I don’t know where this year is going, but I’m fairly certain that science has found a way to speed time while simultaneously slowing my mental processes and emptying my bank account. This might also just be an indication that I’ve been really busy and taking on any major project (or, let’s face it, even most minor projects) just seems totally out of the question and overwhelming. Hence, the caulk situation. Luckily school ends in a week.

As such, I’ve been trying to take this as an opportunity take care of some of those smaller items on my to-do list that tend to fall by the wayside in the excitement of things that are…way more exciting. It’s miserable shit, but it’s also teaching me lofty concepts like “following through” and “responsibility.”

Here is our original living room light fixture. I’ll just say it was probably one of the ugliest things I’ve ever seen and leave it at that. You don’t even want to know the horrors on top of that circle of glass.

BOOM, new light. New light that is actually old, seeing as I bought it off Craigslist back in AUGUST. Take that in for a second. AUGUST.

It’s a Kartell FL/Y Suspension Lamp. It’s huge and plastic and gives off nice light and retails for like $300 but I bought it for $60. Even though Max has all but outlawed the use of overhead lights, I like knowing it’s up there. Waiting. Ready for service in the rare moments when I can get away with it.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL.

A long time ago, right after I painted the living room, I made the super crappy mistake of trying to pretend I liked curtains. This was a bad idea, seeing as I do not like curtains. Not for myself, anyway, or maybe only these curtains hung in this horrible way. I’m all about curtains for other people. I’m sure yours look great, for example, because you’re perfect. You know how to hang a curtain.

Yes, this was the best picture I could scrounge up of the curtain fiasco of 2011-early ’12. Apologies.

God, I hated those curtains. Because they were “temporary,” I decided I didn’t care that the panels were too wide, so the windows could only accommodate one panel each. Sure, I could have cut them in half lengthwise to make two skinnier panels like normal curtain-loving folk might do, but they were “temporary” and…too much effort. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

Here’s a close-up. RITVA curtains from IKEA on an ugly IKEA curtain rod that seems to have been discontinued. That RITVA fabric is actually really nice, by the way, it just looked awful in my windows.

This entire curtain nightmare was brought on by IKEA’s choice to discontinue the fabulous and perfect and beautiful light of my life, fire of my loins that was the ENJE roller blind. Sensing the remote possibility that such an earth-shattering decision might be made by my favorite Swedish furniture manufacturer, I had hoarded all of my ENJE shades from my last apartment, but these two living room windows were too big for those salvaged sloppy seconds. So I had to wait. And wait. And wait. I heard all of this was brought on because the pull-chain constituted a possible strangling hazard for toddlers or something, but honestly? I’m not a huge fan of most kids, but I was a huge fan of those blinds. You see where I’m going here.

Oh joyous day when the ENJE returned to IKEA, but of course they went and bastardized a perfectly good child-repellent design with a new spring-loaded suspension system instead of a pull-chain, which seems like it would be infinitely more hazardous. So I bought two, brimming with excitement to go home and immediately rip down the curtains and throw up my new shades.

A good three or four months later, I finally got around to cutting them to size and actually hanging them in my windows.

Why is it so hard for me to take a decent photo on a sunny day? Point is, you can kind of make out where the shade ends, about six inches short of the actual bottom of the window. IKEA, you sneaky little bitch. While the ENJE was undergoing its flashy redesign, IKEA also decided to shorten the shades to a mere 64 inches, from what had previously been about 6,000 inches. What, IKEA, no more love for big-ass pre-war windows? Like, seriously, could my life be any harder?

Fuck that noise, even too-short ENJE blinds are better than the curtain disaster. Who needs those last 6 inches? IT TOTALLY DOESN”T DRIVE ME CRAZY!!! I SWEAR!!!

It drives me fucking insane.

Here’s a picture to hopefully convey how great the fabric is on these things, diffusing just the right amount of light and obscuring just enough of the outside world for you to both see it when you want to and pretend it isn’t there when you want to be naked.

Oh, and because I like to think of myself as a rebel first and a responsible consumer second, I totally harvested all the pull-chain pieces and brackets from my old too-small shades and used them on the new shades, discarding the weird spring-loaded system that I couldn’t get used to. Sticking it to the man!!!

I don’t really know why I’m explaining the intricate minutia of the differences between two versions of the same IKEA products and my basically n0n-replicable means of addressing my disappointment, but the real takeaway here is this: toddlers, stay out of my apartment. You have been warned.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL.

Here’s something I know we can all rally around.

Shopping!!!

Craigslist. $75. It’s way more comfortable than the Bertoia, which leaves butts looking like belgian waffles.

The finish on the wood is kind of chipped up, so I might try to fix that at some point. Maybe. Probably never but I’ll add it to the list.

I won Small Cool. As in, I am a victorious winner who wins things like contests and money and Apple store gift cards so I can buy things like hookers and blow and Apple store geniuses.

Mekko was all:

Thank you, thank you, thank you to anybody and everybody who took the time to go vote, or registered an account to go vote, or thought about voting and actually didn’t but totally meant to. I already feel mushy and warm and fuzzy that anybody would even want to read this site in the first place,  but that so many people thought my apartment deserved an awesome award with an awesome prize is just totally amazing. Thank you, thank you, and thank you some more.

Shout-out to the other finalists—JoAnn, Beth, and my incredibly talented friends Lauren and Kyle of Chezerbey (one of my very favorite blogs)—for making this whole thing super fun and super stressful with their super beautiful spaces. They didn’t make it easy, so for that I both love and hate them.

