over too soon

This weekend has just flown by. I had great plans to dedicate myself to developing my two rapidly approaching designs, but my father came up to tile our kitchen and the designing just didn't happen. He's gone now, and I'll take a few hours tonight to at least make a dent on what needs to happen. And I'll probably take the day off from work tomorrow. Time to prioritize.

Good things did happen this weekend, number one being the tiles for our back splash. I think we put backer board up for that last summer, but then with our ebay tile fiasco and our feeling of frustration after that, the tile project got dropped. In July we decided to bite the bullet and order what we really wanted, even though they were expensive. (Unfortunately, we realized today that due to a brain fart I only ordered half as much as we need, so tomorrow I've got to call and get more. Argh.)

Ok, before: Since I didn't order enough tile, this actually still looks the same... we tiled the other side of the kitchen.

And after:Looks like I'll be grouting them myself sometime this week. Yes, I can grout tiles. Random skill I've picked up over the years.

The other major accomplishment for the weekend was replacing some shelving in the office/studio. We bought a modular shelving system a few weeks ago at the new Ikea in Brooklyn, but they were out of the feet, so we couldn't put it together until now (when my dad brought feet from the Philadelphia Ikea. Thanks for the runaround, Ikea.)

This is a photo of my work space that I took about a year ago. I know, it's a total cluttered mess. And this is after I've cleaned up and am actually working in it.Note the wooden shelves on the far right, the ones that look like they belong in a garage or basement. Note that they are also tipping precariously forward, like they might want to fall on you when you're not paying attention.

And these are the new shelves that we just got. They have a much smaller footprint and also there's a big shelf at eye height for my models. When I lived on the Lower East Side (I moved away in Jan 2004), I had a big shelf next to my drafting table for my models and it was SO GREAT. Since then I've improvised, and it's not so great. You can see a little model taking up precious table space above. Totally in the way.
Maybe I need to buy some of those matching storage boxes or something. This is not so aesthetically pleasing...

Anyway, working on the apartment is positive, but the changes also bring intense cleaning and sorting (today I actually went through a box that I packed when I moved back in 2004. very satisfying!), and we just don't have time for that this weekend. I want to get rid of this clutter, but the more I do the worse it seems to be. Would another Ikea trip help? or is buying little matching boxes part of the problem...