please, tell me all about it, every last detail!”

Your guests may not say this, but they’ll know you want them to, making them resent you indefinitely.

The same rules apply to presents you bring back for others. When you bring somebody a Terra Cotta Warrior the size of their palm or a totem pole scaled down to resemble the average pepper mill, you think you’re saying “I was thinking about you on my trip, here is an exotic taste of my travels for your enjoyment” but what you’re really saying is “I saw something awesome. Here is a thing to remind you of the awesome thing I have seen that you have not seen. Fuck you.”

And so, it was in my quest to find a good present for my beloved friend and O.G. Chandler that I settled on a small brass bullet, which was being sold for a few shekels at a Kibbutz in Israel. The backstory was that the Kibbutz secretly produced hundreds of thousands of bullets decades ago in an underground factory for use in Israel’s war for independence, but the beauty of the thing was that the context didn’t have to matter in order for it to be a successful gift. Life-sized, shiny, and pierced with a cheap plastic chain, it was as understated, polite, and ladylike as it was unintentionally gangster. Lacking any gunpowder filling, it was not only functionally inert but also lightweight, a plus when you’re planning to travel for another couple of weeks.

It wasn’t until we tried to fly from Jordan to Cairo that the trouble began. As disarming as it is to hear your name spoken clearly, slowly, and multiple times over an entire airport intercom in an Arabic-speaking country, it’s more unnerving when not a single airport security personnel can tell you why. “Go sit down,” they all said, waving me towards a set of benches without another care. Something told me it wouldn’t have mattered whether I explained that my name was being called on the overhead speakers or that my kidneys were rapidly failing, the answer would  still be the same. “Sit down, you can board in a moment.”

Five minutes before boarding, a man in a suit and a security badge came to our gate and found me, telling me that there had been a problem with my suitcase and that I needed to come and claim it. Perhaps my looted bottles of hotel soap had exploded? A zipper had failed? Following him back through two sets of security checkpoints and the length of the duty free area, we got to talking.

“What seems to be the trouble?” I asked lightly, as we navigated the perfume section.

“We need you to open your bag,” he explained, “do you have any weapons in it?”

“Weapons?” I asked, looking down at my skinny jeans and old Pentax swinging around my neck. He glanced at a towering display of cigarette cartons, and I wondered if I should have picked up a few bottles of liquor for the 45 minute flight. ”Me? Weapons?”

“Are you in possession of any firearms?”

“Firearms? As in guns?” I could see how an electric toothbrush might be mistaken for a small dagger on an airport x-ray machine, but guns? Did I look like somebody who carried guns? ”No, of course not,” I replied, “why didn’t they just open the bag to look? No firearms, I’ve never even touched a firearm.”

“It is not our policy,” he explained. “You open the bag.” We walked in silence for a moment, while I weighed trying to explain my anti-gun political opinions against praising his country for their impressive, albeit inconvenient, regard for privacy, such that they can’t rummage around a traveler’s suitcase without express consent. “Bullets?” he piped up.

“Bullets? Of course I don’t have any—” and then it all flooded back. The Kibbutz, the underground factory, the dainty necklace, my lack of effort to smuggle it across national borders. “Well,” I started slowly. “I guess I do have one bullet, but it isn’t real, it’s a fake bullet.” He raised an eyebrow. “What I mean to say is that it’s a real bullet, but just a casing, just a bullet shell—the outside—but no inside. Nothing to make it explode.” He looked at me, skeptical. “It’s not dangerous,” I pushed. “Really, no…ka-boom,” I explained sheepishly, making a hand gesture that inspired a look of deep pity from my chauffeur.

We reached the bag and my passport was taken to another room by one gentleman and my boarding pass handed over to another. The officers crowded around as I slowly unzipped my luggage, pulled some of my clothing out onto the table and located the pendant, still attached to the chain, in a small plastic bag with a pamphlet explaining its significance. The guards looked at each other. A man in a uniform took it from my hands an sat down at the table, slowly. He cautiously removed it from its ziploc and turned it over gently in his hands. He stared at the bullet, he looked at me, he looked back at the bullet, he looked at me. He called the guards over, and they caucused. Five large official Jordanian officers, crowded around my gag gift, whispering about me in Arabic.

At long last, the main officer set about filling out a form, taking down my passport information and continuing to shoot me suspicious glances. “So,” I piped up quietly, turning towards my original captor, “I’m not going to get the bul—I mean, necklace—back, am I?”

“No,” he replied, quickly and without emotion.

“What’s going to happen to it?” I whispered, before I could help myself. It was foolish to belabor the point, but sometimes you need to know.

“It will be destroyed,” he said, handing my passport back to me and turning around to usher me back to my gate. On one hand, I shouldn’t have cared. I wanted to get back to my family, and I wanted to make my flight, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Chandler—the sparkle in her eye I had imagined during the gift’s presentation, the joy I had anticipated feeling, with the knowledge that I had found a good present. All of this happiness, so swiftly dashed. It wasn’t just the bullet that was destroyed that day, but also my dreams.

Luckily, there is a middle ground between useless trinkets and things that can be mistaken for explosives, so I focused the remainder of my travel-shopping energy on items that fit within that category instead.

First up on the agenda is this handwoven kilim runner that I picked up in Jordan, which is looking a bit more saturated in pictures than it does in real life, but you get the idea. It’s long, at about 2′ x 10′, and I’m not totally sure what to do with it yet, despite that I carried it MILES AND MILES through the ancient city of Petra to get it home. I thought it would make a great rug in the kitchen, but it seems a little narrow and a little long, and Max isn’t a fan. Maybe for the hallway? Maybe we’ll just throw it on the floor in the bedroom during the summer or something, just to change things up? Even with one closet between two people and a dog, keeping a bunch of extra rugs around still seems totally logical, right?

Okay, I kind of blew my figurine rule in Egypt, but only because I thought these little southern-Egyptian carvings were cool and I liked the way they looked a little worn down and chippy.

Aside from a replacement present for Chandler (a table cloth, flamboyantly decorated with fake egyptian gods and fake hieroglyphs, with matching napkins), that’s basically all I bought on my travels. And then I came home and did this in my kitchen in a day and a half, remember?

And then I flew off to Portland to visit Chandler. Having been exactly one year since I’d been there the first time, it was really great to see her, Winifred, and catch up on all the great stuff she’s been doing in her place since I left! Look how big that kitty got!

Of course, we had to stop at some of the fun Portlandilicious spots. And by “spots,” I mean places old ladies frequent. I really like visiting the Rejuvenation store when I’m there, just to scope out the clearance section (no dice), but this little black porcelain hook caught my eye. They’re even part of the “Chandler” collection.  For $10, it was fated. Oddly, this tiny tiny little thing is incredibly motivational towards working more on the kitchen, since I can just see it looking all amazing with this hook hanging a cute towel next to the sink. I really want to hang it. Now.

Chandler and I promised to relax and have fun, but we ended up falling into a couple house-project traps, as we tend to do. On a hunt for curtains for her bedroom, we stopped in Urban Outfitters and I found a nice little hand towel, designed by Elizabeth Dunker of Fine Little Day. It is triangles! It is blue! It is nice! It is mine!