Again, from the very bottom of my heart, thank you. Now let’s have some fun.

We racked up over 1,400 votes in 12 days in the semi-finals, and I cannot thank you enough for clicking, signing in, signing up, and clicking that little “favorite” button. It means the world to me, really and truly. If you voted in the semi-finals, you need to go vote again in the final round. Need to.

There’s a lot of money at play here. Like, $5,000 a lot. And if you’ve been paying attention to this blog, you know I can make that money work. You won’t be sorry, because you get to watch it happen.

So GIVE ME ALL THE PRIZES. How will I ever feel validated without constant accolades and cash monies?! Think about it.

In case you’re new here, or you found your way here from Apartment Therapy, here’s the best reason I have for you to go vote for me: I fucking deserve it.

Check out this shit. I did that.

Oh what’s that now? I did that too. Oh yes I did.

Hallway sneak peek! Guess who did that? Me. I did. Wait until you see the other part, you’ll crap your pants.

I even renovated this side of my kitchen. Want to see the other side undergo some crazy amazing makeover magic that I have all the plans for and no money to make happen? Well, you can do something about that. Just go over to Apartment Therapy and vote. 

Here’s how: If you have an account, hooray! You’re halfway there! Go you! Just click here and vote for “Daniel’s Amazing Bones.”

If you don’t have an account, don’t stress. Just click here and make an account. It take like 2 seconds and they won’t even send you any emails. Win-win.

SO GO VOTE. RIGHT NOW. IT’S GO TIME.

If you need more convincing, let Biggie inspire you.

Where health is concerned, I am the type of person who generally thinks that something is probably nothing. Max is the sort who is convinced that nothing is definitely something. Something that could kill you, usually. To Max, anything stray, wild, or feral has rabies, and at any given moment, one of the three of us is probably dying of something horrific.

So when Max took Mekko to the vet a couple of weeks ago because she seemed itchy (poor baby has so many allergies), he mentioned that he was going to have the vet look at a little bump we’d noticed the day before on her shoulder. I told him it was a good idea, but also that it was probably just a mosquito bite or something that would disappear in a couple of days.

The vet took a test of the bump and sent Max home with some allergy medication for the itching, and said she’d call in a few days with the test results.

The call came first thing in the morning last Saturday. Max and I had left for California on Thursday night and wouldn’t be back until Monday morning, and my friend Kate was staying with Mekko at our apartment. The pathology report had come back on the bump, and—though those tests aren’t 100% accurate—it had tested positive for spindle-cell sarcoma. Malignant. Cancer.

Cancer. There are a lot of terrible words in the english language—bile, moist, mood board, for instance—but Cancer is one of the worst. It’s the kind of word that sticks in your mind and festers there, bringing with it confusion, anger, and all manner of terrible thoughts for the future. Our 2 year old dog. Who we’ve had for less than three months. Cancer.

The surgery was scheduled for Tuesday morning last week. When I called, I asked to speak to the doctor and was told that she couldn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. Mekko was also going to have her teeth cleaned, and the vet also planned to extract one of her canines because it’s broken. All of her canines are chipped and damaged, probably from chewing the bars of her cage in the shelter (if that doesn’t break your heart, you don’t have one), but one is apparently especially bad and it needed to go. And, of course, the lump and surrounding tissue would be removed, hopefully eliminating the cancer.

We flew home as planned, landing at 7 am Monday morning. Max went off to class uptown, and I rushed home to spend the day with my dog. I skipped class. I called out of work. We cuddled and went for a few long walks, and when Max got home we went to the dog park and let her stay until it got dark and freezing, hoping she’d get her ya-ya’s out before she’d be out of commission for at least a few weeks.

And then I got a call—the vet wanted to reschedule the surgery, pushing it to Wednesday. I agreed and hung up.

I barely slept Monday night due to both nerves and schoolwork, so I didn’t totally trust myself when, on Tuesday, I started to get immeasurably anxious about the whole situation. Everything about the whole experience just felt wrong. Why hadn’t I spoken to a doctor (not for lack of effort)? Why didn’t I have more information? Weren’t there options? What was the best case scenario? What was the worst? I barely even knew what she’d been diagnosed with, or what exactly they were planning to do about it in surgery. I did know that I’d heard some not-so-flattering things about this vet at the dog park. At this point, I’d read some not-so-flattering reviews, too. But mostly, it just didn’t feel right. But nothing felt right—cancel the surgery and waste precious time, or stick to the plan and hope for the best?

On Wednesday morning, I called the vet as soon as they opened and cancelled. Then I made an appointment with another vet, who came highly recommended by a close friend.

So we got in the car and drove to the new vet, and as soon as I met her, I felt better. She was patient and kind and answered my questions and took the time to think critically about each concern, no matter what the previous doctor had said. About the tooth, she warned that the extraction procedure was both invasive and possibly unnecessary, and she performed a pressure sensitivity test on the tooth in question and found that Mekko didn’t seem to give a shit one way or the other. About the lump, she raised the option of removing it that day, in the office, with a local anesthetic, after which the entire mass could be sent to the lab to be analyzed, giving us a clearer picture of the severity of the cancer. Low-grade and she might not even need another procedure, at least not right away, higher-grade and she would need surgery, the amount of tissue removed dependent on the severity of the cancer.

