You Undress, Christopher Gray Giclee Print | Cube Clock by Newgate | Enamel Pot by Orla Kiely | Block Lamp by Design House Stockholm | Apothecary Soap Dish by Izola | Magno Radio by Singgih Kartono for Areaware

Picking just a few things to highlight for this giveaway was more or less impossible because Erie Drive just has SO MANY NICE THINGS (including the print I blogged about last week!). And guess what? You can win ANYTHING YOU WANT. Yep, that’s right—anything in the store! That tingling in your fingertips and lightheadedness is probably totally normal and not something to worry about? Just go with it.

TO ENTER:

1. Go check out all the fabulous things at Erie Drive and pick your favorite item!

2. Come back here and leave a comment telling me what your favorite thing is in the shop and how you’d use it in your home or life! Maybe you need some art on your walls? Maybe you need to make some coffee? It’s all there!

3. For an extra entry, go “Like” Erie Drive on Facebook! Then just come back here and leave a comment telling me you did so!

Due to shipping constraints, this giveaway is open to US residents only.

THIS GIVEAWAY ENDS THURSDAY, MAY 23rd AT 9 PM. WINNER WILL BE CHOSEN AT RANDOM AND ANNOUNCED FRIDAY!

And oh heyyyyy, you know I love a good discount code! Use and abuse this thing for the next 10 days! Get crazy!

This post is in partnership with Erie Drive.

1. Dressing myself.
2. Cooking.
3. Saving money.
4. Waking up in the mornings.
5. Eating breakfast.
6. Eating lunch.
7. Going to sleep.
8. E-mails.
9. Socializing.
10. Vignetting.

So basically I’m mediocre at nearly all aspects of daily life. Go me!

That last item, though—the last one I struggle with. All the other stuff seems like things I could fairly easily improve upon with a little focused attention and effort, but vignetting is more like a frustrating art where owning nice things and understanding concepts like composition and color and scale and being fabulous intersect. You’d think it would be simple: buy pretty things, plop them on top of other pretty things, and BOOM: prettiness occurs. Not so.

For some people, I think this sort of thing comes really naturally, but some of us have to work at it. And maybe some of us also get careless and flustered and feel ridiculous working at it. I mean, this isn’t a model home, it’s where I live, so when I put too much effort into arranging things just so I tend to feel stupid and petty and I give up and go on being mediocre. It’s a weird hang-up. I want my home to just look easy, breezy, beautiful, like I’m just naturally cool so therefore I have pretty stuff (duh) that all looks nice together (double duh).

Take this situation, for instance. When I brought home the new desk, the painting that had been hanging in that spot just stayed where it was (except leaning instead of hanging). I had that black lamp on the old desk, so it stayed, and then I thought, hey, here’s a Dala horse and a Dansk candleholder and a vase thing I can put pens in and I’ll just put all that up there, too! Great plan, D!

Except it wasn’t so great because it looked crowded and nothing really looked good together. Then, factoring the lamp on the desk and the lamp next to the couch, which don’t look so good together, it was feeling very lamp-y ’round this corner of my world, which doesn’t look so good FYI. Plus the painting is too big and overbearing here, so the desk looked small, and it didn’t provide enough contrast with the painting over the couch (which I recognize is not in the above picture, but trust me). See what I mean? It just…isn’t right.

I’ve been trying to streamline and simplify and pare-down, though, and I’m really happy with how things are looking now! Breaking it down from left to right:

1. The Telescoping Otis Light from OneFortyThree. I’ve been a huge (huge, huge) fan of Logan’s work at OneFortyThree for a longggggg time now, and I’m so thrilled to finally have one of his creations in my life! It perfectly solves the too-many-lamps issue, since it easily swivels from side to side to illuminate both the desk and the couch, and it extends! Now I can say, firsthand, that Logan’s work is as exceptionally made as I imagined it would be from stalking his transformation into a full-blown prolific lamp-making, plywood-bending superhero.

2. Plant from IKEA. I don’t know what it’s called, but it seems hard to kill, and that’s how I like my plants.

3. Christopher Gray Winter Logs Giclee Print from Erie Drive. I’d never heard of Erie Drive until very recently when the creative director and buyer, Alexandra Grenham e-mailed me, and then I was filled with lust and envy and very intense feelings to buy all the things! Alexandra has a really amazing eye that she’s used to curate this store with SO much great stuff, it’s a little overwhelming. I fell head over heels for this Christopher Gray print, though—I love the black and white (no shocker there), and the composition and balance of it. It’s bold and graphic, which contrasts perfectly with the other abstract paintings we have in the room. The quality of the print is really nice, too, which was an unexpected surprise. AND it fits perfectly in an IKEA RIBBA frame, which is really the only way I ever frame anything, ever. Love.

4. Nybro Crystal Volcano tea light holders, vintage Swedish from a stoop sale. Yep, it’s stoop sale season again (finally!) and these were my first scores! I love how big and weighty they are, and as we know from my deep and abiding yearnings for Ultima Thule, I pretty much love whenever glass looks like it’s melting all over the place. Mine were a total steal, but here’s one and here’s another one if you need a pair and have no impulse control (like this guy!).

5. Vintage studio pottery, thrifted. Amateur studio pottery is tough because I love basically all of it, but it doesn’t all look great together. This might be stating the obvious, but I finally figured out that they key is matching up the right scales and keeping things contained to a complementary color palette. There are lots of nice options here, but I’m cheap so I wait for them to show up on my thrifty rounds.