I knew I couldn’t skip the Pendleton Woolen Mills factory, and stopped in to check things out. They didn’t have much I was interested in the first time around, but on Thursday morning, I heeded the store manager’s advice and pulled a Grandma’s Funky Furniture (ye olde readers might recall that moment of coming unhinged), stole the car, and waited outside until opening with baited breath.

Oh joyous day! Double-runs of this fabric on discount! I ended up buying about two yards for myself, and playing Pendleton-mule for Anna, who needed a couple of yards flown back to NYC. I can’t decide what the hell to do with it, but when I do it will be incredible. Like, beyond incredible. Trust.

AND I GOT A DOGGGGGGGGGG DOG DOG DOG DOG DOG DOG DOG. (just in case you, you know, forgot.)

We love our Miss Mekko. She’s the best dog. She is putting on weight and seems to be getting more happy, content, and confident everyday, which is pretty great to watch. She is still all I know how to talk about to anybody with at least one working ear.

It’s true. Having always had dogs growing up, moving away from home a few years ago meant that a gaping, oozing, disgusting hole was left in my dog-loving soul. If you leave your dog tied up outside a store—BLAM, that’s me petting it until you return, then awkwardly slinking away. Think you can walk down the sidewalk and I won’t stop you? FUCK OFF LET ME PET YOUR DOG. I’m that person, that nightmare, who will make you tell me when you have to leave or I’ll just stay and pet your little monster forever. Age, breed, sex, cleanliness, likeliness to tear my face off: none of these details are important. I love dogs and dogs love me and I don’t trust people who don’t like dogs because dogs are the best. Dogs dogs dogs dogs.

In our neighborhood in Brooklyn, every now and again we see these adoption vans parked on the street during the weekend and I inevitably have to go inside. Oftentimes it’s just cats, which are great if you like neglect and disapproval, but on Saturday my friend Lexi and I passed one from the Sean Casey Animal Rescue with dogs. So many dogs. Cute cute cute dogs.

I actually love cats, by the way. I just don’t want one seeing as I always figured it might impede on my later ability to get a dog.

While inside the truck, I was checking out this little girl named Aruba who I believe was a Chihuahua/Italian Greyhound cross who—for all intents and purposes—was basically a fawn. Cute and timid and slim and long legs and, well, kind of elegant, really. Just the kind of dog Max and I had talked about having for months now.

There was some noise coming from the back of the truck so I squatted down to the ground, as is my instinct when I sense the approach of a dog. And this little Pit Bull—this wiggly little bright-eyed beast ran up, threw her arms around my shoulders, and attacked my face with her tongue. But her arms weren’t just, you know, there. This was a full-on hug.

So I took fawn/dog for a walk, and she was adorable. Shy but friendly and very sweet, and liked being held. Check, check, check, and check. The only problem was that she wasn’t that Pit Bull that hugged me.

Lexi and I got pho and sat down to think it over, because decisions require food. I texted Max. He came down to meet us, stopped at the truck on the way, and came in to report that yes, he wanted fawn/dog.

So we went back to the truck. And I took Max to the back, where the Pit Bull had been returned to her cage. And she looked at me and I looked at her and she licked my fingers through the bars and I asked to take her around the block.

She wasn’t good on the leash. She didn’t know commands, and she’s much too big to just scoop up during a kerfuffle. She can’t use a wee-wee pad and has the energy and enthusiasm of, well, a Pit Bull.

Fawn/dog was the smart choice, for us. She’d be a great apartment dog and quiet and lovely, but this Pit Bull just felt right. Rounding the corner of the second block, I made her sit. She did. And then I sat on the ground behind her and flipped her onto my body, cradling her like a baby and rubbing her little tummy and snorgling her fleshy neck. And that sealed it. Over the course of one square city block, we had our dog.

And we are in love. She is beyond sweet, smart as a whip, and cuddles like you would not believe. Instantly the apartment was hers, and she has settled in with incredible speed and ease.

We named her Mekko, as in Marimekko, as in the Finnish textile company, as in we really are that gay. I think it’s cute and suits her nicely and for some reason she actually responds to it.

Did I mention the cuddles? This dog is all about cuddling. She’s one of those unique creatures who understands how to situate her body in order to be a good little spoon, and really just wants to be close to us at all times. We’ve had her all of a day and a half, and she’s already better on the leash and learning commands and just being all-around impressive.

If I thought the descent into crazy dog-owner would come gradually, I was mistaken. She is all I know how to talk about anymore to anybody. I proudly report the number of times she pooped in a day (yesterday: 3! Today: 1, so far.) and somehow I don’t even mind her rancid farts. To me, she is perfect.

God, that face. That fucking face. I mean, can you even? No you cannot.

So far, owning a Pit Bull is great. People on the street are either terrified or thrilled, because Pit owners LOVE other Pit owners. It’s like this weird tribe of crazy people who know something that seems to have been lost on so many otherwise smart, dog-loving, educated people: Pit Bulls are great dogs. Their reputation is completely undeserved. They are smart and loyal and cute and cuddly and awesome.

Walking away from the adoption truck, Max led the way to the pet store while I tailed him with our new dog. And I completely broke the fuck down. I’m not really an overly-emotional person, and I think the last time I cried from happiness was when I was about 5, but there I was, wailing in the street like a crazy person. I try not to get too sappy on here or in my life in general, but for a minute all I could think about was that, a year ago, I didn’t have any of this. It was just me. And then, all at once, all this love has just come into my life, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say that it all feels pretty damn great. Mekko and Max and me. If not for the river pouring down my face and trouble walking or forming real words, we would have made a pretty handsome group in that moment.

Lucky doesn’t begin to describe my life right now. There, I said it. Slap it on a fucking Hallmark card.

P.S.-None of this would have been possible without the amazing people at Sean Casey Animal Rescue. If you’re feeling a bit generous, please consider donating to the amazing work they do, or going to meet one of the many animals they have available for adoption. Our dog wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for them.

P.P.S.- SOMEBODY adopt fawn/dog. She really is precious. She’s here (her name is Aruba).

“Can I take your coat?” a Mobile Lounge attendant might ask gently, while slipping a cocktail into your hand. From there, you’d be led through smoke-filled air to a private table, where plush velvet-upholstered benches would be waiting to accommodate your buttocks. “Just let me know if you need anything,” she’d offer before slipping away to greet the next set of guests, her sporty little uniform disappearing into the crowd. A tinkling of jazz would emanate from the corner, while people chatted quietly at the bar on the starboard side. Ah, the Mobile Lounge, where the drinks flow like water from a natural spring and the music is always right. The message is clear. Take a load off, it says. Relax. Where the Mobile Lounge is concerned, it’s about the journey, not the destination.

Of course, the Mobile Lounge bespeaks a kind of dignity and sophistication that is unambiguously betrayed by the lived experience of actually traveling on it. In reality, the people are packed in like sardines, only after which the driver enters and slowly makes his way through the length of the train to the front, tripping over carry-ons and strollers on the way. A promotional recording plays during the trip, cheerily informing you that the Mobile Lounge is not only innovative, but also comfortable and a fabulous opportunity to witness the advanced workings of a thriving international airport. This might be true, if you are lucky enough to have a view of the windows or are remotely interested in that sort of thing. But as it is, the announcement reads mostly as desperation. Like me, the Mobile Lounge cries. I’m really wonderful if you’d just give me a chance. 