A while later (and a cool $800 or so less than the quote for the surgery we had planned for that morning), Mekko and I left the vet, a little patch on her shoulder shaved and three sutures holding together a small incision wound. Walking out the door, I spotted some paintings piled in the trash from the building next door. Because nothing can stop my scavenging ways, I checked them out for a second. Out of the pile (mostly amateur portraits, and not in a good way), a weird old abstract-expressionist canvas caught my eye and I quickly threw it in the trunk of my car without a second thought.

On Friday, I got another call. The test results were in, and the news was, surprisingly, good. Benign. Not only was the tumor not high-grade, but it wasn’t even low-grade. It wasn’t malignant or even really scary, just a weird collection of weird cells having some weird party on my dog’s shoulder, not bothering anyone. Benign.

While Mekko seemed unfazed by the entire thing, I was a mess all of last week. On Saturday, I did nothing except spend time around friends, Max, and Mekko (and clean, but that counts as recreation in my world), and it was amazing. Then on Sunday I dug that painting out of my trunk and into the apartment and finally got a good look at the thing.

It’s kind of ugly? It’s kind of amazing? I think I kind of love it? Yes I do. Max loves it. I guess we love it.

On the back, it still has the original provenance just barely holding on with two pieces of crusty masking tape. It’s super cool to know the name of the artist and where and when it came from, but what struck me was the title—”Growth (A).”

Growth. A growth was something I found on my dog that sounded scary but turned out not to be. Perhaps it was something like that, excised and viewed under a microscope, that resembled my new painting. But growth was something else, too—us as dog owners, for instance. It wasn’t easy to make that decision based, essentially, only on a bad feeling, but I’m growing to trust myself more in that department. It wasn’t easy for Max to support me and my bad feeling, but we talked it out and I think we grew a little, too. I grew to trust and respect a new person—our new, fabulous vet—and sadly I grew to be a bit more wary of authority than I naturally am as a full-time asshole. I grew more serious about saving up for if/when something truly bad happens. I hope it’s a long time before we ever have to consider our lives without our dog, not only because this little episode scared the shit out of us, but also because I think it made both Max and I realize how lucky we are to have her.

Thank you to Nobuko Otsuki and the avid spring cleaner/dead tenant who left that painting on the street, to remind me of all that crap every time I look over to the corner of my living room.

We love you, Mekko, and we’re so glad you’re here with us and that you’re OK.

I don’t give a shit. I’m full of controversy. Just chock-fucking-full of it.

Take my credenza. Yes, I call it a credenza because I’m fancy. Some people call these bureaus? Buffets? They’re not as fancy as I am, evidently. Ignore the horrible red paint situation and the weird temporary collection of crap I threw on top.

I got this thing for $90 in a thrift store, and spent about 10 minutes cleaning it up and trying to disguise some of the scratches and gauges in the wood veneer with Minwax touch-up pens. It’s never been my favorite thing, but it’s well-made and good-looking enough, holds a ton of stuff (including all of our electronic bits and bobs, it’s like a space station behind those tambour doors), and is perfectly sized for that space next to the fireplace.

Still, I found myself daydreaming about finding something better at some point, but nicer credenzas can get really expensive and they’re a total pain in the ass to move. So, given that the kind of credenzas I really want aren’t exactly falling from the sky in my price range, my crazy brain thought to itself hey, you can fix this. 

The problem mostly had to do with the legs. For starters, it always felt too high given that we use it to hold a TV and as a buffet or bar when we have parties. Also, the back leg had broken during my move from Manhattan. Oh, and too many goddamn tapered mid-century wooden legs happening in this room.

So what’d I go and do? I hacked that shit off. I think I saved the legs because I’m a hoarder and they’re small. But the point is, they’re no longer on this piece of furniture.

DEAL. WITH. IT.

How’d I do that?

Magic.

Also, IKEA.

Now, for a while IKEA made this snazzy chrome underframe for their KARLSTAD series of sofas and armchairs, but now I can’t find them on their US website? WTF, IKEA? Why dost thou giveth, only to taketh away? Surely there’s some logical explanation for this.

I chose the underframe made for the chaise lounge, since it was the closest in size to my credenza. Obviously it wasn’t going to be an exact match, but I figured—hey, this is IKEA. Everything comes in pieces.

Sorry for these laughably illegible “process” shots, apparently I was playing fast and loose that day and just not giving a shit about anything, including how I would later blog about this. My b.

After cutting the pieces down with my chop saw (this could potentially just be done with a hacksaw, but it wouldn’t be nearly so fast-paced and exciting, which is how I like to roll), I drilled a couple new holes in each corner brace for the screws and just attached the whole thing to the bottom of the cabinet.

Done-zo.

Oh what’s that now? Look at that credenza. Take it in.

Lowering the whole thing has really made all the difference with making it feel like an integrated part of the room and scaled properly with that big fireplace right next door. Also, because I was in the mood to really customize the crap out of it, I made the back legs a full 3/4″ shorter than the front to account for the slope in our floor (120 year old building, y’all), and now it actually sits level, like a proper credenza should. It’s a credenza miracle.

Don’t think I didn’t see you eyeing my jacks, you sick sonofabitch. Vintage George Nelson Jacks bookends. Very fake, I think. eBay. I’d been eyeing these babes forever and finally found a pair that weren’t a million dollars. God, my life is thrilling.

NOW, ON TO BUSINESS.

Apartment Therapy is currently hosting a little something called the Small Cool Contest. And you know I entered my ass in that. 

Now, I know the Homie Awards wound is still fresh and all. So why am I exposing myself to more potential momentary anguish and quickly dissipating heartbreak? What am I, some kind of masochist freak?

