Favorite Things

When I first made this blog, I created a sampling of things I liked along the bottom of the header of this blog. It's that strip of pictures of random things you can see directly below the title of this blog.

I just thought I'd share one my newest favorite things:




It's a clock from Ikea. I don't know how Ikea does it, but they are very good at pleasing me. I especially love it contrasting with the turquoise wall of our bedroom.

The clock actually has a lot of storage inside of it. It's a thin metal clock with a front panel that opens up. I've got no idea what to hide inside of it.

If your curious, those are Bucky Balls attached to the front. They are 216 rare earth magnets that stick to each other surprisingly well. I'm sure I'll post about those in the future.

Cabinet is finished!

As you can see, we received the front pieces of the drawers. Alicia did a fabulous job putting them on, didn't she? She even had to drill holes for the handles. Way to go, Alicia!

Ikea Stuff!

Alicia and I have a pretty recognizable pattern. Every time we have a craving to move to a new apartment, we decide we don't want to pay the rent increase, thus staying put where we are. We then turn our attention to our apartment and begin debating what we can improve. You may remember last summer when we purchased those two giant wardrobes for the bed room.

Two weeks ago, Alicia and I saw two different apartments. They were both a step up in price, but they had their advantages. All that kept going through my mind as I looked at the space was "Where would the couch and the lovesac go?" After we were home and decided to not move, I started thinking about how much space we could free up. Not only will it make the apartment feel bigger, but it will make a future move much easier. On the chopping block, the couch. Our lovesac had been hiding in the storage space for awhile.



We realized that if we got rid of the couch, the lovesac could return from exile and be the main focus of the living room. The problem with this solution is that it removes all other sitting in the living room.

With my birthday coming up, we decided it was time for another Ikea trip! We purchased a Poang chair to add extra seating to the living room:



And now the lovesac has a prominent place in our living room:



In the above photo, you can see the new Lack table (only 11.99!). "Where's the coffee table?" you might ask. Well, here it is!:



Yes, this means the entertainment center is no more. It was a black TV stand with great slots for my games and gaming systems. But, it isn't entirely gone!



I built this makeshift counter from the wood of the entertainment center (the black legs) and the wood from a small shelf Alicia was throwing out. I can't believe how perfect the size is. It isn't terribly pretty, but it gives the kitchen a ton more room. As does this:



This is our new kitchen cabinet from Ikea. The front of the drawers will be Black-brown, just like my desk and bookshelf. They said they were in stock, but weren't when we tried to pick them up. So they'll be arriving in a week. Oh well.

The drawers are great. They have the dampeners that prevent the cabinet from being slammed shut.

The top of the cabinet is custom made by me. They wanted approximately $90 for any kind of top. Alicia and I noticed that there were Ikea cutting boards for $10. Of course, the size didn't match. But for $10 dollars, we decided we'd try cutting it to fit. And it worked perfectly! You can see the back of the cutting board doesn't match the front. That piece is what I cut off the side and glued onto the back. All that's left to do now is oil the cutting board to make it perfect.



Prior to these two counters, our only kitchen space for working was that tiny drawer between the stove and the sink, as well as the stove and the sink. Now, we've moved the fridge over 15 inches, and added two counters. The kitchen feels a thousand times better.

Two last surprises from Ikea.



We found a tent for Livia! She goes crazy in there.



We found these two chairs. One of them was in the As-is section. It was $20 instead of $30, which is super cheap. The other one took some tracking down. But these are fabulous chairs. We bought them to go outside, but we keep using inside.

So that's where the apartment is. There were no changes in the bedroom. My desk moved in January, and I suppose I didn't blog about it. So here's a picture:



I've been a little lazy and a lot of busy, so it's kind of a mess. But you can see Alicia's Birthday decorations! She's so sweet to me.

I also put shelves up in the storage area:



You can barely see it at the top of the photo, but the shelves go up to the ceiling. The lack table in this picture was free, as someone in the building moved out and left it in the hallway. This is our little storage area, now.

Well, what do you think? I think the apartment breathes better. By that, I mean it feels more open! Yay!

Also new in the apartment...