I returned from Egypt on Sunday night and have since been drawing inspiration from the Dulles Airport Mobile Lounges with a little invention I like to call the Jet Lag Lounge. Catering to the extremely tired and erratic sleeper, a Jet Lag Lounge is, put simply, any place that looks comfortable enough to doze off for a short spell, regardless of location or time of day. Sleep on me, they call out. Just for a minute, nobody will notice. The living room sofa could be one such lounge, but why stop there, especially when the floor is calling? The shower is a perfectly acceptable place whether or not the water is running, and of course the toilet is always fair game. The real beauty of a Jet Lag Lounge is its ambiguity: anywhere can be a lounge if you squint hard enough. Communal tables at the coffee shop, movie theater seats, park benches—the options are virtually boundless.

Jet Lag never used to bother me, but it’s been several years since I did any sort of serious international travel, and the intervening years have brought me to my early 20s, rendering my body broken-down and fragile. My sleep schedule has never been a terribly reliable thing, much like that friend you had in college who you thought just liked to have fun and then turned out to be an alcoholic. If I’ve given the impression that all I’ve been doing for the last few days is sleeping, that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s more an issue of when: the sudden and unpredictable onset of extreme fatigue, followed by the unavoidable nap, followed by intense, manic energy when I should be sleeping. If I didn’t know any better, I might think I was sick or losing my mind, but I’d prefer to just go with it. Ride out the trip. Let my body sort itself out. In the meantime, I think I’ll just go ahead and take advantage of my fucked up circadian rhythms and take care of some things.

The remainder of Sunday and Monday passed by in a complete haze, but roundabout 11 pm Monday night? Why, I think I’ll just start in on painting the kitchen! No better time than the present, really. Sleep a couple hours, and Home Depot and IKEA start calling my name on Tuesday. Don’t mind if I do! Then, crash. And so on.

By last night, we had gone from this:

To this:

One of the things I’m learning about living with Max is that we’re both totally crazy and obsessive in our own quaint little ways, which makes us a highly effective team if you’re into working until it feels like your bones might fall apart and you’re liable to die of starvation. I tend to worry endlessly about little things going awry over the course of a project, but Max just wants to get it done. I’ll admit, I like the process of making a project happen, whereas in Max’s world, the disorder that comes along with something like this is extraordinarily stressful.

The key, I’ve discovered, is taking advantage of his chaos-anxiety and channeling it into something productive, like assembling IKEA cabinets. And didn’t he do a wonderful job? I’m so proud of my boy.

So here’s how it all went down. It started with this advanced plan that I drew on graph paper and everything, the bulk of which was in my head because I can’t draw for shit. But you get the idea.

Basically, I wanted the bottom cabinets and the tall cabinet on the side to protrude from the wall about 16 inches, which is a little over three inches deeper than standard IKEA wall cabinets sit when hung flush with the wall.

I’m quite positive that there’s a better/smarter/more efficient way to go about this, but I’m not that smart and decided to just go ahead an build a platform for the cabinets to mount to, which is screwed into the studs in the wall. It’s not entirely glamorous, but it works. All it took was 2×4′s, my chop saw, some 2.5″ screws, and my drill. Pretty simple.

The bottom cabinets are IKEA  30″ x 30″ wall cabinets. The platform bumps them up 5.5 inches, so with the addition of the 1″ thick countertop, they sit at standard countertop height. That board lying on the ground is going to become the baseboard molding for the entire room, which will wrap perfectly over the base of the cabinets and hide the 2×4 ugliness. They’re just 1×6 pine boards (but the 6″ is actually 5.5″, because wood is weird.).

Now, you might recall that I already had a big PAX wardrobe from IKEA, which moved with me from my last apartment, was in the bedroom for a while here before I moved it to the kitchen, where it sat awkwardly next to the fridge, like so:

The PAX was about 2 feet deep, which was too deep for this, so I broke out my circular saw and got to work.

Totally chopped the thing in half. It was a little crazy and precarious and I wasn’t sure if it would work, but it’s totally fine!  I also chopped off the three or so inches that form the base on the bottom so that all the cabinets would look uniform and sit on the same level.

Here’s a process shot of building the little platform base for under the PAX, which I screwed into the other base for the bottom cabinets. Are you following? The PAX just sits on top of this, and I screwed the bottom of the PAX into this base and then attached it to the wall at the top with some small L-Brackets that I added to the inside to keep it from falling forward for any reason. It’s also screwed into all the cabinets, so it’s not going anywhere.

The next step was cutting the countertop. We chose the NUMERAR double-sided countertop, which is white laminate on one side and grey on the other, with an aluminum edging. Cutting was fairly straightforward—just draw a straight line and go to it with the circular saw. Easy-peesy. We’re not going to screw down the countertop, so if at some point the white side gets beaten up or we get bored of it, we can always just flip it over.

The next step was hanging the upper cabinets (30″x39″), which basically could not be easier. They hang off a steel suspension rail, so it’s important to make sure that’s VERY SECURE to the wall. I used about 8 big toggle anchors in addition to finding three studs, so the chances of these things falling are pretty slim. Max took this super flattering action shot of me, wherein I decided to dress like a lumberjack.

After cleaning for approximately forever, here’s where we stand! I’m pretty ridiculously happy with it. It holds a ton, gives us five (FIVE!!!) extra feet of counter space that we didn’t have before (we had been operating off four feet, which makes for some tricky cooking), and I think already looks pretty great despite the necessary finishing touches. By the way, that adorable clock on the wall was Max’s Christmas present to me. I LOVE it. I’ll take a better picture of it for the next post. It’s a sphere.

Anyway. Obviously this is a problem. IKEA sells cover panels for the sides of cabinets, so I need to go pick one up and cut it to the proper size. Soon! We also still have to:

1. Cut and install baseboards.
2. Install cabinet hardware.
3. Glue strip of aluminum trim to the cut side of the countertop.
4. Organize all my tools and fit them into the bottom cabinet on the right.
5. Paint the window molding (it’s primed in these photos, not painted).
6. Paint the other half of the ceiling.

The microwave is concealed in a cabinet! I am so pleased that I don’t have to look at it. As you can see, we left the backs of the base cabinets open, which lets us take advantage of the added depth, run cords through it, and provide more than enough ventilation for the microwave to function without being a hazard. It’s not pretty, but who cares? Not me.

Mostly, I think I’m just thrilled that I have a proper, fancy coffee station. I even bought Illy to celebrate, which means I’m probably never buying inferior coffee ever again.

Phew. Kitchen. Things are finally moving. I’d love to talk longer, but my new countertop is looking like a mighty fine place for a nap right now.

Okay, so here’s what happened: The last few weeks of school were crazy with assignments I didn’t want to do and books I didn’t want to read and papers I didn’t want to write and exams I didn’t want to take and classes I didn’t want to attend. But I did, because I’m a role model. Note to self: ideally, you only do college once, so stop taking classes that suck. Bitchfest, over.

