the furniture dance (part 1)

You may remember a few weeks back, when I'd decided to to the Apartment Therapy Cure. Curers (curees?) can opt between the Deep Therapy or One Room cure, and instructions are found both in the official Apartment Therapy Cure book and on the site, where there's currently an 8 week Cure-Along taking place.

I borrowed the book from Terra this week, and skimmed through it fairly quickly. There are some really interesting ideas, and a lot about just slowing down and decluttering. I could use some serious decluttering; the advice about cooking at home is a little less necessary, seeing as I do that regularly anyway. But the book is really about how to love and use your home, and not just inhabit it.

We have plans to refinish the floors in our bedroom and office sometime in the next few months, so it seemed silly to cure those rooms. I quickly decided to focus on our "den," which has become less of a den and more of an office/fiber space for me. My thought is to make it mine, since I use the room more than Christopher does, and it seems to be taken over with my knitting anyway.

Quick history:

May 2007We once had a sofa in here, and it made more sense as a den. I would set up here and watch TV and knit, or maybe we'd watch an episode of Six Feet Under together. (this was before our Netflix subscription.)This is the view looking the other direction. Clearly this was right after the room was set up; there still aren't any books on the shelves.

In the following two years, we have moved the sofa to the living room, where it creates a very nice L with our other sofa, and the cat has claimed this room for herself. It's also become a bit of a dumping ground when we're cleaning up, since it's conveniently located right next to our living room. We've also gotten a nicer TV, which means that we're more likely to watch things (ie Netflix movies) together. Unfortunately, all there is to sit on is the office chair and that white armchair, which is now covered in cat hair.
If you are still reading this, you might see what I'm talking about. Time to throw stuff away.

This room is also mostly about my knitting and my computer, so it would make sense to move my desk and drafting table in from the office, where it's mostly in the dark. Plus Christopher flees every time I try to work in there. I see no point in sharing the work space with him if he's unable to work with me in the room.

Other than putting the old stuff on the curb, I have declared that the TV has to be moved out. Our den is no longer good for watching TV, but the living room is.
So TV and TV cabinet will go into living room, in a space currently occupied by a cabinet housing our linens. This cabinet will be moved into our bedroom. Once this happens there will be little access to the secretary, so it will also be moved. At the moment we want to put it where this mirror is (across the room) though I'm sorry to see the mirror leave the living room, and that corner might start to feel heavy.
On the other hand, it might be a nice little desk/bill paying space, and could work nicely.

There is more planned, but this is the first part of our renewal. I also need to think about how my new work space will function and how to organize it without overfilling it with stuff (which I have a lot of).

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...

productive weekend

We have been wanting to work on our apartment for awhile, but I've been busy and then Christopher's been busy. This weekend neither of us were occupied, so we set ourselves on a few projects and plugged through.

The first project, which we didn't expect to take so much time and energy, was that we got a new fridge. My cousin, an architect, is working on a gut renovation of an apartment in Chelsea. All of the appliances were getting dumped, and she asked if we wanted the fairly new Fisher & Paykel stainless fridge. yes! We would love to replace all of our appliances but just can't afford to.