6. Dansk candleholder, stoop-saled! This was from last summer and was only $5, so I kind of had to. I’ve yet to find candles that actually fit in it, but it’s such a great shape that I don’t care. Tons of similar ones on Etsy and on eBay if you can’t live your life without one for another second.

7. Dog, scavenged.

Here’s a slightly better angle of that swivel in action and how the lamp, couch, desk, and two pieces of art all look in relation to each other. Feelin’ it.

If you also love the Christopher Gray print or other lovely notions from Erie Drive, then maybe you want to stick around because maybe the amazing Alexandra is maybe a fabulous and generous sponsor who wants to offer you a fabulous and generous giveaway very soon. Maybe.

Probably.

This post is in partnership with Erie Drive.

Of the many strengths of the human mind, gauging the passage of time just isn’t one of them. Sure, we do well enough sometimes with minutes and hours, but things seem to get progressively sketchier when we scale up to weeks, then months, then years. It isn’t a coincidence that every time New Year’s rolls around, we experience a collective sense of wonder——my god, another one, already? I’ve come to think we’re just wired with this deficiency, an adaptation of sorts, because if we realized how swiftly everything truly goes by, we’d feel so hopeless.

So, I know people always preface with this kind of thing, but I can’t believe it’s been a year since we went out for a walk with one dog and, long story short, came home with two. I mean, when I really think back——about the weeks of trying to figure out where he’d live, of finding him a foster home, of eventually deciding he could just stay with us, and then of the subsequent weeks of potty training and trying to get him to eat decent food, and now the months of forgetting what it was like not to have him around——I guess I can believe it’s been a year. But it still sounds like such an awfully long time.

When we first found Linus, the vet thought he was between 9 and 11, so we went with 10. So I guess now he’s between 10 and 12? So we’ll go with 11? Happy birthday, Linus. You’re old. Or as the vet put it recently when discussing an upcoming blood test, “geriatric.”

I don’t say “old” as a derogatory term. I love old things. I love old houses, and old furniture, and I especially love old people. And as it turns out, I love old dogs, too. Linus’s past is full of mystery and intrigue, a whole universe of stories we’ll never get to the bottom of. In a way, that’s frustrating——the not knowing——but it’s also kind of romantic. While I know he’d been horribly, inhumanely neglected when he came to us, I don’t like to think that his whole life was spent that way. I prefer to believe that was just some weird pit-stop he made in the land of Bad Luck, that maybe fortunes changed and he fell on some hard times and decided to pack up his knapsack and hit the road in search of greener pastures. And when he finally found them, he was all perfectly weathered, world-weary and ready to settle down.

I think it takes a certain type of person to decide to adopt an old dog, and I won’t pretend I’m one of those people. It means knowingly missing out on stinky puppy breath (which is my favorite smell in the whole world), and silly doggy adolescence. It means never seeing a full set of teeth, or watching your energetic puppy calm down into some version of itself that’s calmer, more dignified, and wiser, somehow. And, the unpleasant truth of the matter, is that it means you just might not have your dog for very long, which is a particular point that nobody seems altogether comfortable talking or thinking about.  But I’m not really one of those sunny people who walks around ignoring stuff like that. And despite my deepest admiration and respect for people who make the choice to adopt old dogs, I can’t really imagine signing up for it. The way we saw it was that we didn’t really have a choice——he fumbled his way into our lives, and we either had to accept that graciously or risk that nobody else would decide to love him, ever. And that just wouldn’t do.

Who knows how long Linus will live——maybe he’ll be one of those wonder dogs who lives until he’s 25, or maybe he’ll be a normal dog who lives until he’s 13 or 14. Either way is OK. That’s always been one of those unspoken understandings between Mister Linus and I. I’ll take care of you as long as you stick around, little guy, and all you have to do is love me. That’s your only job. I won’t try to put you through the mental hurdles of sit or stay or learning your name. You’ll have everything you need, and you just have to hold up your end of the bargain.

Max’s mom, Sue, once commented offhandedly that all Linus really wants is a warm body to cuddle up to. In some senses, I think that’s basically true. Linus likes everybody and everything, and nearly anyone who sits still for more than a few minutes on our sofa will find a dog sprawling peacefully across their lap. But I think Linus and I have a special thing between us—a type of love that I can’t really convey to most people, or even expect other dog owners to understand. When I was little, I read Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass because I liked the cover when I saw it at Borders. I don’t recall enjoying the book, but one of the ideas in it really appealed to me——that everybody got a little spirit animal called a dæmon, a dedicated creature metaphysically attached to them through, like, magic n’ stuff. And that’s how I feel about Linus. Mekko is my beautiful, perfect baby——my lovable problem child——but Linus? He’s my dæmon.

People often think it’s weird that we have Linus and Mekko, a high-spirited Pit Bull, in the same house. I do, too. Mekko is the dog I always wanted——beyond intelligent, sharply focused, energetic, overly friendly, and as neurotic as her dads (which is to say, extraordinarily neurotic). Mekko is the sort of dog who could probably learn all sorts of exceptional things if we put her up to them, like sign language and math and how to rescue babies from burning buildings. She’s the type who wants to get where she’s going, who’s always looking ahead for the next challenge or exciting thing. People say dogs live in the present and don’t think consciously about the past or future, but I don’t think that’s really true. Mekko probably doesn’t think about what her life will look like when she’s 30, but I know she’s always thinking about somewhere just a little ahead of the present, just beyond it enough that we don’t know what it looks like yet.

