So it Goes.

Posted: Dec 22 · Comments: 22

Sometimes things just don’t work out the way you planned them. When Eva and I began to discuss moving off campus and out of the NYU dorms last year, we thought that we’d probably just stick together until we graduated. We thought we might stay in the same apartment for three years. While we settled here mainly for budgetary reasons, the Upper East Side of Manhattan seemed rife with opportunity—if not for adventure and bawdy good times, then at least for a different way of life than the one we’d grown accustomed to living just a few blocks from the academic temples of NYU. About that last bit, we were quite right.

Eva moved out today. I’m sticking around, don’t you worry. I’ve known about this for a while now, and have been hemming and hawing over just how to approach the topic here in blogland. I think this blog is fairly personal, and I hope you share that feeling, of course. But in the same breath, I don’t consider it a catch-all for nearly everything that happens in my life, and I certainly don’t see it as a repository for what happens in the lives of others. Since it is, after all, a blog about this apartment I keep gabbing about far more than it is a blog about me.

Suffice to say this wasn’t an easy decision for her, and it wasn’t an easy process for either of us. That said, it really didn’t have much to do with me. We were friends when we found this apartment, we were friends while we lived here together, and we’re friends now. Relationships of all kinds, including friendships, change and evolve and shift over time, and that’s what’s happening here. From strangers to neighbors to friends to roommates and now back to friends, it’s been quite a year and a half for her and I. Change is good. She’s moving back into NYU housing and I wish her all the best, sincerely.

Life
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Minutia

Posted: Dec 13 · Comments: 21

Sometimes taking care of the little things can be such a drag. They’re just so, well, little. I tend to put tasks like this off indefinitely—that tiny nail hole in the wall that needs to be spackled, the chipped paint on the windowsill that could use a touch-up. They seem so inconsequential and undeserving of effort, so naturally they’re the most irritating. These tiny repairs aren’t just annoyances, they’re like living with a bunch of little demons. “Seriously dude, just spend the five minutes fixing me already and move on with your life,” they sneer as you walk by. They push and push until all of those little moments you’ve spent thinking “hm, I should really fix that already and move on with my life” compound into something quite wearing, which makes you question your very right to consider yourself a competent, able-bodied person who cares about their house.

At least that’s how it goes for me, I don’t know what your deal is.

One little thing that had been bugging me for months was the big threshold between the kitchen tiles and the living room hardwood.

It’s big and wide and ugly and spattered with paint. It wasn’t actually this bad since I had already started sanding when I thought to take a picture (see top right corner, obvs). But still. Next to that tile, it’s like a big shitstorm of ugly.

It took about 5 minutes to sand the thing down and another 5 to apply some leftover stain, the Minwax Jacobean 2750 that I used on my desk. The next day, it took another 5 minutes to put on a coat of tung oil. That’s 15 minutes, for those who can’t add.

And guess what? This little crap makes me stupidly happy. Is it perfect? Far from it. Is it as good as it’s likely to get? Probably. And while I wouldn’t consider any room (particularly the living room) in this apartment “done,” it’s nice to consider that little tasks like this are worthy of attention now that I’m more in the “pimp it out” phase than the “paint the walls” phase.

Now those tiny nail holes… I will destroy you. Someday. When I get around to it.

Kitchen Hackin’

Posted: Dec 10 · Comments: 33

You might remember (but you probably don’t) that back in the olden days of this past summer, I had two MOLGER benches from IKEA serving as temporary living room furniture—one as a coffee table and one as a TV stand—until I could find cheap, sexy, vintage, real furniture. I can’t give much praise to the way they handled these functions aesthetically, but they played their respective roles quite well. Purposefully, they were ugly enough that I wouldn’t allow myself to get used to them, but practical enough that they alleviated the pressure to furnish immediately with stuff I didn’t really love. Because when you’re relying on thrift stores for great, modestly-priced furniture in Manhattan, it’s best to prepare yourself for a wait.

Well, I showed you my coffee table already, so that takes care of one bench. Then I bought something to replace the other one, but you’ll have to wait to see it until I take some pictures. One bench, two bench (red bench, blue bench). I know, artful photography.

But I actually had an ulterior motive when I bought these in the first place. Since microwaves are kind of objectively ugly, I wanted it as out of sight as possible. They are also huge, and in a kitchen with less than 3.5 total feet of counter space, 1 foot of which needs to house a dish-drying rack 99% of the time, that thing just doesn’t fit anywhere. The only other wall in the kitchen doubles as the narrow path from the front door into the living room, so the storage solution to hold the microwave and other assorted things (and create another work surface on the top, besides), had to be way smaller than any of those nice IKEA kitchen carts. The MOLGER benches (find them in the bathroom section!) turned out to be the perfect width and depth for the space—and the microwave—but not nearly the right height. So this happened:

And now I’ll show you how.

