wardrobe

Ok, I give up. I'm so sick of scouring Craigslist for weeks trying to find a stylish, affordable armoire that has drawers and shelving, that isn't laminate, that's sturdy, and preferably white, to house my printers, scanner and photo accessories. So I'm going to buy the Leksvik wardrobe from Ikea. Technically it's a children's item (the best department at Ikea, in my opinion! haha) but it is not too deep and just wide enough, plus its tall and has shelving inside. And it's not ugly. At first I will put it together and use it, but I fully intend on painting it a color eventually and papering the insides all pretty. Well, I want to paint it white, but I might think of a color, like yellow. Will get back to you on that. But my Epson's been sitting in a box since we moved over a month ago! Oh, photography business? Yeah, right. I'll have to get back to you on that one, too.

I want this room

Another brilliant 'hack' coming from Ikea Hacker this week, Jules is on a roll. This is way more than just a simple hack, though, it's an entire room redo by Jennifer and Sean.


What a gorgeous room, and with what seems to be nearly 100% Ikea. I truly love it.


Here are some details. I am in awe of how they hung the Expedit shelf horizontally, on the wall. Gutsy! I love the two file cabinets next to each other as a leg, and the CD shelf as another leg. Last, the curtains. Next year, I need to learn to sew!

the sweetest ikea hack yet

Over at Ikea Hacker, Jules posted one of the sweetest, most creative hacks I've ever seen! Pinot and Dita at Our Artful Life decorated their wall with paint and Ikea fabrics.


So adorable. I am no painter, but I could really see this done on a wall with any kind of fabric to match your decor, and it wouldn't be at all child-like. Especially that tree! I wish I could duplicate it! So pretty.

ikea business

I found a link to the Ikea Business website from a new favorite blog, Linda & Harriett (they make an amazing letterpress 2009 calendar for only $24.) Over at Ikea Business, not only do they have a quiz to figure out what style you are (I'm Scandinavian Original!), the website is mostly video-based, with local shop owners talking about an showing off the solutions they use from Ikea.



I love how Shakti Yoga & Living Arts in Maplewood, NJ uses the stripa shelves to hold business cards, and then bulletin boards above. I found the Ikea Business website to be inspiring, not just for business owners, so take a look over there!

mr. gorbachev, break up this wall!

This is my living room, or at least the right most 70% of it. My living room is an 11x21" box, and the entire southern wall is blank. 21 feet of blank! I know frames should go on this wall, but I don't know where, and I don't know what it ought to look like in the end. I don't want to go overboard with holes and shelving, since we are moving in 6-8 months. I was thinking of getting 2-3 large posters to hang behind the TV, and then maybe I could have a small cluster of photographs and prints in line with the dining room table. What do you think? I'm stumped.

Please excuse the mess! I always forget to clean up before I take photos of my apartment!

(Clicking on the image above should link to a larger version.)

thank blog I'm back

I knew today would be the day. When I got out of class, I had a voicemail from a 212 number, and I heard that my laptop was ready! After only five days in the shop. I went right to the Apple store and got my baby back. They replaced the logicboard completely. With a happy sigh, I say, life can finally return back to normal (though I was getting used to replacing TV shows with the Internet!)

This past Friday was not a good day. At 8:45am, just before I was going to get up to go to class, the building's super knocks on my door to say that the plumbers working on the unit above me needed to get into my apartment. These are the same guys behind the lovely leak in my kitchen ceiling, and I had to go to class, so I said no, they'll have to come another time.

Then I received one of the worst phone calls of my life from the management company, threatening me that if I didn't let them in, I would be evicted. After that, she manages to tell me it's an emergency. Well, why didn't you say so! I had no choice but to let them in, and I wouldn't have thought twice in the first place had I known that from the start. Then they tore a gorgeous hole in the boy's closet.


Luckily, they've since patched it up. It didn't have to sit for weeks like the state of my kitchen. They fixed that too, both the light fixture and patching up the ceiling (though they haven't painted over the plaster yet.) In my excitement to have overhead lighting again, I realized, I've never blogged about my kitchen before!


This is our kitchen before we ever moved in. Tiny, salmon, and without much storage.



We painted it light blue and installed some white metal shelving above the stove, but that wasn't enough. So we installed a pegboard on the side wall, and a small ikea shelf and a rail above the butcher block, I guess we can call it. That was enough for about five minutes, when I quickly realized we could maximize this space completely and inexpensively.


Over the summer, we took a trip to the Home Depot in Jersey City, where we got custom cut shelves that I painted white, and we hung them with Ikea Valter brackets.


