12 posts tagged “apartment”
Er, don't mind the bear. This bed is super tall, I kind of have to haul my ass up on it like I'm 5 years old. The set is super nice and it's scenting my room with the gentle aroma of new wood. See also the new bedside lamp with curly-metal accent.
I should paint in there but guh, I don't know.
It will arrive on Wednesday. I got the whole set you see in the pic, except for the mirror because that thing makes me make my scrunchy nose face. Not cute. The wood isn't as dark in real life and I'm not 100% in love with the bed but it's all wood and seems sturdy enough. I got the entire set and a nice little lamp for under $900 so whatever, yay.
I don't see it being the kind of furniture that I have forever and ever but it's nice enough. Everything else I've seen in that price range is "assemble it yourself" furniture and seriously, I'm sick of putting together furniture. Just lift it off a truck and plunk down in the room and leave, thank you.
I went to the same store I bought my sofa and mattress sets from last March (Harlem Furniture) and the sales guy remembered us. Isn't that weird? A lot of their stuff is over the top TACKY but there's some nice, simple stuff to be found and I like how they do business. They give you a furniture care kit when you buy wood furniture and I gushed about it so much (hey, FREE cleaning products??) that the sales guy gave my mom one, too. Hehe!
Now I need new bedding. I swear, after all this work and money, I'm never moving out of this apartment!
$40 for four place settings, from Target. Aren't they lovely? They are pretty trendy and seem to incite one of two reactions:
1. "Those are really cute!!" or
2. "Those are... ehhh."
I love them, though. They'd make for a really gorgeous table if I, uh... had a table. They're also durable as heck. I'm really clumsy and have banged the coffee cups around a lot, but they're holding up fine.
Is that no matter how hard I clean, how much I sweep, scrub, spritz or wipe, it will never be really CLEAN in here. I can't even estimate how old the tile in the bathroom is and the floors are actual wood, so they have to be ancient. The cabinets in the kitchen are metal and look to me like they were installed sometime before 1965. In and around the radiators is just impossible to clean and there's gunk that I know is older than I am. Plus, living in the city, everything gets dusty and dirty about two seconds after I sweep. I just can't get this place clean enough!
Someone down the hall from me moved out and the apartment now has new wood floors. I don't know if the other flooring was replaced but I'm really jealous of that new wood floor. This building is in great shape for being older, because it's been kept up nicely, but my apartment just needs some cosmetic things - new floors, new tub and toilet, and new radiators. If I wanted to dream big, I'd want new windows and several layers of paint chipped off the walls and moldings so they'd be smooth and ready to paint. If I wanted to dream really big, I'd just have the bathroom gutted and re-tiled completely. Oh and the plumping needs to be updated. I'd like to take a hot shower once in a while.
I guess this is why people buy condos? I at least want the dirt in my apartment to be MY dirt, y'know?
I wanted to document the fact that I am making an effort to furnish my apartment. These are four IKEA Billy bookcases side by side. I put them together myself thankyouverymuch. It bugs me that the one on the far left has a gap between it and the next bookcase but I'll deal.
I need to get rid of the stereo you see because I replaced it with my iLuv that's set up in the first bookcase. I had to hack a hole into the back of the darn thing with a steak knife to get the cords through. I'm so handy.
I'm planning to hang something on that big expanse of wall behind the bookcases, maybe some retro fabric mounted somehow.
If you click through to the full size images, you'll see an old photo of my parents from 1969 in front of the mirror and a photo of my mom from the 50's on the first shelf of the third bookcase. Cute, huh?
That's the new shower curtain. It doesn't look great in the pictures but I really like it. I was standing in the shower, installing the dispenser and realized how much more light came through the new curtain, so I like that. I think I'm going to swap the rug with one that's either black or bright pink. The bathroom is small so it's easy to redecorate when I get bored.
The dispenser was probably the best $30 I've spent yet. It holds 16 ounces in each chamber, which is good because I just bought 64 oz bottles of my favorite shampoo and conditioner (Pureology: Hydrate) and I certainly don't have room for a gallon of anything in that bathroom! I filled the third chamber with my bottle of Philosophy "Go Go Banana" body wash. It smells like banana Laffy Taffy <3 It's nice to get the bottles up off the bathtub, much less clutter this way.
Ahhhh!
Ok so now I've decorated the bathroom twice and yet, I'm using the big boxes that my A/C units came in as a phone table in the hallway. Houston, we have a problem.
I've taken a vow to not buy any clothing, shoes, handbags, misc. accessories, beauty products that I don't need and other unnecessary bullshit until I make a real, honest effort towards making this apartment resemble something more like a home and less like a place where I'm just sort of keeping my stuff. Just to give you an idea of how far along I've gotten with this, I still have moving boxes stashed in the hall closet. I moved into this place in March. It's time to get serious.
I've already rearranged my living room to make room for a big bookcase from IKEA. I've looked high and low for a bookcase that fits the space I have saved for it and the stupid Billy bookcase is the only thing I've found that comes close. The only problem, besides the fact that I already have a smaller Billy bookcase in there, is that there's no hole in the back for cords and I want to put my stereo on it. So I'll have to see if I can make a hole in the back without killing the whole thing. Right.
Oh and I have to get out to IKEA, buy the giant bookcase, transport it to my apartment, get it up on the elevator and then put it together. But besides that...
However, I'm glad I finally made a decision about the bookcase situation because I've spent a good two or three weeks scouring the freakin' internet looking for something. I can now move on with my life.
I'm already bored with my bathroom so I went to Bed, Bath and Beyond tonight and purchased a new shower curtain, a really neat dispenser thing for the shower, and a bottle for handsoap that says SOAP on it. The shower curtain is really... well, it's black and white and has dogs on it. But it's cute! I'll take pictures once I have it up. I'm thinking about a pink bathrug. I was considering this whole fake Parisian theme, because the tile is black and white, but I'd get bored with it two seconds after pulling it together. I would like a framed photo of the Eiffel Tower to hang in there.
That reminds me, I was going to frame my degree and hang it above the toilet. I mean, if you want people to see something, hang it right where they can't miss it.
This is all a distraction from the fact that my bedroom is a disgrace. I don't even own a bed, the boxspring and mattress are sitting on the floor. I have one dresser and it's too small to hold my wardrobe because the closet is also too small. I need one of those big, long, six drawer dealies. And a bed. I have a nightstand though! Sigh.
I haven't made much progress with decorating/furnishing my apartment. I bought a bunch of picture frames and a big mirror to hang in the hallway, but I have to sort through photos and have some printed before I can work on that little project.
But I did find some stuff on the Pier 1 website that I really like. I asked my mom to pick the stuff up for me since there's a store right by their house. I got one of each pillow and one of each frame. She used her Pier 1 card and got 10% off, so everything came to about $37 total. Nice, huh? :)