Disassemble both benches. I started by deciding how tall it should be and settled on 31″—around console table height. I originally wanted it to be the height of the countertops (36.5″), but once I really looked at it, that just seemed really awkwardly tall and bulky and stupid. So I hacked 8 inches off the top of both frames from one of the benches. By the way, never buy a crappy plastic mitre box.

Then they need to be attached to each other in a secure and visually tidy way (read: no metal mending plates). Luckily, IKEA thoughtfully placed little rubber floor protectors at the bottom of the legs, which pop out easily. The holes are 5/16″ wide, which is a standard-sized drill bit. Since you’re pretty smart and you want the legs to match up as closely as possible, it’s easiest to use these lovingly mass-produced and therefore standardized-perfectly-to-center holes as drill guides, so you’re attaching the bottom of one set of legs to the bottom of the other set of legs (the top of which you just sawed off and discarded). In people, this would be something like the human centipede, or a really compelling sideshow act. Sorry, that was uncalled for and also why I don’t use the Twitter.

So, you need a 5/16″ drill bit, some 5/16″ x 1.5″ wood dowels, and some wood glue.

Drill down slightly into each hole on all four sets of bench frames to make it just a little bit deeper. Drop in a dollop of wood glue. Put in a dowel. Put one normal-sized frame on top of a midget frame. Press together vigorously. For me, this involved alternately balancing my entire weight on it and sitting on it until I was satisfied with its security, but you can decide how into it you want to get. Repeat. Let both pieces dry overnight. Sorry for the creepy-ish pictures, I only DIY in the dead of night as a general rule.

After both frames have dried, spackle over the seams and sand. Repeat, then repeat again. But not a fourth time because it’s near the floor and nobody cares anyway. While you’re at this, sand the entire frame so it’s ready to be painted. I also spackled over the original drill holes (except for the top ones), since the shelves needed to be 10.5″ apart in order to fit the microwave and the cute vintage breadbox, which is a wider spread than the original shelves.

I had an extra can of white spray paint so I used it to coat the legs. It takes a few coats. I don’t know why it looks so gloppy in the photo, I swear it’s smooth in real life. Regular latex would have worked just fine with a good primer, I just really love spray paint. Hearing it, feeling it, smelling that sweet aroma… what heaven.

After everything’s all painted up, it’s time to re-drill the screw holes in the sides to attach the shelves, keeping in mind the height of what you need to put on them and the thickness of the shelf. Also drill new holes in the bottoms of the legs for the little rubber floor protectors. Put it all back together and you’re done!

I’m including this side view, which shows the width of the path between the door and the living room. Nice and unobtrusive. I’m not sure I’m feeling the paper towel/parchment paper/tinfoil holder up there—I want so badly for it to fit—but I don’t think it’s working. Awkward placement. It might have to go (and by “go,” I mean back to my house-house, that place my parents live in).

Tada! Scarf props to my friend Eliza. I’m really loving having this storage and functionality in the kitchen. It got all the coffee stuff off the counter and nicely onto a little tray, comfortably holds the microwave and my cookbooks (don’t look too closely, lest you mistake me for somebody’s grandmother. But yes, my adorable sister did get me a first edition copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking on eBay for our birthday, she’s the greatest). The breadbox is too close to the floor to hold bread (I. fucking. hate. cockroaches.), so it holds all the tupperware instead.

Did I just write that paragraph? Jesus, I am an old lady.

A Very Eames Birthday

Posted: Dec 6 · Comments: 24

I’ve never been one to develop deep, romantic celebrity crushes—those powerful fantasies often ending in soul-crushing defeat when you realize that the famous apple of your eye is unavailable. Or worse, dead. 7-year-old me is looking at you, Judy Garland.

But I’m in love, so in love. With Charles and Ray Eames. Both of them. As one unit.

I should have seen this coming. A love of every single gorgeous iteration of the shell chair is bound to eventually give way to a broader fascination and respect for their work. I honestly don’t believe there exists a single thing designed by their hands that I don’t love. They were the most brilliant and prolific American designers for 50 some-odd years, and as far as I’m concerned, they still are. Hands down.

But with a great love of their work came a love of the people themselves, and I think their creative output just speaks so nicely to who I imagine them to be as individuals. They’re brilliant, obviously, but they also seem incredibly kind. And fun. Hardworking and a bit silly. Both charming and modest. People who valued their privacy but were generous enough to share their perspective with a world that benefitted from it, knowingly or not.