But Linus lives thoroughly in the moment. He moves quickly when he feels excited, but most of the time he moves at a pace not much faster than a crawl. Fresh flowers, discarded food scraps on the sidewalk, the fragrant aroma of someone else’s pee——these are all things Linus feels obligated to stop and appreciate fully, with every ounce of his attention. He greets each discovery anew, as if it’s the most fascinating and enticing thing he’s ever encountered. Absent any schedule to keep or goals to fulfill, Linus is left only with what’s in front of him, here and now. He’s the one that literally makes us slow down, take long pauses, and remember that maybe everything doesn’t have to happen so fast. Maybe time will just wait for us a little longer than we thought it could. Maybe we have all the time we need.

Ladies and gentlemen: I no longer dread doing dishes. Filling large pots of water or the caverns of our Brita are no longer tasks that fill me with longing and dread. At last, I have a new kitchen faucet, and it fills my heart with joy.

Here is my old faucet. Even looking at it is upsetting. After almost two years, I’d gotten so used to this thing that I almost didn’t see it as a problem anymore——just another of life’s little daily hurdles to be overcome, like my subway card not swiping or my socks not matching. Our sink is only about 6 inches deep (because it’s crappy) and because the faucet is so low, we only had about 7 inches of clearance between the spout and the bottom of the sink. For a long time, I blamed the sink, but what do you do about a sink? I could replace the sink, but then I’d probably need a new countertop, and I’d need to re-plumb the whole thing, and that just seemed crazy. It wasn’t killing anyone.

When I realized that a new faucet could probably alleviate a lot of my frustrations, it took me a while to justify it. I could deal with the slow leak that occurred at the base of the spout every time I turned it on. I could handle breaking glass after glass while doing the dishes, trying to manipulate things in the cramped space. Having to dump half the water out of a pot to get it out from under the faucet just seemed like a sign that maybe we shouldn’t eat so much spaghetti. Which is true. We shouldn’t eat so much spaghetti. So I left the faucet alone.

Besides, plumbing is just one of those things that makes me weirdly nervous. What if I were to accidentally cause a flood? I can picture the front door of our apartment opening and the water just rushing out, like a shattered fish tank, and quickly overtaking the entire building, then the street, then the borough. “Amateur Design Blogger Attempts to Mess with Plumbing, Floods East Coast” would read the headline in The Los Angeles Times, because all of the worthwhile newspapers would be underwater. The world would weep. If I hadn’t been dealt the mercy of a painless drowning, I would have to go on living, knowing everyone hates me. My life would be miserable.

But I am here to tell you that it was worth the risk. I had no idea what I was missing out on. No earthly notion of how much my life could be improved with about $150 and a trip to IKEA.

I wish I had photos of the whole process to show you, but unfortunately the space under my sink is frightfully dark and hazardously crowded, so I kind of wimped out on trying to document the whole thing. I have to say, though, it was shockingly quick and easy.

Step 1: Turn the water off. This is the first step to not flooding the world. We have one lever that cuts the water supply to the entire apartment and knobs on each of the hot and cold supply lines that turn the water off when rotated.

Step 2: From under the sink, disconnect the hot and cold supply lines from the old faucet with a wrench or pliers.

Step 3: Remove the old faucet! This was fairly straightforward, there were basically three big plastic nuts accessible from under the sink that kept it in place. After these were removed, the old faucet just lifted out from the top of the sink. I put it in a plastic bag and kept it under the sink—in the off chance we move, I’m not leaving the new faucet behind!

I’M SO SORRY FOR BRINGING THIS PICTURE INTO THIS. By far the worst part of the whole process was taking out the old faucet to discover this broken down nasty crusty-ass mess under it. I think it’s old decomposed rubber? And mold? It easily scraped off and I was able to completely clean the stainless steel underneath back to shiny stainless glory, but still, I am scarred by this sight. And now you are, too!

Because the new IKEA faucet only requires one hole in the sink (or countertop), I needed to cover the outer two existing holes. I read somewhere that IKEA faucets come with a deck adaptor, but this is a lie. I purchased mine for about $15 from Amazon.

After that, it was just a matter of dropping the new faucet bits down through the hole and getting them all hooked up! The IKEA faucets come pre-assembled, so this was all very simple and straightforward. Just read the directions.

The one thing that stood in the way of this being a SUPER quick install was that the supply lines on the IKEA faucet were too short to extend all the way to the valves, so I had to go to Lowes to buy extenders. I thought this might be really hard, but it turns out that they sell pieces specifically for this problem. An employee helped me locate them super quickly, and I was in and out the door in minutes and for less than $20.

The IKEA instructions didn’t make any mention of this, but I used plumber’s tape at all of the threaded connections to keep things super water-tight and leak-free. So far, so good! It’s really easy stuff to find and work with, and for about a dollar and a few extra minutes, it’s totally worth it for the little bit of added security.

And that was it! Don’t you just want to lick it? It’s OK, it’s a very natural reaction.

IT. HAS. CHANGED. EVERYTHING.

Seriously, all those little tasks that used to be so irritating with the old faucet are now so easy and enjoyable! I used to hate doing dishes with a burning fiery passion, and now I’m actually a little disappointed when there aren’t any to do. What the hell kind of person likes doing dishes? Me, apparently. I do. I’m that person. Me and my new faucet, taking on the world, one dirty casserole pan at a time.

Here’s a glamorous action shot of my precious at work. Look at it go!

I’m welling up.

So now that we know how completely awesome Hygge & West’s fabulous new line of removable wallpapers look in my kitchen, you’re probably sitting around thinking to yourself, “self, I wish I could also have some delicious removable wallpaper to light up my walls and life!”