No I am not. But unlike the Homie’s, Small Cool pays. It pays fucking $5,000; that’s how much it pays.

Please give it to me. I will tile my kitchen for your reading enjoyment and also fix my windows and show you how? And more! Please? I’m not too big on talking about *personal finances*, but let’s just say that a few recent changes in circumstances have made that money look really good right about now. Pity me.

Right now it’s the semi-finals round, and if we can make it to the top of my category (“Little”), we’ll move into the finals. Winning the finals is where the money magic happens, duh.

SO PLEASE, GO OVER TO APARTMENT THERAPY AND FAVORITE ME. There are new pictures of the apartment (taken by Max!) , including lots of things I haven’t talked about on the blog yet!

You might have to make an account. Do it, you’ll feel better, as explained by this formula I made up on Twitter: More Money = More Projects = More Blogging = Happier YOU. Live it, love it, learn it.

VOTE.

A very disgruntled reader had this to say, over direct message on Twitter. I couldn’t agree more.

Oh, who am I kidding. My mom sent me that.

In a way, if you think about it, this inability to meet projected self-imposed blogging deadlines only makes this post more timely. Like, thematically. Seeing as, much like blogging, I find that home-related tasks take anywhere from 2-17 times longer than I think they will. So this whole delayed blogging thing = totally intentional, metaphorical even. Nobody understands my art.

Oh well, let’s get on with it.

Where did your home improvement skills come from?

Now, I want to be clear. I did not grow up in a house where people were particularly handy. The extent of hands-on home improvement I did as a kid was “lightbulb patrol,” a task my father and I performed every couple of months. It mainly involved scouring the house for dead bulbs, after which I would run to the garage to find the proper replacement, and he would screw it in. It was all very scientific and advanced.

I barely handled a tool until high school, when I started participating in the crew end of our theater productions. My high school had an amazing black-box theater program, where everything (except for the actual direction of the shows) was completely student-run—including design, building, raising money, and planning the layout of the theater (black box = no fixed seating/stage placement). I did a few different jobs over several seasons, but that was really my first exposure to building things with my hands and having to think critically about materials. But what I found was that none of it was actually very hard. Sure, some power tools can be used unsafely, but that’s the great thing about the world we live in: we have the internet.

Most of the things I do on this blog are things I’m trying out for the first time, so I think it’s really about having a willingness to try stuff, and at least a little willingness to watch it fail. But there are SO many great resources on the internet that explain how to do things, so when I’m in doubt, my first instinct is usually to use the Google machine. Another great thing for me over the years—both from an educational standpoint and from an inspirational standpoint (even if it isn’t aesthetic, than at least the inspiration to get moving on projects)—has been BLOGS. When I discovered “house blogs,” the year was 2006 and I was a teenager  living at home, and happened to read an article that the Washington Post wrote about this !!!great new internet phenomenon!!! where people chronicled their renovations online. This was around the height of my HGTV/TLC phase, and here I was reading that I could look at this stuff online, too? In real time, told by real people? You don’t say! So while some teenage boys have their secret little porn habits, I had my secret little house blog habits. Houseblogs.net and a list of mostly now-defunk blogs were saved in a discreet little bookmarks folder in my browser, and I felt like such a creep knowing not only about so-and-so’s bathroom remodel but also feeling in some way connected to these strangers and their families. Apparently that feeling has since wained, considering I’m now good friends with one of my longtime house-bloggy superstars and started up my own blog.

Where does your style come from?

Baby, I was born this way. Kind of. Sort of. I think my taste comes from a big combination of things. This is probably the subject of a much longer post, but I think my design sensibility has probably been most informed over the years by people who are and were close to me, including several family members with really interesting homes with modern but very personal and varied aesthetics. I was lucky to spend time in these spaces, and with a family that was interested in art as a means of expression. They didn’t draw a lot of lines between their appreciation of visual art, interior design, architecture, performance, literature, etc., and I think growing up with exposure to those things and a support system of people who recognized and appreciated the power of them was hugely valuable to the way I try to approach the world as an adult.

That said, my style is always evolving. I was raised in a home where our bedrooms were very much our own, and we were always allowed to experiment with ideas about how they looked and functioned. And because my parents aren’t the sorts of people who are overly concerned or finicky about the interior of their house, my mom and I especially tended to team up to make decisions about everything from wall colors, furniture, art placement, and other improvements and changes that we could make to our living space. So when I got out on my own, it was only natural to continue that kind of process, albeit perhaps with a bit more fervor and obsession than before. I’m always changing things around and switching things up and making plans and trying to improve upon my existing surroundings, whether that’s tackling a space for the first time or reconfiguring something that I’ve already done. I think I like to joke that it’s just my way of keeping busy, but it’s more than that—to me, the notion of “completeness” in a space is a sad, sad thing. I don’t think living in a static environment is a good thing for creativity on any  level, but the most direct effect is that lack of opportunity to experiment and evolve your style over time and open yourself up to new possibilities.

As your style changes, how do you curate with no regrets? Or are there regrets?

My style has changed a lot in the four years that I’ve lived away from home. I mean, this was my first apartment:

Yeah. Granted, this was when I was living in Canada, which was a very impermanent situation (I knew I would only live there about 9 months, after which I’d have to get rid of almost everything), but still. I loved that apartment. I thought it was so cool. Everything was bought on the super-super cheap, and it all just tickled me. See those needlepoints over the sofa? They were my main passion that year.