Anyway, before school was technically even wrapped up, I was whisked away on a big family vacation. Israel, then Jordan, then Egypt. It is epic. If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, you’re probably already privy to these developments. If you don’t, shame on you.

Photos of my apartment keep mocking me, waiting desperately to be spun like gold from straw into glimmering new blog posts—but shit, I’m tired. I think I walked somewhere between 2 and 47 miles today and my weary bones just don’t want to write about my bathroom. Soon, you gorgeous impatient thing. Soon. I finally took the pictures and everything.

Israel was totally beautiful and amazing and full of hot Jews who know their way around a hummus recipe. That leg of the trip was full of boatloads of incredible history and impossibly heavy and very old stones. I dug up really old pottery shards and floated around in some super salty water and slathered mud all over my semi-naked flesh.

Also, saw a skinny Santa Claus parading around some foxy lady in blue who I can only assume is his mistress. Slut.

Israel has a lot going for it, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t put the discovery of my new favorite animal/future pet high on the list: the rock rabbit, also known as the Hyrax. Bear in mind that this is a real thing that exists in nature but is also a stuffed animal of my dreams, come to life in the form of fuzzy round cuteness. Get a load of this thing:

OBSESSED.

Oh right. The trip has also been full of family—my dad, mom, brother, and sister, along with four cousins, two aunts, and two uncles.

All of the cousins are younger and cuter than we are, and suddenly I am feeling very old. Nothing like explaining how a film camera works or what Tower Records used to sell to make your 22 years feel more like 23 and a half. The agony.

You know what helps with that? HYRAX.

Look at that majestic motherfucker. Look at that nose and the little rounded ears and the fluffy blonde fur and those crazy little pudgy toes.

Fun fact about the Hyrax: it’s not a rodent.
Funner fact about the Hyrax: it’s more closely related to the rhinoceros. Oh, scientists, you crazy fuckers.

Anyway.

My second-oldest cousin Reese even got Bat Mitzvah’d in Israel! AT THE WESTERN WALL. Yeah, we’re not messing around. She did a beautiful job, by the way.

And lest you doubted our piety as Jews, we also made sure to get Chinese food on Christmas in Tiberias, a task that was neither easy nor terribly appetizing, to be honest. But important all the same.

So I guess you’re wondering: if Jews eat Chinese food, what do Hyrax eat?

Looks like leaves? I’m going with leaves. Who cares! Look at that little round furry nugget nomming away! The snaggleteeth! The wide suspicious eyes! The crooked mouth!

Ugh, it kills me. Kills me dead.

So Israel was amazing. I had a great time and already want to go back and do totally different things and see more and stuff my face with falafel even more than I did. Someday.

I know I kind of missed the whole holiday train, but if you did Christmas or you’re wrapping up Chanukah or you’re celebrating something else altogether, I hope it was/is great.

And in case I don’t chime in before the New Year: 2011 was an amazing year for a lot of reasons, but if you’re reading this blog, then one of those reasons was you. I can’t offer money or gold or the elixir of youth, so as a token of my gratitude, please accept this Hyrax butt instead.

I don’t mean to sing my own praises here, but I’d say I have an above-average olfactory sense, a gift that tends to be more curse than blessing in the city of New York. My apartment didn’t smell bad, but rather didn’t really smell like anything, which is how I like it. I tend to find scented rooms a little uncomfortable, to be honest. Why does your 6th floor East Village apartment always smell like a garden center full of hydrangeas? What are you trying to cover up? Do you have terrible gas? Are you growing pot in your coat closet? Do you have a rotting carcass fetish?  There are no flowers around, it doesn’t make sense. Context is everything.

All of this changed with Max.

Face your fears.

By my count, we have 2 plug-ins, 2 reed diffusers, 2 oil burners, and a vast assortment of tiny vials of variously scented oils, much like a witch doctor. Bear in mind that our apartment is about 600 square feet. Max used to have a third oil burner before I think I urged him to throw it away, and I’ve put my foot solidly down against the concept of tiny bowls of potpourri strewn about the place, but I know it’s probably only a matter of time. I know he’s just waiting for that right potpourri.

At one point shortly after he moved in, he purchased a third reed diffuser and put it on the mantle. It was the sort of thing that gave me the nervous eye twitch, but hey, I thought, he’s new here, let the boy have it. It wasn’t until it fell to the floor, diffusing its contents all over my rug and the couch, that tacit frustration boiled over into rage. “THESE THINGS ARE ARE MADE BY THE MEDDLING HANDS OF THE DEVIL,” I recall yelling. I sulked for days, pretending that it was the oil spill all over my antique rug (which is gone now… just cover it with cornstarch and vacuum later! Thanks, Martha!) that bothered me, not that my apartment smelled like a funeral parlor. That smell could linger for days, but possibly forever, and eventually I’d have to move, telling people, “Oh, it was a great apartment, but I got tired of smelling Savon’s Sandlewood oil. It was time to move on.”

All of our many new fragrances were easy to accept with a kind of passive compliance, but things got more distressing when Max zeroed in on the throw pillow situation.

All I heard about was throw pillows. I had purchased some fabric that I had planned to make into throw pillows, but a combination of laziness and a crippling fear of my sewing machine had delayed the process for about a year. Max thought this fabric was “too manly” anyway (“but we are men, Sugar Tits!”), so what followed was weeks of bickering over which pillows. Max would threaten me with some semi-contemporary trellis pattern thing and I’d get all weepy about the vintage kilim pillow he made me donate to Goodwill (gone, but not forgotten) and that would go on for a while until we’d realize we were actually fighting about throw pillows and then we’d explode into a pile of rainbows and glitter paint.

Eventually I presented Max with a single option, which he took: the Coco Pillow from CB2. Neither of us loved them, neither of us hated them, which was a big improvement over everything else we’d presented each other. Stalemate pillows, if you will. We bought two. Drama, ended.

But two pillows wasn’t enough to satiate Max’s undying thirst for throw pillows. So, desperate to finally end this whole debacle, I walked into the Marimekko shop at Crate & Barrel and bought a yard of fabric.

And then I FACED MY FEARS.

I looked up some instructions online. I broke out that sewing machine. I made some fucking pillows. I watched the pilot episode of that Terra Nova show and was disappointed. Talk about a packed afternoon.

Don’t pretend you’re not impressed. FYI, made them about an inch smaller than the insert, which keeps them from getting too droopy. You know, pro tip.

Totally sewed them with an envelop back, too! This allowed me to skip the whole zipper issue, seeing as who the hell am I kidding here? I can’t sew a zipper.

But then, because my pillows were such a wild success, I showed them to a friend at a party and we got to talking about whether I could make cushions for our friend Emily’s couch for her birthday.

Vintage teak Danish sofa. No cushions. Foam, dacron, spray adhesive, fabric, sewing machine, zippers. “Yes!” drunk Daniel said, “I would love to do that! When do we start?” And then sober Daniel had a panic attack.

FACE.

YOUR.