Alicia purchased the new shelf during our first trip to Ikea back in June. It's nice having a place for straws and napkins. The picture above the table is also new. She added the green backdrop. It didn't work until the orange shelf went up, now it looks pretty good.

Alicia actually spray-painted the shelf herself. Good job? Indeed!

Apartment Shuffle

I've been living in my apartment in Brooklyn for over a year. Which is a lot, considering I've moved four times in the past five years. Outside my time back home in Eden Prairie, the longest tenure I've had in an apartment is one year 10 months, give or take (this was when I broke up with my ex and was essentially living with Alicia in her place).

So Alicia and I starting thinking about this place. We are paying $1600 a month, which is a lot, but much cheaper than Manhattan. Was it a good deal? Should we stay another year? Is there a better neighborhood to move to?

With those questions in mind, Alicia and I had fun surfing the internet looking at apartments in New York. Part of the fun was the thought of actually moving, part came from verifying whether we had a good apartment.

At first, we thought we were getting screwed. I got out the tape measure and discovered our apartment is somewhere between 450 - 550 square feet. Which is small, compared to what other apartments had. This was amplified by our feelings of claustrophobia, brought on by all of our stuff. Sure, we've lived with it for a year, but it took a year to realize we had a very full apartment. There wasn't much open floor space, most walls were covered with shelves, and our living room really felt cramped. Suddenly, having 700 square feet sounded really appealing.

The listings on Craigslist.org and others indicated that most one - two bedroom apartments in the 700 square feet range were about what we were paying, $1600-1800 a month. Moving was sounding better and better.

But I had to see the apartments. I managed to check out two open houses. The first was $1700 a month in a nicer building just four blocks away from where we are now. The problem was the space was in very awkward places. There were no right angles in the apartment and it turned out (by my estimate) to be nowhere near 700sqft as advertised. Really, it felt like there was no advantage over this place. It was almost equal. Not worth moving for.

Next, Alicia and I tried a step up in price ($1800 a month) for bigger (actually 700 sqft), but in a worse neighborhood (about two subway stops deeper into Brooklyn). We arrive at a newly built building that was originally meant to be condos until the real estate market took a turn for the worse. The agent brought us to this incredible apartment with a deck, huge windows, a nice stainless steel fridge, beautiful bathroom, full kitchen, . . . I could go on. So, what's the catch?

It's the model, and it is $2200 a month. We go down the hall to see the $1800 a month apartment. Still feels like the same size as our apartment. The kitchen is smaller, there's no deck, and there's no decent light. It just isn't worth taking the trouble to move into. Plus, $200 more a month? No thanks.

The implications of moving were becoming clear. For our price range, we weren't getting any improvement. And it would certainly be more expensive every month. But that model apartment, Wow. It was nice. We've come to the agreement that we should hold out on moving until we can step up to that level.

So Alicia and I start looking at our apartment and tried to determine what we could fix. As some background, when we moved here over a year ago, we were very excited. We spent two or three months planning the layout of this apartment. Every piece of furniture was in its ideal spot. But still, everything felt cramped. If only we had more storage. . .

Here's our solution. We went to the new Brooklyn Ikea and purchased two "Wardrobes" to act as a closet. These huge monoliths hold our clothing, freeing up both closets to be used for other things. They are from the Hopen line, which matches the dresser you see to the right, my bed and my bed side table. I love the frosted glass!

I won't kid you, these were rather expensive. Not four figures, or even close. But their price is justified in my mind when I consider how much moving costs alone would be. And if Alicia and I live in this apartment for another year at $1600/month instead of somewhere else at $1800/month, we've just saved $2400.

But they've worked. The space we have taken up in the bedroom is now free in the rest of the apartment. What used to look like Alicia's closet now looks like this:

We've got all of our food, most of our cleaning supplies, and lots of other junk in there. That is all junk that used to sit in our living room. Now, it is tucked away in our newly acquired storage space.

The most startling shuffle in the apartment that resulted from the Ikea wardrobes is the lovesac's new home:

I know what you're thinking: "Aren't you shunning it??" The short answer is yes. I've had the Lovesac for four years now. It is the most comfortable piece of furniture I own. This apartment just doesn't have the space for it in the living room. Heck, it took up 1/4th of the floor space! It has it's own little corner now that I can still sit on it to read, and it stays fluffed almost all the time. And by shoving it back there, look at the living room now:

What is hard to convey is the floor space. This room doesn't heat up as much anymore. It feels wide open and comfortable. It has made this apartment feel half as cramped as it used to feel. Heck, I can even use my orange chair now.