While I don’t like to have a lot of excess stuff around, tossing stuff that I once loved or had some personal attachment to does not come naturally to me. It’s hard to get rid of things. One thing that really helps is trying to be really realistic about my current feelings toward something, regardless of what I might have felt for it in the past. Take those needlepoints, for example. I kept all of those needlepoints, and then proudly displayed them on my dorm room walls when I came to college. You can imagine how popular I was. Still, they were attached to a couple of very particular and transformative periods of my life, and each came with its own memory of the purchase, which was usually something absurd. But when I moved into my last apartment, I just found that, as much as I still got a kick out of them, they weren’t really bringing me the same joy that they once had because I knew that they weren’t exactly part of the room or overall aesthetic that would ultimately make me happy with my living space. For a while I just stored them in a series of places, and then I moved with them to Brooklyn, despite having never actually hung them up for a year. I actually just got rid of (almost) all of them—which was really a matter of weighing my actual likelihood of hanging them again (not much) vs. the complications of keeping them (a very cluttered closet). That, and the recognition that the thing isn’t what holds the memory, my brain is. Sometimes it feels better to have a picture, too.

How do you manage to make such drastic changes to a rental? I’m not even allowed to paint! What kind of jedi mind-tricks are you playing on your landlord?

This is one of my most frequently asked questions (or criticisms), and all I can say is, every rental situation is different. One of the huge pitfalls of my building for some people (and serious attraction to somebody like me) is that my landlord just doesn’t seem to care. He’s a really nice guy, but what tenants do to their apartment is pretty much up to the tenants. That’s bad when you need stuff fixed. That’s bad when you want to move into a well-maintained, well cared for, functional and clean apartment. It’s great when you want to be left alone to take down your kitchen cabinets without fear of retribution. That last one is me, in case you couldn’t tell.

I deal with my landlord by not dealing with him. While he did agree to reimburse me $20/gallon of paint (even though a can of Benjamin Moore costs closer to $40), I’ve never asked him to do anything on my apartment, and I’ve never asked him if I was allowed to do anything on my apartment. That’s not to say I totally play fast and loose with it, either—I certainly keep in mind that this is not a place I own, and I need to respect that it’s somebody else’s property I’m altering, which is why so much of the work I do has been focused on restoration. I really don’t make particularly drastic changes, I don’t think, but if my respect for the history of this place or interest in its functional operation outweighs his, then so be it. That said, I have a really hard time imagining anybody, my landlord included, objecting to anything I’ve done or plan to do with this space. I’ve made countless repairs and functional improvements, and ultimately that’s only increasing the value of his property.

All of that aside, I think it’s bullshit that anybody can’t paint their own apartment. BULL. SHIT. Don’t even get me started in nailing a hole into the wall to hang a picture. All of that stuff is so easily reparable and reversible, and I do think any tenant should be allowed to do that stuff as long as they take care in doing it, and are prepared to undo it correctly when they move. There’s some responsibility there, but not a lot. Mostly what I’m saying is, spend the fucking $6 for a little tub of spackle and a sanding block and don’t patch your nail holes with toothpaste. That’s why those clauses exist.

I’m about to move into a new place and start on my own renovation project! But how do you know where to start? Do you recomend starting with the things that feel more fun, or the things that makes more sense (like painting the ceiling). Recommendations?

Of course every space has different requirements, but I think one of the great things about doing work yourself is that you can set the pace. Before you do anything, it’s nice to be able to live in a space for a little while to give yourself a chance to identify what needs to be done to it. Then, lists. Write lists, huge huge lists, and try to be as specific is possible about breaking down tasks into their steps. It’s overwhelming, but it’s nice, too, to really give yourself a realistic sense of the work and keep yourself on track. It’s so tempting to dive right in to something, but half the work of this stuff is planning so that your steps don’t overlap or you end up having to redo work you’ve already done. I know that’s terribly unspecific, but it just depends on the space! For me, that’s usually meant painting first—it’s so much less daunting when you don’t have to completely disassemble a room just to get at the walls. I guess a general rule of thumb is to just try to be practical, and as long as you take the time to plan stuff, the logistics of it all will really just fall into place.

How do you find the time to do such amazing home renovations/decorations? Do you set a day or two aside or do you just make a room over slowly over time?

I don’t have loads of free time in my life, so things have to happen gradually. There’s just no other choice. Being in school, I can’t just decide to dedicate a whole weekend to a project. I think it’s pretty clear from the pace of this blog that it takes a while for an entire room to start to really come together, but even individual projects can stretch out for weeks or even months! I try to work on things when I have the time and energy to, and I try not to place huge deadlines on myself with stuff like this. After all, it should be fun, and I don’t want to end up hating futzing around with my house.

Can you share your thrifting tips? You have the most amazing luck and find incredible things and I don’t and waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

I know it might seem like I’m constantly dragging great stuff home from thrift stores, but that’s really not the case. I have found some good things, but…this is New York. It’s rough out there for a thrifter. People ask me all the time what stores I recommend, and I’ve basically stopped answering—it’s not because I’m afraid of giving up my secrets or anything like that, it’s just because the places I like are shit holes of despair and heinousness and I really don’t want to give anyone the wrong idea that they’re some kind of gold mine.

I think my moderate thrift store success has been attributable to a couple things, though. The first is frequency—you have to spend a lot of time looking at crap and going away empty handed to get that one time where you find something great. The other is ignoring the context. Everything looks ugly in a dump. Some things look great in a house, standing alone, cleaned up and pretty. That’s a skill that takes some work, because it’s really easy to initially hate something, or even just completely miss it because it’s surrounded by so much ugly.