FEARS.

I basically followed this awesome dude’s instructions for the foam, which I purchased at Canal Rubber. They’re WONDERFUL there, by the way. If you go in, give Lee a holler for me.

Then, using these advanced tools… (indeed, those are children’s scissors from IKEA. Our kitchen scissors were inexplicably lost so the other option was cuticle scissors.)

And a hefty amount of figuring it the fuck out…

I made this sexy tweedy thing. And another one for the back.

Which turned into these sexy tweedy things.

So people could do shit like this on them.

Sometimes people tell me, “oh, Daniel, you are so gifted and crafty!” And I say to them, “I swear, I don’t have any special skills.”  This is basically true, save for one caveat: I am just a naturally gifted DIY superhero who can do anything. ANYTHING. I even learned how to thread a bobbin during this whole sofa cushion thing. And watched the entire first season of Walking Dead. As I said: ANYTHING.

Face your fears.

As it’s getting dark so early, it’s cold outside, and Max was getting a little too comfortable, I decided I really wanted some house plants.

Max has this thing about houseplants. He hates them. Sometimes I think about why this might be, seeing as a good houseplant is loyal, and alive, and filters your air, and needs very little maintenance. Is it because sometimes the leaves collect dust? Is it because they have soil, which is traditionally home to bugs? Is it because they photosynthesize for energy, which is basically eating the sun? Is it because they grow, like silent, perpetually still zombie children waiting around in corners of your house?

FACE.

YO.

MOTHERFUCKING.

FEARS.

I already had this one. Bought it at Morton-Williams, 82nd & 1st Ave. (can I hear a whut-whut?!). I do not know what it’s called, but I do know that it lived through the move and just keeps growing. So, so proud.

And what? What did I do? Went and bought a Fabian Aralia from some guy on Craigslist? Like a crazy plant person? Who talked about plants with me while I pet his dog? Sure did.

Then just to be an asshole I bought this little lovely at Trader Joe’s for a couple bucks. Planted her in a weird sized vase I had and water her every once in a while. She’s alright.

I recognize that buying houseplants as a form of passive aggression is about the gayest thing imaginable (I can say that, you can’t). It just feels so right.

I wasn’t really prepared for this, though. Seasonal decorating.

Gourds. Everywhere there are gourds. Gourds, pumpkins, glass pumpkins, more gourds.

These cropped up shortly before Halloween and have been slowly rotting on most of the surfaces in our apartment ever since. Max says they’re a “slightly pre-Halloween up until and including Thanksgiving” thing. He is disposing of them piecemeal—we’ll come home, something will smell funky, and he’ll find the offending gourd and toss it.

It’s not a horrible smell, just something a little bitter in the air. It might be worse, but, you see, we have these air fresheners.

Until next time: FACE. YO. FEARS.

Before:

AFTER!

I like it! I don’t LOVE it, to be honest—the color’s a little bluer than I was expecting—but I do like it a lot. WAY better than the red, even if I end up repainting it eventually.

I know there were some fans out there of the red, but I hated it. Hated it. Even if I had wanted to keep it, the walls were in R-O-U-G-H shape and it would have needed to be redone. Not that it matters, it made my head hurt and my eyes bleed. At no point ever in the entire time I’ve lived here did I think to myself, “Hey! Maybe I should keep this red. It’s so funky!” That, by the way, is a good example of something I would never say aloud, in case you were struggling to think of anything.

Something I would say? “I’m painting our living room Paper White by Benjamin Moore in matte. The ceiling will be White in eggshell, the moldings will be Super White in semi-gloss. The doors and fireplace mantle will be Onyx in Pearl.”

Something Max would say? “Do whatever you want, but please stop talking about it. What’s for dinner?” OMGYOUGUYZDREAMY.

Because I get questions in the comments and the occasional email regarding this very important and surprisingly mysterious concept, I’m going to tell you how to paint a room. Well, how I paint a room. You can do it however you want but my way will always be the right way.

PREP:

1. Locate, patch, and sand holes with spackle. Really sand, now. Don’t be a punk.

2. Move all your furniture and crap into the middle of the room, cover with a giant $2 plastic tarp.

3. Try to go inside your furniture fort, look around, pretend you’re in a quarantine chamber in a space ship.

4. Put drop cloths on floor around perimeter of room.

PAINT THAT SHIT:

1. STAY HYDRATED. Painting is hard work, don’t kid yourself. It will take you many hours, most of them standing, which is more physical activity than you’re generally comfortable with. That’s why I recommend you stay hydrated. I like to stay hydrated with a couple beers or glasses of wine because, let’s face it, painting’s the fucking worst. Worse than famine. Worse than natural disasters. Worse than Rick Perry. (Maybe not worse than Rick Perry.) The point is: loosen up, settle in for the long haul. So drink some booze, smoke some weed, whatever works for you.

2. Gather up your supplies. You will need: paint, a paint brush (or several), a paint tray, a roller (and pad, I always use “semi-smooth” for walls), and a ladder unless you’re a giant.

I like to use a 2″ angle brush, and because I was feeling a little crazy that day, I bought a stubby one without a handle. What am I, a leprechaun? I don’t know what came over me.

3. Start by cutting in the perimeter of the ceiling with your brush, since the roller can’t paint corners. ”Cutting in” is a fancy painterly term, and when you say it, you’ll sound like you know shit.

4. Paint the ceiling with a roller. Now, you might think you can skip painting the ceiling. “But it looks white,” your lazy ass says. YOU ARE WRONG. It is not white. When confronted with real white, it looks poopy and horrible. Like so:

PAINT YOUR CEILING. You won’t regret it.

5. Start by cutting in with your brush around moldings and up the corners of the room. This was a special pain in the ass because I also had to do it around all those fancy wall-moldings, too.

6. Prime, if you have to. You should really prime if you’re painting a light color over a dark color, or the other way around. For dark over light, ask your paint store if you should use a tinted primer. At this point, things will look terrible.

7. Cut in around the moldings and corners again, and paint another coat with your roller. Then do that again. You probably want two coats, maybe three depending on what paint you use. I used Benjamin Moore’s Regal Select, which is really nice stuff. I usually go with just the plain Regal (it’s a little cheaper and still very nice paint), but I really didn’t want to do three coats.

8. After you’re done with the walls, paint the moldings! Now, you might think you don’t need to paint your moldings. “They look white,” you say.

WRONG AGAIN, STUPID. You need to paint your trim. Just do it, you’ll feel better.

Now, this might shock you. DO NOT USE PAINTER’S TAPE. There is a time and a place for it, but it’s really not necessary in most cases, certainly not for painting most moldings and stuff. Normally, it just messes you up, since paint gets all up under the tape and ruins your clean lines. It also takes forever to apply, and really isn’t as fun as you think it is to rip off. You really just need your angle brush, a steady-ish hand, and about three minutes of practice to really get the hang of things. If you are going to use painter’s tape, please for the love of god use it right.

The last people who painted my apartment apparently did not read the tape instruction manual and thought it would be easier to cut their tape off  the wall with an x-acto knife. This is not only wrong, but evil, because it leaves TEENY TINY slivers of painting tape that will slowly separate from the walls over time and drive the next painter totally fucking insane trying to peel off. It’s not right, it’s not fair, never do this ever or your karma will be in the shitter. And that’s a promise.