I thought so. I am very perceptive to your innermost wants and desires. I have what they call the gift.*

*of common sense, that is, because who in their right mind would not want to get in on this removable and reusable wallpaper extravaganza!

Here’s the deal, folks: the very wonderful wallpaper magicians at Hygge & West are giving away 12——count ‘em, twelve!——removable wallpaper panels to one lucky reader! 

TO ENTER:

1. Go check out the whole line of Removal Wallpapers over a Hygge & West.

2. Come back here and leave a comment telling me what your favorite pattern is and where/how you would use it! Do you have a wall in your kitchen that could use some fancy pattern love? Maybe you want to cover your refrigerator? Your body? The possibilities are endless! 

3. For an extra entry, go follow Hygge & West on Pinterest and pin your favorite pattern! Then just come back here and tell me you did so, so I know to give you an extra entry. 

UPDATE: THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED! Congratulations, Jessica!!

Oh hey, what’s that? A special promo code, just for you? Wallpaper it up, you whacky thing, you!

Good luck, everyone!

International entries to the giveaway are welcome and Hygge & West will pay the shipping. However, the winner may be responsible for international duties & taxes.

This post is in partnership with Hygge & West.

When I was a toddler, after my twin sister had moved into her own room, my mother set about the task of redecorating mine. I don’t recall having any part in the decision-making, but I do remember stumbling in on the progress one day. Furniture was pushed around and the matching dinosaur-themed curtains and bedding were waiting to be placed. I remember being particularly fascinated with the matching wallpaper, though—a small border that went just around the top of the room and matched everything else. The process—what with the paste and the trays of water and the scraps everywhere and my poor exhausted mother—made me feel very fancy and special. My brother’s room had been decorated similarly years earlier—a matching dinosaur motif—so I figured that everyone got a dinosaur-themed bedroom when they passed a certain threshold into kid-dom. Except my sister. She got flowers. But she was a girl, so there.

Unlike my brother’s more realistic earth-toned dinosaurs, mine were bubbly and cartoon-ish, rendered in bright blues and aquas. My comforter and curtains were reversible with coordinating stripes on the opposite side, but I liked everything to match—all dinos, all the time. This was the early-90s, and I knew what was up in the world of high-stylin’ toddler interiors.

I grew to love that dinosaur pattern with an intense, unhealthy fervor, thrown into sharp relief the day we moved out of the house about 4 years later. I knew vaguely of the new family moving in, who had two little blond boys and seemed nice enough, but when the news rolled in that my prized curtains and wallpaper border had been part of the sale, I was blinded to all reason and left with only hatred in my heart and resentment in my bones. I wanted my curtains. I wanted my wallpaper. And more than that, I did not want anyone else to have them.

I hoped these people would up and decide not to buy the house after all, or at the very least, lose their kids in the mall. Without their children, they would no longer want the dinosaurs around to remind them of what once was and might have been, and we could all go on our merry way. Them, childless, sad, and alone, and me with my dinos. The natural order of things.

But it did not come to pass, and moving day found me clinging to the bottom hems of my curtains, wailing in protest as I stared up at the wallpaper border and tried to devise a way to remove it. The disappointing thing about being seven years old is that your full bodyweight and all of your strength isn’t a very powerful match to your father’s, but as I was dragged away, I pledged that I would someday come back for them. Even if I was 37, I’d knock on the door and go take what was rightfully mine, and I’d put up my curtains and my wallpaper in my room and everything would be right in the world again.

What I failed to understand at the time was that a) I’d get over it, b) that wallpaper isn’t all that easy to remove, let alone reuse, and c) that as a future renter in NYC, wallpaper would continue to be one of those things I could only dream of.

UNTIL NOW. We all know how much I love Lisa Congdon’s line of wallpaper at Hygge & West (also, everything else at Hygge & West, let’s be honest), so imagine my excitement when the folks at Hygge & West offered to let me sample their new line of removable wallpaper. You read that right. Removable! And, theoretically, reusable, which is pretty awesome too. Renters rejoice! I knew exactly where and how I would use it and which pattern I wanted—Lisa Congdon’s Triangles in the yellow/black colorway. This is so much better than cartoon dinosaurs, y’all.

This back wall of my kitchen has changed a lot over the past couple of years, from getting painted, the window getting salvaged wood moldings and a nice light-diffusing roller shade, and a new overhead pendant light. It’s a very small dining space, so a while ago we swapped out the round fake tulip-ish table and Eames chairs for this smaller set-up (the tabletop and legs are IKEA and the chairs are vintage Bertoia wire chairs). All of these things are huge improvements toward making this a (finally!) functional little dining space, but it was just feeling a little…dead. I debated painting just this back wall with a shot of bright color, but I thought a little graphic pattern (designed by one of my internet-friends, no less!) would be way better.

I was a little suspicious of the product, to be honest, but it’s pretty amazing. Each “tile” is about 2′ x 3′, which is the size of one full pattern repeat. They come in handy rolls with handy instructions on each one.

The best way I have of describing them is that they’re basically enormous vinyl stickers that look and act like wallpaper. The adhesive is made of 100% voodoo. It clings really well to the walls, but peels off easily and doesn’t leave any residue behind or damage the paint. The panels are very hearty and can be stuck down and removed multiple times (I moved the first panel a few times, just to get the positioning perfect) without compromising the strength of the adhesive or stretching/tearing the panel. It’s very cool.

The instructions suggested starting with the first panel at eye level, but I opted to start from the ceiling because it resulted in fewer cuts, and using entire panels was easier and more efficient. You can’t see the seams at all until you’re standing less than a foot away and looking for them, so it didn’t really matter where they fell.