Also, haggle. Always haggle if you can. Good deals take some work and some awkwardness and some assholery sometimes.

What item/piece of furniture or whatever is on your must-have bucket-list?

I love chairs. Give me a house where I have space for 400 chairs without them looking cluttered, please and thank you.

Also, the DeSede Non-Stop Sofa.

Or a Nelson Sling Sofa. I will accept either.

What is your favorite tool for DIY projects? What tools should I buy if I own none?

Probably my teeth, followed by my fingers, followed by my drill. I honestly do not understand how people survive without owning a drill. If you own no tools, by a tape measure, a hammer, and a drill. The rest will follow. (I have a DeWalt drill that is no longer in production, but any non-totally-whimpy cordless will do for most people)

How do you protect the rest of your apartment when you use your circular saw/other equipment?

Whenever possible, I try to do projects outside—either on my fire escape or the roof of my building. When I do something inside that makes a mess, I usually try to seal off the room if I can with a plastic tarp or a drop cloth, but let’s face it—dust is going to happen. Sometimes you just have to accept that the clean-up is going to take longer than the project.

What is the current status of the bizarre hallway in your apartment and the painty windows?

Patience, my child. The windows are still painty. The hallway looks rad as fuck and I need to take pictures.

If you were forced at gunpoint to paint a room in your apartment with color other than white (all four walls!), which room and what color would you pick?

Does black count? Because sometimes I toy with painting my entire living room (including trim) black.

Colors freak me out on walls a little bit, but I really like Victoria’s pink dining room.

Favorite and least-favorite design/decorating trends or approaches?

Favorite trends: I really like this whole neon/fluorescent thing that I’ve seen cropping up places. I think I need to get some hot pink into my kitchen.

Least favorite trend: I hate this “steampunk” shit. Seriously, wtf. I’m also getting really tired of spaces that are so heavy-handedly “turn of the century rustic.” Is this a New York thing? What’s going on here? I don’t know why “Put and Edison Bulb On It” hasn’t taken off as a meme.

Favorite approaches: Original and personal and fun and comfortable.

Least favorite approach: Anna wrote a terrific post this morning about inspiration and creativity, and it hit the nail on the head. While inspiration certainly has its place in a process, one of the trends I feel like I’ve seen exploding on blogs (particularly tumblrs) and other platforms (Pinterest, for starters) is a total, insane excess of “inspiration.” Gathering inspiration has become the process. People are collecting it like it’s in short supply, “curating” their little hearts out, crowdsourcing the shit out of an idea, and taking images out of the context from which they came and stripping their meaning. I think that’s bad. People defining their own creativity solely by the things they can curate from others is bad. People finding 8,000 photos of perfect, beautiful rooms before they can make a decision about their own is bad. I think that total excess is incredibly stifling to actual creativity and originality, and ultimately makes people less confident in making their own decisions about their spaces.

**On that sunny note, keep an eye out for the next installment of this Q&A, coming soon! We need to wrap this business up.**

That said, I was completely blown away by the outpouring of love and support I received after I posted about Mekko for the first time. And it didn’t just come from the wonderful crowd who already read my blog, but also from people who stumbled upon that post from so many places around the internet and took the time to leave a friendly comment or pen a kind e-mail. To be honest, I expected a really mixed reaction. People have enough opinions about dogs in general—who should own them, where they should live, how they should be cared for—leaving aside all the flack I anticipated receiving for adopting a Pit Bull. But, as with some other things that I’ve posted and readied myself for attack, the onslaught never came. All of this is my roundabout, awkward way of saying thank you. Thank you for making this a fun, kind place on an internet where fun, kind places are rare.

And now, without further delay, here’s what people wanted to know about my baby.

1. My question is, how’s Mekko doing? Has she been a good dog? Have you been doing much training or taking any classes?

Deciding to dedicate the next decade or so of your life to something that you’ve spent all of about 5 minutes with is a pretty scary thing, particularly when that something could potentially chew apart all your furniture, piss all over everything, or maul your face off while you sleep. Luckily, Mekko has chosen to do none of these things. She’s a great dog. Apparently pessimism is a central theme in my life, but I think I was pretty realistic about how hard things might be, and she’s just made the transition into dog ownership miraculously easy. She is incredibly sweet and affectionate, loves people and other dogs, and has enough energy to be hilarious and interesting but not so much (as the above picture might demonstrate) that she’s totally draining us, either. We’ve had her just over two months now, and it’s really been amazing to watch her come into her own. I don’t want to overdramatize here—she didn’t come to us super emotionally damaged or anything—but she is a different dog than she was when we brought her home that first day. They aren’t drastic changes, but a series of subtle ones. She’s put on weight and looks healthy. She’s less anxious. She seems more confident. And she seems really happy.

One of the many great things about Mekko is that she really wants to be a good dog, which has made training fairly easy. So far, we’ve really been working on developing and strengthening basic skills. It took about 3 weeks to get her 100% potty-trained, she’s gotten really great at walking on the leash (which was a nightmare when we got her), she’s a champ at sitting on command, and she learned her name really quickly. I’d like to start building up certain things she already knows and start teaching her new commands, and I think she’ll pick them up quickly. I’ve been told many times how valuable classes are, but we haven’t taken any yet. We may choose to in the future, but right now I think we’re all still adjusting to our new lives and it just hasn’t felt like a pressing concern.