9. Clean up, put your furniture back, and you’re done!

Max bought that painting a couple weeks ago from his friend Matt Uebbing. We’re still deciding on art placement, so it’s not hung yet, but we’ll get to that.

I decided to paint the wall moldings with the ceiling paint, which is just off-the-shelf BM “White” in eggshell. It offsets nicely with the wall color without being SO in-your-face, and the finish is every-so-slightly glossier than the matte walls. I just used a 1″ brush, and it took forever.

Before:

AFTER!

Before:

We really need some art on the walls and to fix up that super sad stuff happening on top of the mantle. All in good time.

Obviously, I painted the fireplace the same BM Onyx as the doors, and I really love it. I used to totally hate the tiling work, but now I think I kind of like that too? I don’t know, for some reason now it seems kind of perfectly-antiquey-poopy-brownish-mustard. Masculine might be the word I’m looking for. Anyway. The new paint has really changed my views on them.

I am totally in love with my new lamp, by the way. Like, if I die, and I’m ever reincarnated as a lamp, I think it would look a lot like that.

While alone it’s easier to focus exclusively on the task at hand, but the presence of another person inspires a sort of quick self-inspection, followed by an assessment, followed by shame. Alright, you might think, he’s seen me. Play it cool. Do you look ridiculous? Yes. Do you have a compelling reason? Certainly. And when he opens his mouth to say something like “What in the fuck are you doing down there?” you need to explain yourself. Hurriedly, you try to come up with a reason why the doors sticking out a couple of inches instead of receding nicely into the walls is a pressing problem riddled with threatening functional implications. Further, one that can only be addressed while sweaty, dirty, and mostly naked. You decide to bypass the accusatorial interrogation and just skip to the explanation.

“Some asshole past tenant stuffed about a million newspapers into our walls, and that’s why the pocket doors won’t open all the way, which looks all weird and is probably why they keep skipping off their tracks and I’ve been trying to fish them out but they’re really stuck and I lost track of time and I’m really sorry but I broke your umbrella.”

“Which newspaper?” he replied. And there it was. Not angered, nor shocked and appalled, nor even slightly surprised that he might come home to find me in such a state, there was something immensely comforting about his apathy.

“Oh, just a bunch of horse racing schedules and statistics and stuff, from the mid-70s. Nothing interesting.”

“Oh, bummer.”

And then I went back to sticking my arms into the wall and he told me about his day at work. And it was good.

Aside from what is now obvious (that Eugene Tombs was nesting in our apartment), all of our doors had an exciting laundry list of things wrong with them. The paint was chipping off the pocket doors. The bedroom and bathroom doors didn’t close. All the hardware had been painted over by careless landlords and tenants for years, and was not only ugly but also didn’t work. Poor doors. So abused.

When I first moved into this apartment, during the brief period that it was still technically just my apartment and I could be as big of an asswipe as I wanted to be, I told Max that I was going to paint all the doors black. I told other people this, too, all of whom expressed deep concern. “Really? Black? Like, black-black?” FUCK YES, BLACK. But let me just say:

Before:

After:

Yeah. They’re rad. I love my black doors. The color is Onyx by Benjamin Moore, in Pearl finish. It’s basically the perfect, perfect black. I want to live in a world of Benjamin Moore Onyx.

All the doors in the apartment (there are only three other ones, including the front door) are getting the Onyx treatment too, and I love it. Bedroom door before:

And AFTER!

I love them. Love them. You can tell me anything. Tell me they’re ugly. See if I care. I do not care. You know why? Because I love them.

LOVE.

My affection isn’t just a paint fetish thing, though. It’s also the hardware. I’m so happy with how the hardware turned out. Because it had been painted over so many, many times, it all had to be carefully cut and scraped and stripped away from the doors. Here’s a fancy close-up image I made by cropping a much wider image I had, because I took no proper before pictures. My blogging fanciness knows no bounds.

Stripping paint off stuff is one of those intensely tedious, endlessly satisfying tasks that just keeps you coming back for more. Once I got it all detached from the doors, I stuck it in a pot of boiling water (and a little dish soap), and let it simmer like a delicious hardware stew for a while. Like so:

No, I do not still cook food in that pot. Luckily, it was from a thrift store and I don’t feel too bad about it.

After a bunch of the paint has boiled off, it’s time to move this party to the sink, where you’ll scrub and pick at the stragglers while burning your hands through latex gloves beneath scalding running water. It’s fun! Let your kid do it, he/she will have a phenomenal time.

All kidding aside, it’s really kind of amazing to restore something like this—probably well over a century old—to an original, functioning condition. Hearing that door click! closed for the first time was super rewarding, and using the doorknob everyday feels like such an awesome privilege that I totally fucking deserve. 

Aside from that, I think we can all agree that the mix of the black door, the white trim, and the brass/pewter-y hardware is pretty dope. It’s all J.Crew-Men’s-Shop-Yale-Club-Old-New-England-Classic-Fancy up in here. All of those associations make perfect sense to me.

The pocket door hardware was slightly more challenging because it’s not actually very old, so the brass was super shiny and new and weird looking when I stripped the paint off them. I found something online that told me to wet them with vinegar and stick them in a hot oven for a few minutes, which would help age the brass. Usually I’m not a fan of trying to obtain faux-old finishes, but this was tiny and subtle and totally worked and I love them now.

Best for last? Okay. Best for last.

The bathroom door was a whole crazy mess of gloppy old paint and filthy and sadness.

Like, gag me with a spoon, as my father would say. But you know I’m all about that black porcelain knob.

Insert some boiling water, some taking the door off its hinges, sanding and sanding and sanding down the bottom so it would close, a few coats of paint later, and…

Here’s the outside. The wood handle makes my heart sing. I just rubbed on a couple coats of Danish oil after it dried out from the boiling and it’s so pretty.

On the inside of the door, under all the paint was this super cool lock. In case you can’t make it out, it reads: “New York City 1883 Make.” EIGHTEEN FUCKING EIGHTY THREE. That shit is old, and awesome. It had a petrified cockroach carcass inside of it. That’s history. I think it was painted black originally but the boiling took off all the paint and I ended up liking the raw metal, so I spray painted it with a matte clear coat protection so it wouldn’t rust in a steamy bathroom.

Wider angles to come, when I get my act together and photograph the bathroom. Things are looking a little different in there! (See what I did there? I love to play the tease.)

I also realized that, aside from just not blogging at all, I’ve also spoken nary a word about anything outside the going-ons in my bedroom. Not that way, you filthy-minded freak. Let’s try to be mature about this, please.

But we have other rooms! Three of them! Four, if you count the hallway, that scary beast of an appendage. So let’s talk about the kitchen. Or rather, let’s kvetch about the kitchen. Pain-in-the-ass-o’-mine that it is.