Much improved. Now there isn't any more space to add storage, and I cannot imagine how we could have functioned in that kitchen without all of this. Never mind the fact that I rarely cook anyway. So that's my kitchen, and I am so glad to have it back to normal, and to have everything back to normal today!

it's the little things

I love submitting hacks to Ikea Hacker, so I snapped a few pictures to show off our 'recycling center.'



We use a Bjuron plant stand, with a Fibbe bin underneath to hold plastic bags that we recycle at the grocery store, and a clear bin (I couldn't find the name of it, but it's like the Slugis) to hold recyclables ready to be put out for collection in the building. I covered the flap of the Fibbe bin with some wood grain contact paper because it was getting a little grimey looking, but now it's much better!



We used to just pile stuff up in the corner, or hope that we had a big paper shopping bag laying around to keep everything in, but it was always very messy. Also, we needed to put the recyclables up high because our dog used to always steal things from the pile and chew them up! Now she can't reach, so it's prefect.

something accomplished

I just covered my Ikea Rian side table with some fabric!



It was looking a bit ratty before, and now it's the perfect place to display my 99 cent Goodwill tray and all the clickers (though they are never all sitting there like that, nor do I really like it that way!)

Here's a close up of the fabric:



I think I need a new small point and shoot camera. Mine (Canon Powershot A700) really isn't great in low-light situations. I don't shoot salable photography with digital, but I think I might need a new pocket sized one for snapshots.

Craft Corner Completed!

Oh what a great day it was yesterday when I finally completed my craft corner. It ended when I finished covering my Fira chest. It took several coats of paint and lacquer and two attempts at covering with paper, but now I am so, so pleased. In fact, I am very excited about all of my color and paper choices lately. I began to modify the phrase "measure twice, cut once," to say, "think once, create twice," in that whatever my initial plan is, I execute it, something goes wrong or I decide to change it, (like with my bulletin board) and then I love it in the end.


The drawers before I put them into the base.


Close up of the pattern of the side.


The insides of the drawers, painted yellow and lacquered, were dusty, bumpy and rough and I thought that I wouldn't want to put my paper and supplies into the drawers that way. So I covered the bottoms with paper from a pack of 12x12 scrapbook paper that I got at Target for just $1 this past Sunday! I love Target's $1 bins - I also got a stamp pad, ribbon and two packs of small scraps (that match the larger pack of paper), all for $1 each.


Voila! Here is my new, clean space. I think the colors all go so perfectly together. The area really lights up the room and finally something is on the walls! I'm going to order two shelves to put above the TV to display my many cameras and knick knacks and I think that wall will finally be complete.


Speaking of walls, I finally began my mirror wall in the entryway. You see, when I was growing up, my grandmother still lived in her house in Belle Harbor, Queens, NY, that my dad and aunt grew up in. I loved it, so vintage, cozy, a few houses down from the beach. One of my favorite features was that the whole entry wall, going all the way up the staircase, was covered with mirrors collected from all over the world. When she sold the house, I was still young and didn't have any interest in most of the mirrors. But after I moved into my apartment, I had the perfect wall for mirrors and for my birthday, my grandmother gave me a few of the ones that were on her wall. I already had the two larger mirrors and one of the stained glass ones, but the rest are hers. There's a mirror on there from Greece and one from China, probably other places, too, but now I forget. I can't wait to see this wall grow.

That's what I've been up to lately. With each project, I get closer to feeling like I have a completed apartment that really feels like home.

Ikea Hacks

Took a trip back to Ikea on Saturday and loaded up on goodies. Many of them were to "hack" (well, really, just paint!)



This was the first draft of my Chris noticeboard. I used three colors of paint samples from the hardware store. But after I painted it, I realized it really didn't go with my new drawers (see below) and my magnet board. So I changed a little bit and wound up with something much prettier and matching with my new color scheme.





I also got the Helmer drawers that I've been wanting for a while. I took off the casters and it fits perfectly under my desk. All it took was some paper cut to size and spray glue and voila. Though it did take a lot of trial and error to get the paper to stick the right way.

Other things to be painted are the Vika Furusund, which is now a leg of the kitchen table, 6 Knuff magazine files and a Fira chest, which is already in progress.

Other things purchased during the trip were a Rian side table for my sewing machine, 6 Branas baskets, a Global lamp and a Lisbet runner, but we haven't laid it down permanently yet and when we did as a test, wow it made me so dizzy, so we'll have to see if that's going to stay, and several other little things like picture frames and bowls.

I'm looking forward to a happier, brighter apartment soon!