It was a couple months ago that I discovered their films and started watching them in the NYU library, sitting for an afternoon in front of a little TV on the second floor of Bobst for an afternoon and just working my way through a couple disks every now and again. I knew about the “Powers of Ten,” having seen it a few times in assorted places, but did you know they made roughly 85 films throughout their careers? Some have to do with their designs. Some are historical and informative. Some are just incredibly beautiful little snippets of the world, made ripe for our own appreciation through the added value of theirs.

Much like their furniture, architecture, or toys, the films are at once technically complicated and visually simple. They’re so much fun. Give this mesmerizing snippet a go:

I’ll stop now, since it’s probably better not to even get me started talking about those two. The point is, I love them and I can’t really hide it. My lovely mommy took note of this fact and gifted accordingly when my birthday rolled around a couple months ago. So guess who owns the Eames films box-set? ME, that’s who. Who’s up for a screening party? I make amazing hors d’oeuvres and you can utilize as many “party enhancers” as you’re comfy with, I ain’t here to judge.

And as if that weren’t supercool enough, my loving parents just went and outdid themselves.

The Hang-It-All, designed in 1953, is just one of those things. There aren’t many objects in the world that I consider pleasantly ubiquitous, but that’s sort of how I feel about the Hang-It-All. It’s popular for good reason, like gangster rap or bacon. So I kind of love seeing it everywhere, in all its equal-parts-beautiful-and-quirky glory. For guests it bids a warm, inviting welcome; and after a long day of classes last week, when temperatures dropped down to the mid-it’s-fucking-colds, it was the best place I’ve ever hung my coat and scarf. I just find it overwhelmingly cheerful, and I think that’s what I like about Charles and Ray, too. They—the designs and the people—just put a smile on my face.

Which is just a roundabout way of saying that stuff really does buy happiness. Maybe not, like, constant and eternal joy, but at least moments. I like that about things.

Note: the closely cropped photo of the Hang-It-All is for your own protection, so as not to ruin any mysterious upcoming posts about other new things in the kitchen. Wider angles coming up soon!

The Doors, Again.

Posted: Nov 26 · Comments: 18

Back in June, I put together a tutorial on how to apply removable fabric to windows in a post entitled “The Doors.” But I was mostly talking about one door. My bedroom door. Eva wasn’t moving in for a few months so there didn’t seem to be a huge rush in getting all those panes of glass covered with fabric right away on hers, too. Particularly because shortly after I completed my own door, I decided that what I’d done was more of a test run than a final product. Once assured that the fabric was there to stay (until I decided to remove it, that is), I would tear it all down and start over with something better.

What I loved about the fabric solution to our privacy issues was not exactly the fabric itself, but the way it allowed light to filter in while still creating privacy (in lieu of fussy curtains or frosted window film that would have been impossible to cut perfectly). The fabric was just a plain white twin XL sheet, rendered obsolete by the vow I made with myself to never again live in a dorm or sleep atop a twin bed. Not that there’s anything wrong with either of those things, I just happen to hate both of them.  So while the sheet was a perfect material to experiment on, it never really had the right texture and always seemed just a bit too plain to really look finished and intentional. About two months later, I found just the right fabric in, of course, my natural habitat: IKEA.

RITVA curtains, 20 smackers. They were a little pricey for this (since I’m sure I could have done better in an actual fabric shop), but the fabric they’re made out of was just so perfect. I needed it.

And then it sat. And sat. And sat. And other projects happened all around it while it continued to sit. And Eva’s door? Not covered. I thought one day she’d want to take care of it herself, or tag-team it perhaps, but it turns out Eva has about the same enthusiasm for home improvement projects as she does for blogging. It’s not for everyone, I know. So I finally just sucked it up, got my shit together, and did both of our doors in one fell swoop. And you know what? It turns out that it’s really helpful to be able to follow your own tutorials on the internet. Me, (re)teaching me. How inspiring.

See what I mean? I love the texture—sort of like a linen, but different. Complex, geometric, and interesting while still simple, clean, and modern. I think it’s just right.

I know it’s hard to get worked up when the “after” looks essentially the same as the “before,” but I swear the new fabric makes a big difference in person. If you’re still bored, here’s a “before-before” from May, just to make things more exciting and dramatic.

In any case, super nice to have both doors done—all matching and looking handsome together. One step closer to a living room that doesn’t exist in a sorry state of neglect. It’s getting there, slowly but surely.

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