You see, before I moved in, this is what the kitchen looked like. Renovated circa 1995 with all of the deep thought and careful consideration driving the actions of most NYC landlords, it is a sad place. And despite actually being a fairly sizable room, this is the extent of the storage. A few really cheap cabinets and almost no counter space. Oh, and a fun fact about those cabinets: the shelves don’t even adjust. What. The. Hell.

Then Max and I moved in and it exploded into this:

So crowded. Oh, and the space next to the fridge? The 6 feet of nothingness? Went from this:

To this:

Believe me, internet. I am ashamed. I’m sorry you had to see it. But you’ll never appreciate the mild improvements I’ve made if I didn’t share just how bad things got. I hope you get the picture of my desperation with this awkward horrible excuse for a room. A room where I’m supposed to be able to create meals.

So while we’re a long way from a truly gratifying before and after, I’ve made a few semi-notable functional improvements that I actually feel really good about. It still looks like shit, but at least I can cook in the damn place.

A big part of the problem was having so little counter space to prep food on, which just seemed silly since there’s such a buttload of space to the right of the fridge. So I moved the fridge over two feet…

And plopped in a new base cabinet from IKEA! Of course, it looks nothing like all the other cabinets and (for now) looks a little like it got lost on the way to somebody else’s house, but I’m so glad it’s here. Seriously, it’s awesomesauce.

I decided to top it with the NUMERAR butcherblock countertop in oak, which is fancy stuff. It’s really heavy. We bought the smallest piece available and had to cut it down ourselves. Which just meant that I got to purchase a circular saw of my very own. So exciting, you guys. Look at me. Real power tools.

The whole butcherblock thing kind of skeeves out Max, but thus far I’ve ignored his complaints and continued to cut veggies and stuff right on the countertop. I’m not super concerned with keeping it looking pristine, and really don’t mind it showing some use. And by “use,” I mean millions of cut marks.

The other great thing about this cabinet is how it’s pimped out. Check it, yo:

Hell yes. Pull-out trashcan + recycling bin, courtesy of Simple Human. It’s bomb. So nice to be able to chop shit on the countertop, then casually just slide the waste off the edge and have it fall into a waiting receptacle rather than all over the floor. It’s also nice that we don’t eat up precious floor space with trashcans.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL.

An apartment on the second floor of our building is currently being renovated to death (god knows why…this never ends well), and a whole bunch of molding was on its way out to the trash. And our kitchen sports this window. I call it Sad Window. It has no molding. It has an ugly security gate. It has a dusty crooked venetian blind that I have always been too afraid to use. Behold:

It’s the only window in our apartment without nice original moldings, and I dreamt of doing something about it. So when fantasy met opportunity, I struck. And carried all this shit into the house. Max was not pleased.

It was all totally grungy and disgusting. It also had about a million of these terrifying old nails. When you find yourself counting the years since your last tetanus vaccination before embarking on a home-related project, you know you’ve crossed a line.

With the nails removed, I knew that with some careful hacking, I could do my darndest to restore Sad Window. Luckily, I have also recently purchased a mitre saw of my very own (I know! so many tools!). And yeah, I’m kind of fucking amazing with it. They don’t call me Chop Saw Charlie for nothing. In fact, nobody calls me that, it’s idiotic.

I basically just measured, cut the pieces down, and did some careful cobbling together to recreate the original moldings (which was surprisingly complicated, actually. There are a lot of pieces involved in that molding work) and attached them to the walls with finishing nails and construction adhesive. I hate to say things like this, but it really brings a lot of much-needed character back into the kitchen without feeling too contrived, which I like. Once everything’s caulked and painted (yes, someday, it’s all getting painted. I don’t even want to hear it.), it’s going to look amazing.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL.

Buying all of these power tools comes at a cost that is felt not only on my credit card (but actually, they’re not as expensive as you might think), but also on our utter lack of storage space. So I needed to do some rearranging in the kitchen. All that really means is that I colonized the pots and pans cabinet and turned it into my personal tool locker. Whoopsie!

This inspired a big move: one day, while under the influence of cold medicine (for a cold, not for recreation. well, kind of for recreation.), I totally manhandled a huge IKEA Pax wardrobe from a corner of our bedroom into the kitchen. It’s the same one I had in my old apartment, and brought it here as a temporary storage measure that has since become permanent. Funny how that happens.

I know, it’s HUGE next to the fridge, and really pretty stupid looking. A note about that fridge: it’s been leaking water into a small tupperware in the back of the fridge section since I moved in. I thought maybe I just needed to defrost the freezer, so one day I unplugged everything and took a hair dryer and melted all of the ice, sopped it up with a towel, the whole bit. I thought I had fixed it. Yet, now it still leaks. I hate this refrigerator with every fiber of my being, and I wish it would just die so we could get a new one. I would be willing to sacrifice the mochi in our freezer for that to happen, seriously I would.

Anyway, back to the wardrobe. Someday, I actually think it could look good if integrated with built-in cabinets and stuff. And it’s actually really great for a kitchen. Totally holds the vacuum and kitchen appliances and even extra linens and some other random stuff. And our ragtag collection of pots and pans! It’s luxurious, to say the least.

Side note: Magic Bullet is the fucking shit. It’s like non-stop smoothy making excitement up in here. Also, if it’s good enough for Courtney Stodden, it’s good enough for me. 

So anyway, the kitchen isn’t completely miserable anymore, I guess. It works. It’s ugly, it needs a lot of work, but it’s okay for now. It’s still totally bursting at the seams storage-wise, but it’ll get there. Someday.

And yes, that is a portrait of Martha Stewart chilling up there in the corner. Max painted it a few years ago and I love it. And Martha. We are huge Martha fanboys, and proud.

Oh yeah, janky horrible “temporary” milk-crate shelves are in here now. They’re still ugly, but annoyingly helpful when we’re at such a loss for storage.

Decanters give me faith, though. Someday, we’ll be those people. The people who decant their food and then have a proper shelf to put them on. We’ll get there.

I never fucking learn though. I convince myself that building projects will be easy and simple, that what I really want isn’t something that IKEA can readily provide, and that there’s no reason for me to shy away from a little DIY. Then I end up covered in plaster dust and ruing the day I ever turned my nose up at a perfectly good BILLY bookcase. This is the short story of my life, perpetually retold here for your edification and enjoyment.

When Max moved in, he didn’t bring that much stuff. This was a good thing, both because I am an evil dictator and because I already have a lot of stuff. But if you are planning to move in with Maxwell Tielman, know this: 1) I will cut you, get your filthy whore-paws off my man. 2) He comes with books, and lots of them.

For a couple weeks, there were basically books EVERYWHERE in the apartment—on two mini folding bookcases Max brought with as temporary measures, the horrible free milk crate monstrosity I cobbled together, and little piles all over the place. It became eminently clear that my little pipe and ply shelves of yore, which served me well in Manhattan, just weren’t going to cut it here. I’m a Brooklynite now; I read stuff.

But I had new things on the mind, anyway—or, rather, things fed to me by the industrious, ever-stylish, and regrettably blog-less Maya, who DIY’d up some amazing wall-to-wall shelves using standard steel L-brackets and nice chunky pieces of lumber at her digs:

Amazing, right? Unfortunately, I don’t have any walls in my apartment that are really ideal for some true wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling shelving, but I figured it could work for a smaller amount of space and still look pretty great. So I did it.