This wall was a little extra-tricky because NOTHING about it is level or square, so I found it was easier to rough-cut the partial-panels (leaving about an inch of excess), stick them to the wall with the seams aligning, then remove the excess with an X-acto knife. Because of the huge window, the only full panels used were that vertical strip in the second process shot—everything else had to be cut down to size either at the edges of the moldings or at the corners of the wall. I just moved across the wall from right to left, ending in the opposite corner.

It takes a little concentration to get the seams to align and get everything looking snazzy and perfect, but the whole thing was pretty easy and painless and only took a few hours. It’s the sort of job that might be easier/faster with two people, but I did it myself because I got it* like that.

*zero patience, need for instant gratification, inability to work with others

OH HEY LOOK AT THAT. Pattern-y goodness forever and ever. I LOVE it. Like, more than I thought I would, more than I thought I could. I’ve never wallpapered anything before in my life, and I’m really thrilled with how this turned out. It makes the kitchen!

One thing I wasn’t really anticipating is that it makes our narrow kitchen (it’s only 7.5 feet wide) feel wider and more spacious, somehow. It also totally makes the dining area feel defined and like a real space instead of kind of an afterthought, like it did before. So exciting.

I know the baseboards still aren’t caulked and painted. I am aware. I am garbage. BUT LOOK, WALLPAPER!

I love reaching the end of our crazy long hallway and getting a little glimpse of this bright, happy pattern in the kitchen. I finally love how the kitchen is looking, even if it isn’t completely finished yet.

And hey, if you like this removable wallpaper idea, you might love what’s coming up next on the bloggy! (hint: rhymes with miveaway.)

This post is in partnership with Hygge & West.

One of the more perpetually hilarious/depressing things about looking at apartments in New York is seeing the ways that landlords try to get creative when renovating and preparing a unit for the next tenant. I recently got an email from a reader who uncovered a beautiful original hardwood door in her Harlem apartment, which at some point had been covered with a piece of 70s wood paneling. When my friend moved into her apartment near me, the trim had all been painted alternating shades of fleshy pink-beige and baby-poop-brown. Of course, there was my last apartment with the pink laminate cabinets and the pink-ish laminate countertops and the pink-ish faux-marble ceramic floor, but that wasn’t so bad. At least it was all pink?

It’s cute, when you think about it. Why not just go the easy route and pick stuff that’s totally neutral? Because landlords are people, too, with creative impulses that cannot be tamed by worrying about what any other sane person might possibly want to live with. They like to experiment. They like having some room to play. It’s very adorable and very frustrating to live with the consequences.

Pretty much my single biggest gripe with my apartment has always been the kitchen floor. What a terrible piece of shit.

Let me count the ways:

1. Stupid design with the black edge and big black square in the middle. Why? Just because.

2. White ceramic in a kitchen. You guys, I’m a clean dude. But a white ceramic floor in a small kitchen is just not a great idea if you don’t want to be mopping every 4 seconds. No matter how often I cleaned this floor, it ALWAYS looked filthy.

3. Cracked and chipped tiles. Everywhere. ‘nuf said.

4. So, so uneven. Yes, the floors all over our apartment are uneven, and that’s OK. But this kitchen floor was so bad because this tiling job is so terrible that none of the tiles themselves are at all level. This means that cleaning the floor essentially amounted to all the gunk getting stuck on protruding edges of errant tiles. Pretty traumatic stuff.

5. Grout. I actually always assumed these huge grout lines were dark grey, but once I started really scrubbing some of the lines, I realized it was actually originally white. I think. EW. But there’s only SO MUCH bleach and baking soda and a toothbrush and my willpower can accomplish, so it never really cleaned up beyond a piss yellow. Which was worse than the “dark grey” (dirt), in my opinion.

I thought maybe I would just live with this tile because I otherwise love my apartment and could maybe just concede on this one thing. It could probably be worse, right?  And besides, what do you do about a tile floor? There is just no way that I’m going to demo and replace a ceramic floor in a rental apartment. As this blog has proven many times over, I’m a lunatic, but I’m not, like, completely unhinged. Give me some credit.

Then, I had an epiphany. I didn’t actually have to alter the floor in any major way to get rid of it. What Dean at My Little Apartment did in her bathroom years ago popped up in my mind (holy cow, that was back in 2007. am I the Rain Man of home blogs?), so I thought maybe I could do something similar. Rubber was the answer to my prayers (/incessant whining).

I ended up buying my rubber from a company with the catchy name of Rubber Flooring Inc. Most of the companies I found only sold this style of rubber in 4-foot wide sheets, but I was nervous about how a big seam running up the middle of my floor would look/function over time. I really just wanted one BIG sheet, like a beautiful black sea of gorgeous hospital-y rubber. Luckily, the Rubber Flooring Inc. roll is 7.5 feet by 17 feet, which is almost the exact dimensions of my kitchen.

I love you, Rubber Flooring Inc. I love you and your straightforward, no-nonsense, branding and your sale that allowed me to get free shipping and a brand new kitchen floor for $250. It’s not chump change, but after living with this floor for a year and a half and figuring I might well live with it for another 5 or 10, this seemed like my best option.

I accidentally deleted the process photos off of my camera, but here are a couple I snapped with my iPhone. The whole thing was very straightforward, I just drew up a diagram of my floor plan and where I needed to make the cuts, unrolled the whole thing in my living room, and hacked it up accordingly.