And, yes. She is allowed on all the furniture. Deal with it.

2. What are the ups and downs of owning a Pit Bull?

Now, I have had dogs my whole life, and have loved all of them to a degree that non-dog-owners probably can’t understand. But Mekko is different, and I don’t think I just feel that way because she’s mine (well, and Max’s, but you know). I’ve never owned a Pit Bull—my family had 2 Labs and a Golden Retriever/Doberman mix growing up—but I’ve been told that some of Mekko’s attributes are pretty characteristic of Pit Bulls, so here it goes. Mekko loves to cuddle. She would cuddle all day, everyday. She is a fabulous little spoon and snores like a heavyset man, and it’s amazing. And she’s so warm. Aside from that, she is really social, and basically wants to be friends with every dog and every person she comes into contact with. It’s nice having a dog like that—this little social butterfly who makes me talk to people, too. I’ve met so many great dog owners and other dogs in the neighborhood, and it’s fun running into all our new friends all the time. And more than any other breed, Pit Bull owners really feel this strong allegiance with other Pit Bull owners. There are sidewalk love-fests several times a week.

I really think the hardest part of owning a Pit Bull is dealing with the stigma. It’s never been terribly aggressive or violent or anything, and I’m sure it hurts my feelings much more than it hurts hers. But it’s sad to see other dog owners decide to cross the street rather than risk passing us, or people who scoop up their kids and scowl. Or be told at the dog park that she’s not allowed to play with a dog because the other owner is afraid of her. People feel the need to tell me on the sidewalk that my dog bites—not as a question, but as an accusation or a statement of fact. Really? When? Mekko doesn’t want to bite these people, but I do.

The point is this: ALL DOGS CAN HAVE BEHAVIORAL ISSUES. Plain and simple. And every dog owner should be prepared to deal with that, regardless of whether you’re adopting a Pit Bull or a Chihuahua. It’s about being able to address a problem when it arises, being open to seeking out advice and exploring resources, and being willing to changing your own behavior to suit the needs of your dog.

3. How has being a dog owner changed your life—good and bad? How do you get anything done when she’s around? 

Mekko makes us incredibly happy, and we love her to pieces. I’m not one of those people who overly anthropomorphizes my dog, but I feel like Mekko really changed our relationship. When there’s two in your group it’s called a couple, but three—three feels like a family. It’s a weird word, and I still feel a little awkward applying it to a unit that’s different than the one I share with my siblings and parents. But I think that’s the only word for it.

I really don’t think Mekko has changed my life in any bad ways, but she has made my life different in many ways. Broadly, she’s a big thing to take care of, and even split between two people, she’s a big time commitment. The hardest part hasn’t been learning to take care of her, but learning how to keep doing the other things in my life while also making room for her needs. Full-time-student-with-part-time-job-and-relationship-and-dog-and-blog-and-hopefully-some-modicum-of-social-life still feels like an intimidatingly large pair of shoes to fill, and I’m definitely still trying to negotiate that new terrain. I think it’s getting easier, but I still feel like I’ve become somewhat unproductive and less competent in the other areas of my life. I have to keep reminding myself how new this all is and work on continuing to figure out how to balance my life and responsibilities.

6. What’s the most hilarious thing she does (because Pit Bulls are such comedians)?

I don’t even know where to start. Mekko makes me laugh constantly. She really likes to walk herself up to our 5th-floor apartment and waits for us at all the landings. When she sees another dog approaching from half a block away, she lies down on the sidewalk and wags her tail until they approach. She LOVES this one squeaky toy and only understands tennis balls as objects from which all the fuzz must be forcibly and methodically removed. That new Taylor Swift song produces an immediate calming effect on her. She’s taken to sleeping on the couch some nights, but she’ll wake up early and come get her morning cuddle time in bed, which isn’t so much hilarious as it is heart-stoppingly cute.

7. Will Mamma Biscuit and Mekko ever meet? And if so, will Mekko eat her?

I think Mamma Biscuit and Mekko would get along because they’re both hot NYC bitches who love their dads. Natural pair.

I got a lot of questions, so I’ve decided to approach things a little differently this time around. Rather than put together one massive post, I thought it might be better to break up the questions by theme, and then do a post everyday this week surrounding each theme. That way, the posts will be more manageable and easier to swallow. It will also allow me to talk about myself for five whole days instead of one! Narcissism is my favorite game, so let’s get started!

I’ve re-worded and composited certain questions, so if you don’t see your question verbatim, it’s not because I don’t love you. It was just easier.

1. How do you like living in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn?

For those who just jumped on the exciting bandwagon that is this blog, it’s true: I do not live in Manhattan. I am a fraud. I did live in Manhattan from May 2010-June 2011, when I started this blog, and then I took the leap and moved to Brooklyn, which is a whole different borough. The neighborhood I live in is called Boerum Hill, which is close to Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, and Brooklyn Heights (my neighborhood is small, and many New Yorkers don’t know where it is!).

I love Brooklyn. Things are different here. The shopping is better, the people are nicer, everything’s less expensive, and there are more dogs. The apartments are better, too. And cheaper. With absent-er landlords. Win-win-win, unless you need stuff fixed all the time.

Boerum Hill is a great neighborhood. It’s safe without being boring, and there are great restaurants, bars, and shops either in the neighborhood or close by.  And the transportation—excuse me a moment, I get teary-eyed—is fantastic. There are so many trains around, which makes getting all over Brooklyn and all over New York that easier and more enticing. And the people are so friendly. I know so many of my neighbors, and I really feel like I’m part of a community here.