Yes, they’re big. They’re bold. These books ain’t messin’.

There are some downsides to living in a fifth floor walk-up, like wheezing for breath by the time we get to our apartment door. But this also means we’re on the top floor, which means full, unrestricted roof access (you know, until I’m told otherwise. I don’t ask a lot of questions). Which means I finally have a place to build things and not turn our apartment into a total hellhole in the process.

Instead of using thicker pieces of timber, we opted for 1″x12″ pine boards, cut down to about seven foot lengths by the gentle, grumpy hands of Home Depot employees. The brackets are 12″ L-brackets, which I opted to spray paint Rustoleum matte black. After sanding everything down, I stained all the wood with a mix of Minwax’s Walnut and English Chestnut, which is basically the same as my favorite Jacobean stain that I think they stopped making. Boo.

Oh, and a word to the wise: ALWAYS keep your scraps, even if you don’t think you’ll need them. It’s nice to have a few pieces of leftover wood to test out your staining technique on, figure out how long you want to let your stain soak into the wood, etc. etc.

I’m hesitant to even show this picture of how they’re attached to the walls. Those of you who know anything about attaching very heavy things to walls are going to scream in anger about why I didn’t just screw directly into studs, and the answer is embarrassing. I couldn’t find them! I have an electronic stud-sensor, but it’s basically useless for old plaster walls since the plaster is on top of lathe, and the lathe is on top of studs, and this building was built in 1890 and your best guess as to where the studs are is as good as mine. I test-drilled and test-drilled and test-drilled for forever before giving up and just going with Plan B: toggle anchors. These babies are big and strong and require HUGE pilot holes in the walls (barely covered up by the brackets themselves), which I know full well are going to necessitate some exciting repair work for the brave soul who takes these shelves down. Hopefully that person is not me.

Drilling all those big holes is messy, messy, messy. I should really stop using my vacuum as a ShopVac, I think the identity crisis is slowly killing it.

Once all of the brackets were up and the shelves were screwed in (using 1/2″ wood screws), I decided to paint all the screw heads with Rustoleum matte-black enamel, an oil-based paint that matches the spray paint I’d already done on the brackets. I just went along, row-by-row, and touched up all the heads with a little foam brush. Twice. All 128 of them.

Because Max isn’t really one to stain wood or operate power tools or worry about painting screw heads, his major contribution during all of this was to design and print some custom little bookplates to go inside all of our books. You can read way more about that over on his blog, but I think they turned out to be the super-cutest pragmatic insurance policy ever. This way, if his eye lingers, I will know exactly which of these many books to bring to the roof, set aflame, and piss all over the ashes. No, I don’t repeat these threats several times a day, how dare you?!

Back to the books. So many books. The shelves are spaced so the bottom shelf is nicely size for larger-format texts (like design books, etc.), and the upper shelves are well-sized for more standard sized books.

Now I just need to pretty-up that region between the bottom shelf and my desk. And get over the fact that I now think I should have hung the whole thing about 4 inches lower. And my ever-sneaking suspicion that our vintage teak nightstand shelves make the whole room a little too shelfy. Here I go. Shutting up now.

It was instant love between Muji and I. Right before I came back to the States, I picked up a white duvet cover made of gorgeous and super soft cotton. When I got home, I stripped the Pottery Barn duvet off my comforter and replaced it with that one. Newly fancying myself ever-so-slightly French (and, therefore, automatically sophisticated), red ticking stripes no longer suited the decor of my childhood bedroom. It was white, all the way.

I’ve clung fairly consistently to white linens over the years, partially because I like the way they look, partially because they were the only thing that didn’t get ruined by the peroxide-laced products I used to treat my teenaged pizza-face, and partially because, in my book, there’s not a scent in the world more beautiful than that of Clorox bleach. My sister recently reported that she watched an episode of My Strange Addiction in which a woman was addicted to bathing in bleach. Now, before you get all uppity, I’ll admit that it sounds unhealthy, sure—and I’m sure they told her as much. But the fact that this woman apparently did this both frequently enough to warrant calling her habit an addiction rather than, say, a quirky hobby, and managed to avoid instant death in the process has me thinking it might not be such a bad thing to try every now and again.

But for at least two years now, I’ve had a vision in my head of a perfectly grey duvet cover. It had to be light but not too light, warm but not too beige and cool but not too blue. It had to have a nice substantial texture, preferably linen. Since that time, I’ve searched high and low for hours online, multiple times. As it happens, Max enthusiastically supported this goal, motivated mostly by his open disdain of the white one I already owned. Which was fair, seeing as the multiple coffee and food stains (yes, food. I can feel your judgment from here, and it hurts) made its further categorization as “white” generous at best.

We searched and searched. We found. We found this:

It is from area. It is perfect. It is $255 for the duvet alone. It was not happening.

As usual, heartbreak and sticker shock was mentally retooled as a fabulous DIY opportunity!, and a plan was born in a crazed fit of desire. We would make it. We would buy a plain white IKEA duvet cover. And then we would dye it. And then all of our dreams would come true.

With the best of intentions, we bought both the duvet and the dye (Rit Dye in Pearl Grey from Amazon), and were planning to complete our scheme last night when, as fate would have it, my dear (cyber)friend Morgan of The Brick House, tweeted a link to exactly what I’d always wanted yesterday morning. Hands shaking as I clasped my iPhone, I wept. On the inside. CB2 had heard my prayers and answered them with a product called Coast Bed Linens:

Grey linen? For $139? I guess could get into that.

Then, yesterday afternoon, Anna from Door Sixteen asked if I wanted to meet at CB2 to check out this mysterious new duvet in town. I might buy one. She might buy one. Let’s making shopping a team sport!

And then… we saw it. And it wasn’t the stuff that dreams are made of. Well, not my dreams. Or Anna’s dreams. It was darker and had an odd sheen to it and the linen texture just wasn’t all that nice. So we passed on that grass.

Luckily, in the five years since I went to Paris, Muji has found its way to the US of A, with a big ole store right next to CB2. Feeling dejected, hungry, and sad, we decided to pop inside for a second and I SAW IT.

I love spending time with Anna, but this was a moment in which I probably should have been alone, since she was introduced to my “maniacally excited voice,” something that apparently bears a disconcerting resemblance to a “heaving growl.” This is why:

Yeah. It brings the hotness.

For real. It does. It’s not linen, but more of a texture-y (but soft!) cotton. And it was half the price of the CB2 one. I’m so smug about it.

Oh, and in case you think I’m the greedy bastard that I am but pretend not to be, I picked one on Morgan’s behalf, too. And one for Maya.Grey duvets all around!

And because I’ve been a lazy lazy blogger lately and HAVE SO MUCH TO POST ABOUT but haven’t gotten my act together to take pictures of any of it, I guess I’ll just make up for it by showing this hot pink geode coaster I picked up recently at Evolution. I’m into hot pink right now. Oh and half of that girly silver box to hold watches and stuff. The box might be heinously ugly, I’m undecided.

Now what do I do with this?