I should probably take a moment to note that this roll of rubber, which looked fairly modest in size, was very literally the heaviest thing I have ever attempted to carry in my life. I still have no idea how Max and I manhandled it up to the 5th floor, but I do recall almost breaking an arm in the process.

SHAZAM, new floor.

I love this floor. It’s so, so easy to keep clean, it feels nice underfoot, and it magically evens out the whole wonky tile business underneath. I can forget about the bad tile situation and move on with my new life. I’m very happy with it.

As per the manufacturer’s instructions, I stuck down the edges with double-sided carpet tape. For a few days, this worked great, but it soon became unstuck from the tile underneath. The rubber is heavy enough that it’s till OK, but I really want to find a solution to keep it stuck down better. I tried hot glue, which was a massive fail, and now I’m thinking maybe rubber cement? I don’t know. I don’t want to damage the tile floor, but I want this thing to sit as flat as humanly possible. This would have been a non-issue if I had had the foresight to do this BEFORE installing new cabinets and baseboards, but I didn’t, and now I must suffer the consequences.

ANYWAY. Enough about that.

Hey, look! I installed new white toe-kicks on the old wood cabinets. Doors and drawer fronts to follow, finally, if it kills me. I will have matching cabinets it it’s the last thing I do on this earth.

The DAY after I put down the new floor, I was hanging out and thrifting with my friend on the Upper West Side and we went in this little tiny very fancy looking antiques store, filled with gorgeous expensive furniture. Now, I usually don’t even go in places like this, and when I do, I immediately look at the ceiling and the floor. That’s where the bargains are. Sometimes. Maybe.

“Is this for sale?” I asked, pointing at a very dirty, perfectly beat-up oriental rug under a bunch of stuff.
“I don’t know, I guess it could be? You really don’t want that rug though, it’s filthy. We’ve just been using it in the store forever.”
“OK, so how much could it be for sale for?”
“Say $125?”
“Could you do $100?”

We took the rug outside and laid it on the sidewalk, where the owner proceeded to tell me how much I did not want to buy this ratty piece of crap rug. Assuring him I did, he assured me it wasn’t worth that much, and decided without further urging to sell it to me for $45. Then he put it in a garbage bag and I was on my way.

Like magic! I love this rug. It’s the perfect size for the space, and I love having a rug like this in the kitchen. Antique orientals aren’t too precious because they’ve already taken a lot of wear and abuse, so it’s perfect. Upper West Side. Who would have thought?

A sale’s a sale, folks. It never hurts to ask.

Mekko also seems to appreciate the transformation, which is really all that counts anyway.

I was twelve at the time, and I remember sitting in my bedroom and answering simple, repetitive questions for two hours. It was fun and relaxing and, when the results came in, made me feel exceedingly special. Here was a written report explaining in scientific-ish terms that I was, essentially, a terrific person. Of course, everyone’s results come out this way, so I’m not bragging, but the test told me specifically why I was terrific. The test had a way of putting a positive spin on all traits. Instead of being needlessly and irrationally emotional about the problems of other people, I was just very empathetic. I could give up on the dream of pursuing anything very practical or profitable career-wise because ultimately I was just too literary for all that. I was an intellectual, and this made me feel as though I was more interesting than my siblings, which was more or less all I wanted at 12.

The biggest takeaway for my family, though, was that instead of just being a lunatic spaz, I had a high change score. I was the kid who was constantly rearranging my furniture and always questioning why we couldn’t just move some stuff around in the house or paint a room or four. Prior to the tests, this sort of behavior was interpreted by mostly everyone as simply irritating. But after the tests, I had a label. There was a chart in a folder that said this was just who I was, irrevocably.

Because permanence and stagnation freak me out, I often try to avoid them. I don’t mind permanence much where my life is concerned (oh hey, live-in boyfriend and two dogs in the space of a year), but it drives me crazy in my living space. I like things best when they’re easy to reverse and modify. It drives me crazy that each room in my apartment only has one truly viable furniture layout (trust me, I’ve tried everything!), and I don’t like feeling married to certain pieces (with the notable exception of my grandparents’ Eames lounge chair. I’ll marry that.).

Oh hey there. Lookatchu.

The only reason anyone reads this blog is probably because I once made a desk. It was one of the first things I ever built, and I was really proud of that thing. I had no idea what I was doing or the best way to go about anything (some of my advice in that post is, uh, really bad), but the point was that I had an idea and I made it happen and it totally worked and it looked cool. And then Anna blogged about it and I felt really cool, which led people other than my mom to read my blog and led me to eventually counting Anna and some other people I met through blogging as some of my best friends.

So that desk meant a lot to me. I’ll admit that. I’m not made of stone!

But while I loved that desk in my old apartment, I could never really make it work here. I schlepped it from the bedroom (where it was NEVER used) to the living room (where it sat for months and was rarely used). It took up precious space and provided so little storage. Eventually, the desk just became frustrating, and I realized I was keeping it around mostly out of some weird sense of obligation and sentimentality. But it had ceased to be very practical (which was the whole goal when I built it) and when the MDF top started to bow slightly and some of the paint chipped, it just didn’t look so great anymore.

Enter the light of my life, fire of my loins: Craigslist. For a while I just wanted to get rid of the desk and replace it with some kind of small, low dresser on this wall next to the sofa or maybe a smaller desk, and then I realized I could have both! I quickly found a listing for a cute Swedish secretary-style desk for a couple hundred bucks. Oddly, there was another listing for the exact same desk for like $1,200 at the time, which is a total rip-off.