2. In the future, would you consider moving out of NY? And if so, where?

Max and I both came to New York for school, and I don’t think either of us started with aspirations of staying forever once we graduated. I was actually incredibly apprehensive about moving here and worried constantly that I would hate it. But that didn’t happen, and now I don’t ever want to move away. There are other cities I could see living in though, I guess. Chicago, San Francisco, Paris, some future colony on the moon?

But I love New York. Please don’t make me leave.

3. How do you make money/support yourself? How do you find the money to do all of this? 

Max and I are both full-time students (I’m an undergrad, Max is in a graduate program at Parsons), we both work part-time jobs, and, yes, we both have parents who help support us. While we live comfortably, I don’t think we live extravagantly.

Money is always tight, which is mostly why I try so hard to find low-cost solutions when dealing with home projects. Thrifting and DIY-ing almost everything you own is a good start. While we definitely do certain things just for pretty’s sake, most of what I’m doing to my apartment is really motivated by functional concerns. I love our apartment, but it’s got its fair share of challenges—almost no storage and a really lousy kitchen, along with a whole laundry list of broken stuff/things in total disrepair when I moved in, a few of which remain. Most of my work here has really been addressing that stuff, so in that sense I’m not sure I do a whole lot more than the average person does. I think the difference might be in the permanence. I love this apartment and intend to live in it for a long time, so part of saving money in the long-term here is doing things right the first time. I am not a fan of stopgap measures, and never have been. It’s part of why I didn’t have a coffee table for about 4 months until I thrifted the right one, or why my mattress was on the floor until I could figure out how to make the bed I wanted, or why my kitchen re-do is dragging out for months. We plan and we budget and we save in order to do the things we want to do, the way we want to do them.  A little at a time is the name of the game.

4. How long were you and Max together before moving in? What tips do you have for couples about to shack up?

Max and I met in February of 2011 and he officially moved in (as in, brought all his stuff and started paying rent) in August—less than 6 months after we initially introduced ourselves. And looking at an apartment in May was definitely informed by the notion that we’d both end up living in it. I’m no relationship expert, but I recognize that’s pretty quick. What can I say? He’s obsessed with me.

I think it’s important to just do what feels right. Nobody knows and understands your relationship except you, and every couple is different. For us, it wasn’t a very hard decision. We had a sense that it would make us happy, and it has. Plus, we were spending all of our time together anyway, and after a while it just didn’t make sense for Max to keep his own apartment—it was just added stress for him, and that meant added stress for both of us. But it was nice to have a period where we could try it out and test the waters, and we realized that we were really good roommates, aside from the couple stuff. He’s a good picker-upper, I’m a good cleaner. He stays on top of our bills and isn’t totally terrified of calling our landlord on occasion, and I’m good at fixing things and keeping us fed. For the most part, it’s pretty easy. We both try to communicate as clearly and honestly as we can, and I think that’s hugely important. But we’re not the perfect couple or the perfect pair of roommates—we have our little moments, just like everyone else.

5. What are you studying in school? What do you want to do when you finish school? 

I go to the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU, which is a strange little place where we formulate our own “concentrations” rather than fulfill a traditional major. While I’m still working on totally nailing down exactly what I’m doing, I’m essentially studying a mix of creative writing and design. I’m interested in how materiality (scaling from objects to homes to cities and beyond) both reflects and affects who people are, and how that can be reflected through narrative. I’ve tried to look at design through a fairly broad lens, placing various forms of design (city planning, architecture, objects, technologies) within historical socio-economic and political contexts, and tried to incorporate that understanding in my creative written work. I recognize that this alone does not qualify me for many jobs.

As a college undergrad, I’m trying to be okay with the fact that I don’t know exactly what I want to do with my life.  And while I love design, I think I’m a better writer than I am a designer. Part of the fun of this blog is that I get to combine two things that I love in a super casual, fun, and interpersonal way. The blog stays pretty narrowly focused on my apartment, and I like the challenge of trying to write about mundane home-improvement tasks in an engaging way. And it seems like some of you think I do an okay job, and that’s been pretty amazing. Having such a kind, generous audience for this creative outlet o’ mine has been incredible—knowing that anybody wants to read what I write (even if, in this case, I’m usually talking about stuff like furniture and white paint) still both confounds and tickles me, and has been great encouragement to keep writing and trying to make a real go of it. I’ve worked up a little portfolio over the last couple of years, and I’d really like to start trying to get some pieces published. Ideally, then I want to write until my fingers fall off. Then I will die. That’s basically the extent of my life plan.

6. Are you planning on making this design stuff a career? Do you do interior design consultations? I am completely overwhelmed and could use you!

I don’t know how design will end up figuring into my life in the super-long-term (isn’t my generation supposed to have like 12 different careers, anyway?), but I’m sure it will in some way!

I don’t currently do any consulting, but I want to start soon! I think it sounds like a  great time helping people out with their spaces in a more direct way than I do through this blog alone, so I’m working on getting my ducks in a row to start taking on a some clients soon! Maybe you want some of my finicky taste and craziness rolling into your life and fancying up your house? Shoot me an email. Maybe you know someone who wants that? Shoot them an email, then tell them to shoot me an email. I’d like to start in late May.

**OKAY, keep those gorgeous eyes peeled for another round of questions tomorrow! The fun never stops.**

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check it out! They match! Fuck yes!

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

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

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

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