Of course, transporting a large fridge from the 5th floor of a building in Manhattan to the 6th floor of a building in Brooklyn isn't so simple. Through my cousin, who was taking some things for herself, we hired 2 Mexican men to carry the appliances down. This was just a horrible idea for every one and thing involved. The men weren't strong enough and ended up dragging the appliances down the stairs. My cousin's stove was totally stratched up and our fridge ended up completely dented by the time it got to the sidewalk, where my father and I loaded it into the back of a rented trailer. From there, my dad drove to Brooklyn and met Christopher (while I went to work). They were unable to get the fridge up the few stairs outside our building (Christopher's forearms got pretty bruised in the process) and so they had to bring it around to the rear of the building and through the basement. Our elevator is small and Christopher backed into it with the fridge and handtruck, fililng the elevator and leaving him pinned between the fridge and the wall and making it very difficult to exit.
After all of that, we though it'd be fairly simple to install, except that the new fridge was 3 inches wider than our old one. I didn't think this would be a problem. All I thought we needed to do was push our wall cabinets over to the far wall and cut off the end of the counter. (The counter had a 3" lip on the right side.) For several hours yesterday we unbolted the cabinets and pushed them to the left and screwed them together and bolted them back to the wall, but we only seemed to gain about 1/2" . What I hadn't anticipated was that the wall behind the fridge wasn't vertical and so there wasn't as much space as we thought. It wasn't pretty. In the end I realized we had to remove a 15" cabinet and replace it with a 12" one, which we have to order. Amazingly, everything in that cabinet easilly fit into the base cabinet below it (clearly we have too much room!) . That all happened today and it was fairly quick and painless. And now we have a beautiful new fridge. The space inside is so much more efficient than our old one; it feels so empty!! Another huge bonus is that this fridge is fairly shalllow. Our old one stuck out a few more inches and blocked the doorway a little. You may have thought that this was enough work for one weekend, but there was more! Christopher (rightfully) has decided to get his office in shape before the fall. As he's going away for 3 1/2 weeks in August, this is his last chance. So, when he wasn't listening to me curse about the cabinets, he was patching and sanding and painting the last bit of the office.

I don't think I've posted photos of our office before. It's an L-shaped room, with a window at one end. Christopher has one side (the part with the window) for his office, and my studio is set up in the darker area of the room. Since I barely use my part it's become a bit of a dumping ground for random boxes and things we don't know what to do with. And since Christopher has been using his desk since we moved in, his area has never really gotten organized or completed. We painted most of the room back in January and put in some bookshelves but it never got finished. Here is Christopher in the office in January: Here it was last week: And here it is now: It still needs some shelves and general organizational strategies, but I think it's on its way!

saturday pleasures

It was my intention to sleep in this morning, but dear Dinah decided otherwise and mewed at our door at 9:30 until I went out to pet her. Many of you who read this have small children and have no sympathy for me wanting to sleep in, but this week has been exhausting and I was parched for sleep.

But oh what one can accomplish in a morning!

One: our bathroom sink drain has been clogged for months. I battle it weekly with my eco-friendly baking soda and vinegar mixture, but it continues to reclog. This morning I did two doses of baking soda, vinegar and boiling water and finally gave up and poured some lye in. The lye seems to have done the trick and water flows freely down the drain.

Two: I made oatmeal. Not the instant in a pack kind, but the steel cut kind that I buy in bulk at the food coop. It takes about 1/2 an hour to cook, so it's not something I make regularly. But since it was a weekend and I wanted something heartier, I started a pot and worked on...

Three: the play I've been designing (which opened on Thursday night) is going to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and we just realized that the folks in Edinburgh need a ground plan, which I drafted this morning.

And lastly, once Christopher woke up and had some oatmeal, I took a stroll down to the farmer's market at Grand Army Plaza. It's there every Saturday, and usually I'm too lazy to go down there. Plus it is more expensive than the coop where we do our shopping and also know we're getting local or socially responsible food. Anyway, it is a gorgeous day and I wanted to get some fresh spinach so I took a little walk. Little did I know that it's been too hot for spinach so no one has any. They do have everything else: zucchini, carrots, garlic, scapes, onions, peppers, cauliflower, gooseberries, currants, pickles, flowers, fish, sausage, cheese, bread. I'm sure I've missed something. In any case, I bought 3 pounds of mussels, an eggplant and a bunch of carrots. Buying the mussels was enthusiastic of me; Christopher doesn't like them so now I have a huge bowl of them to eat within the next day or two.
When I got home, Christopher was busy doing laundry. He's also on a mission to finish painting the office, which is a great idea. We've more or less abandoned that room in the past month because we don't have an air conditioner in there so it's unbearably hot. It's also terribly organized; we need more shelves in our closets and better organizing strategies and the office has taken a hit. Maybe that'll happen this weekend. Hopefully it will happpen this month. We are trying to make more of an effort to go to theater, and the summer in New York is full of things to go to. Tonight we're off to the Lincoln Center Festival to see Gemelos, with discounted tickets.