I totally love this cute little desk, but it’s a piece of crap! The teak veneer is pretty, but I think the entire thing is made of just chipboard and cardboard and some little dowels and wood glue. It seemed like the entire thing was going to fall apart when we dragged it up to the apartment, and it had little floating storage compartments inside the desk part that did totally fall apart and now need repair. Whoops. Anyway, not all things vintage are synonymous with quality.

Oh well. It works. And now that it’s in place, I don’t think it’ll fall apart as much anymore. Also, I KNOW that arrangement on the top is not working, but I need to rearrange the art to make room on a wall for that painting. I guess. I don’t know. High change score. Don’t rush my process.

Anyway! The desk is super cute, super Swedish, super vintage, and has a lavish amount of storage space. When you live in 500 square feet with one small closet, it’s amazing how much a change from 4 small drawers to 4 less-small drawers just feels absolutely spacious. The desk holds all of our office supplies, electronics crap (extra cords, chargers, external hard drives, etc.), and most of my tools (thereby clearing up space in the kitchen cabinets!). It’s great.

I don’t have any pictures of the new lounge chair and the old desk in the room at the same time I don’t think, but trust—it was feeling very crowded and dumb. Here’s a before-ish picture for reference-ish? I’m shitty at this.

I love how the new desk has totally opened up this end of the living room. I moved the Fiddle Leaf Fig (still going strong!) out of the corner and it seems to be pretty happy there in the middle. The proportions of the desk are small enough that it works off to the side of the sofa in a way that most other furniture (including the old desk!) just looked really awkward. Feeling it.

I moved my Patrick Townsend String Light from the kitchen to the corner behind the chair, and I LOVE IT there. It’s the perfect lighting after the sun goes down, and is just so soft and beautiful. It’s unfortunately exceedingly hard to photograph well, but it really is one of my favorite things. Like, in the world.

I kind of wish we could get away without a side table next to the chair, but I’ll admit that it’s nice to have something to put a mug or a book down on. It’s a vintage knock-off Saarinen tulip side table from the amazing Maya! I kind of want to replace the top at some point (it’s just wood with a bullnose edge), but I don’t know. It’s feeling very mid-century-modern-museum up in here, so fake tulip might have to be relocated. Hmmm.

I want to change all the things always.

I love String.

I love desk.

I’m out of words.

Linus is the sort of dog I generally associate with the elderly: sleepy, cuddly, a little vacant, with a hairstyle that must be maintained. I’ve only ever owned big dogs and figured I always would, yet here we are. People are always confused when they find out that Mekko the Pit Bull is the dog that we willingly, intentionally adopted, whereas Linus—the fancy white toy breed—was a stray who we just sort of took in by accident. But that’s how it happened. Even though he’s the sweetest, most gentle, good-natured little animal I’ve ever known, the fact remains: we did not ask for him. Sometimes, I’ll just find myself marveling at how very tiny he is (12 pounds!) and pondering how it is that he’s even real and not just, say, an animatronic stuffed animal with a funky-smelling face. It’s sometimes truly puzzling that this creature looks to me as his caretaker.

Roundabout 6 times a year, I get to have the best day ever because Linus goes to get groomed! I like Linus to look a little bit scrappy (it just matches his personality better), but I live for the shocking reveal when he’s unveiled at the end of his session. It’s disorienting having a dog who can transform so much in the course of an hour or two, to the point that I’m positive I wouldn’t recognize him on the street. It’s like a perpetually thrilling magic act and I look forward to it immensely.

Here was Linus this morning, right before grooming. I had to take the picture on my iPhone because I was too lazy to go grab my camera.

And here he is this afternoon! Hilarious, right? I could laugh and laugh for days. I asked for a shorter ‘do this time for summer, and I can tell Linus is totally digging it. He’s a very subdued dog at home, but out on the street is where he lets his true colors shine through. And trust, the strut on this dog after grooming today was that of an animal who feels free and sexy and invigorated by style.

I know it’s hard to believe, what with the perfectly-coiffed snout and the blunt-cut ears and the pipe cleaner tail, but he’ll go back to being a scrappy mess within a few days. I promise! But for now, I’ll just be admiring the magic of it all. So fresh, so fancy.

No, we have no idea what kind of dog Linus is! I think maltese-miniature poodle cross, but we’ve literally heard everything! Poodle, Maltese, Bichon, Havanese, Coton de Tulear, maybe with a little terrier, the list goes on. They all look the same to me.  

Linus gets groomed by Jenny at the Petsmart on Atlantic Avenue, and we all LOVE her. She’s so great.

It only look me about two months* from start to finish, but I finished** the tiling in the kitchen!

*I took a lot of breaks on account of having work and life and class and being sick twice and The Biggest Loser was on.

**It’s actually not totally finished but that isn’t the point leave me alone.

Basically every person under the sun told me not to tile with black grout, but I love it. Like a ton. 3 different people at 3 different tile stores all told me to stay away from the black grout, and a couple friends also expressed concern at the extreme griddy pattern that would dominate my walls till the end of time, but I went for it. I mean, check how good black grout can look on square tiles and tell me I’m wrong. Black grout forever.

Once again, I have chosen to photograph my supplies after they got all mucked up because I am a classy ass blogger who knows what they’re doing.

• Polyblend Non-Sanded Grout in Charcoal. You want to use non-sanded grout when the grout lines are this small. Otherwise you will rue the day.
• A bucket. Fill this about halfway with water.
• A sponge.
• A float. I used a bigger float when I did the first part of laying the tile, but I thought it might be easier to use a smaller one for the grout.
• A small coping saw. (for special cuts!)
• A small-ish container (not pictured) to mix the grout in.