The configuration you see above isn't permanent. Alicia is planning on shuffling the desks around after the bar exam (she's done Wednesday, 7/30!).

The best part is that the apartment now feels fresh. I'd be happy living here for another year, and that will save us money.

Ikea Brooklyn

On Wednesday, June 18th, Alicia and I braved the early morning to get to the grand opening of Ikea in Brooklyn.

We got on the subway at around 6:30, taking the G train to its last stop. The Ikea is on the shore, about ten blocks south of the subway station. When the store is open, it has a shuttle bus running every 15 minutes, but because it was 7:10 in the morning (Ikea opened at 9am), we had to hike it. We got a little lost, but that gave us a tour of the neighborhood.

We finally arrived at Ikea around 7:45am. It was a circus. Literally. There were clowns, a band playing, even a carnival game where you hit the sledge hammer against the lever and try to make a little ball hit the bell at the top. I won a little finger puppet dragon. Here's the band playing next to some Ikea Flags on the Jumbotron set up.

At about 8:30, they set up a podium and some grand opening speeches were made. There was one by the Brooklyn Borough president, one by a New York City Councilwoman, and two or three Ikea executives. In Swedish tradition, instead of cutting a ribbon, they sawed a Log:

Here's a picture of a cool truck that was driving around that was basically a living room on wheels (the text on the top says, "See what $1,365 can do for a l:

Finally, at about 9am, the line started moving. I would estimate there were a few hundred people in front of us, but it was moving fast. As we entered, we were given golden envelopes with prizes inside. Alicia and I both received a coupon for a free frozen yogurt, but we could have gotten as much as $250.

The strangest (and coolest) part of the whole day was actually going up the escalators into the Ikea Showrooms. There was a large crowd of Ikea workers cheering:

It really made me feel like I had done something cool, even if I was just going into Ikea. It was crazy.

But the store was great. Ikea had put a lot of attention into making it look great. Here's one example:

They actually went through and made all the clocks have the correct time. Here's two other bizarre photos, one of very neatly folded yellow Ikea bags, one of the never been used carts all neatly waiting customers:

Surprisingly, it didn't feel very crowded. The store is just that big. The only other Ikea I've been to is the Twin Cities Ikea and I'd estimate that Brooklyn Ikea is about half as large. This is based on the size of every department. The showrooms just held more. The layout was almost the same. The warehouse section at the end was nearly identical. My only complaint about the other shoppers is that no one was actually following the arrows around the showrooms. They were zig zagging through the shortcuts, and it made it a bit confusing for Alicia and I to gawk at the pretty setups.

Shopping wise, I wanted a new desk chair to replace my previous $35 dollar Ikea chair. It had lasted about 2 years, but when I leaned back, the top would fall off the chair legs. The replacement I picked has a back, and only cost me $30. So it's been great thus far.

My favorite purchase has been a mortar & pestle. Its heavy, made of nice stone (marble I think?), and I've played with it almost every day. I keep crushing Altoids, but today I crushed some sugar that had gotten rock-like because it got wet and dried:

The worst and creepiest thing we bought was this Cheese and Roe spread from the grocery section. Check out the package:

It is just gross. At first, it has a pleasant cheese flavor. But then the roe hits. It tastes like gross fish, and doesn't go away. I had to quickly find something else to eat to make it go away.

But it was a great experience. There was a lot of new Ikea stuff to see, and I will probably never see such a clean Ikea in my life. Plus, we got free stuff while waiting in line:

We also got a pen and a tape measure, not pictured. The yellow thing at the bottom with the Ikea logo is a beach ball that I gave to the little girl next door. She's always bugging me as I come and go, but I still thought I'd be nice. Plus, what was Alicia and I going to do with a beach ball?

What's sad is that I'm already planning what I want the next time I go. I'm addicted to Ikea. Now that it is just a subway ride away, I might just have a problem.