Grouting is honestly incredibly stressful and kind of messy and annoying, but SO satisfying when it’s done. I kind of got used to living with un-grouted tile and it wasn’t bothering me so much, but then I grouted and realized how totally miserable my entire life was because grout is the best.

The box that the grout came in had handy little instructions on the back, and the whole thing was fairly straightforward. I mixed small batches (using only about a cup of grout powder at a time and enough water to make a peanut butter-like consistency) to keep things feeling manageable, which was a good system. Basically I spread the grout on the tiles and then scraped off my excess, holding the float at a 45-degree angle, which is what you’re seeing in that first picture.

Then, after 20 minutes (which was about enough time to use my whole batch of mixed grout), I went back and started wiping everything down where I started. I found that the key was not to get overly-aggressive with the wiping, but enough so that there weren’t any big globs of grout left where there shouldn’t have been. At this point, everything looked totally nasty and horrible and like it would never be OK again.

You might remember that this part of the tile was already here when we moved into the apartment and was grouted with white grout (which had seen much better days). I bought a grout scraper (kind of like this one) and just went over all of the old grout lines. Not all of the old grout came out, but the point is to remove as much as you can to provide enough depth for the new grout adhere and fully cover it. It wasn’t terribly difficult, but it did take kind of forever just to scrape all those grout lines.

After letting the grout set for a couple hours, I just came back with more sponge action and a final paper towel wipe-down to reveal the full-on tile hotness. So fresh and so clean.

And oh hey, I moved the bubble clock! And oh hey, I put up the second half of the shelf! I had to trim about 6 inches off of the shelf in order to allow the cabinet door to open, so I used a blade for cutting metal on my miter saw and hung it up. It’s awesome having such a super long ledge, and I love that it allows us to get more things off the countertop. We don’t have that much counter-space, so it’s important to maximize what we do have.

Obviously the two bottom cabinets still need to be re-faced to match the rest of the white cabinets. It’s kind of ridiculous that it’s taken me this long to deal with that situation. Not cute. Also, I want a new faucet because that one is THE WORST. Also, we badly need door/drawer hardware. Also, maybe the walls need to be black? This dumb kitchen will never be done.

But the tile! I love it! Now that the grout is done and the shelf is in place, the old tile and the new tile really blend super well together, which I’m really happy about. It’s not perfect, but it’s close enough for me not to care.

The hardest part of this whole tiling job was that one stupid tile that wraps around the power outlet.

I bought this little coping saw with a diamond-encrusted blade (like my teeth) online and just sawed away at it until it fit over the outlet. It took about 20 minutes, which felt like an eternity to deal with one stupid tile, but was totally worth it.

To bring the power outlet out to the new depth of the wall, I picked up these handy outlet extender do-hickeys at Home Depot, which worked perfectly. The pieces just sort of fold together until you get the necessary thickness, then you can cut off the excess and put it between the outlet and the wall (the screws are long enough that they’re still secured to the box in the wall. Then the whole thing gets covered by a switchplate and it looks very snazzy and amazing and professional.

And oh wait? What’s that? You didn’t think I was just going to tile one side of the room and leave the other all sad and tile-less, did you?

Course not. I’m not a fucking monster.

BOOM. Tile everywhere. Tile to the floor. Tile like you wouldn’t believe.

One of my favorite things in the room now is our portrait of Martha! Max painted this likeness of the venerable Miss Martha Helen Stewart a few years ago, and I love having her watch over us while we attempt to cook and take care of our guests and live up to her standard of amazing. Also, she covers our breaker box perfectly.

Martha Stewart is literally the perfect human and if you don’t agree with that, well, you can just show yourself right out the way you came.

Yeah, I really need to paint that little piece of trim, too. I need to paint all the trim. I’M GETTING TO IT.

There is so much delicious tile. Also, Max got an espresso machine so now he is bouncing off the walls like a total psycho.

One of the things I’d love to do someday is replace this countertop with butcher block. I really don’t know why I chose this white laminate, but it’s not very practical as it shows EVERYTHING and I want to bring more natural wood to this side of the room. Also, I have three different countertop materials going on in one very small kitchen which is just not a good idea FYI. But I LOVE the section of butcher block that we do have and I’d really like some more of it pronto.

I make mistakes.

I still need to caulk everything, like where the tile meets the bottom of the cabinets and the walls and the trim and the baseboards and in the corners, but I have to order the black caulk online because all home improvement stores hate me.

I’m so happy about my tile. I totally did that and it looks legit and everything.

The friendly folks at Ball sent me a set of adorable blue limited-edition Ball Heritage Collection jars, produced for Ball’s 100-year anniversary, and I love them! The blue is so cheery. So far we’ve just used them to put flowers in and drink out of, but maybe when the kitchen is done and I’m itching for projects, I’ll try my hand at canning? Sounds like fun scary chemistry science times?

Looks like the jars are sold out on Ball’s website but still available some places if you google around for them.

The white cheese board is from Crate&Barrel and the marble one was a lucky thrift find this weekend. $6!

I am very happy with how far the kitchen has come. I swear I’ll show wider shots of the room soon, but something very exciting is happening with the floor that I have to save for another post. Soon! It’s good.

In case you want to see the kitchen evolve from the beginning, here you go!

1. Let’s Talk About the Kitchen.
2. Kitchen Happenings are Afoot.
3. Dear Kitchen: It Gets Better.
4. One More Kitchen Thing.
5. As-Is, You Win Again.
6. Stopgap Measures in the Kitchen.
7. Tiling: Part 1!