Finally, A Pantry

I have complained to just about everyone who will listen about the lack of storage in my kitchen, but after Christmas things reached a sort of breaking point.  I received several things from Christmas, among them a paella pan, a knife block, a frying pan and lid, a food processor, and some assorted food items (assorted spices, arborio rice, etc.).  I realized, upon returning home, that while I might have been doing all right before Christmas, all these new additions needed to go someplace, and I didn't have a place to put them.  This problem was underscored when I returned from the grocery store with a couple of things that, in Chicago, I would have stuck into my pantry - olive oil and pasta sauce - which, combined with the other food items I couldn't find places for, make it blindingly obvious to me that if I ever wanted to clear off my counters, I would need more storage space.  So I betook myself to the Target in Columbia Heights (which I'm marking on the blog map, because I go there so often) and resolved to look for storage.

I had a bit of trouble.  I found the storage section without much difficulty, and bypassed plastic and metal for particle board that looks like wood - wire is all well and good for a closet, but anything in or near my kitchen is in plain view 24/7, so I wanted something that looked nice.  I came across a one-door, five-foot tall cabinet unit which, while it would have served perfectly as a pantry, was far too heavy for me to cart home on the Metro.  I then saw a two-door, three-foot tall cabinet in three colors which seemed exactly what I needed.  Better yet, one of the colors, alder (a sort of neutral blond) had had its price reduced by six dollars - I would happily spend $25 for my pantry.  The problem: the alder unit wasn't on the shelves, and after inquiring of a staff member, I determined that it wasn't in the stockroom either.  Drat.  I didn't want white, because it's too clinical, and I didn't really want espresso either (even though my table, chairs, desk, and bookshelf are espresso), because 1) these pieces were made by a different company, so the colors might not be the same, 2) this is particle board, not wood (like those other pieces), so the color might not translate, and 3) I thought lighter would look better in the place I intended to put it.  But no alder was available, so I went upstairs to get an extension cord.

As I descended the escalator, I noticed that there was another storage section, in one of the the rotating areas where there had been Christmas candy the last time I was at the Target.  So I walked over and poked around, and after encountering some of the same pieces that I had seen in the first section I was ready to give up.  But then I turned around and saw it: two-door, three feet tall, alder, and right there.  It shouldn't have been there - none of the other cabinets were there (I suspect someone thought better of it after putting it in a cart and, rather than putting it where it belonged, just ditched wherever they were).  But there it was, just one - the only one in the entire store!  I seized it and hastened, Gollum-like, to the check out.  After lugging the box onto the Metro and home, I assembled it, and here it is:

Although I didn't plan it this way, the alder color actually matches the floor pretty well.  As you can see, I have now found a place to store my paella pan, since it won't hang on my pot-rack.  I took the opportunity to free up a bit more space around the apartment by adding some things to the top of the cabinet so it looks all professional and such.  I am most pleased, of course, by the extra storage space - three feet tall, one foot deep, two feet wide, and three shelves gives me lots more room for food and whatever else needs to go in there.  And for $25 dollars!  I'm only letting myself get one large thing per month, and this is January's, but I think it's a pretty good choice.

Of course, I know you didn't come here to read about furniture - I just wanted to share this particular triumph with you.  I owe you pictures from and posts about my time in Gettysburg, and I promise to write them either tomorrow or Monday.  I'll back-date them to the middle of this week, but I'll be sure to provide links to them if they aren't immediately apparent on the home page.  I wouldn't deprive you of those pictures - I stayed in this incredibly kitschy hotel that you've just got to see...

My Rug Came!

And it was good for me.  Was it good for you?

Heyyyy bay-bay...

I have long been a fan of hardwood - floors, that is - but my experience with it, especially in my parents' home, is warm glowing hardwood which has lots of rugs and furniture on it, so it's more like you get little glimpses of caramel-yellow.  Here, on the other hand, I get great wide expanses, because I don't have hardly any furniture (also, my hardwood floors are not as nice as my parents', because theirs are original to the house (late 1800s), while mine are original to the complex (mid-1960s).  Still, far better this than wall-to-wall carpet, which is a maintenance issue I just don't want to have to deal with. 

Of course, you'd like to see the rug spread out now, wouldn't you?  So would I.

Nice, no?  I have to give artistic credit to my sister, who spotted it on Target's website while I was tweaking out about something (I forget what) back in August during move-in.  The colors are in reality a bit richer than this photo suggests, but northern light has a tendency to wash things out.  Fortunately, though, it doesn't fade stuff, and my plants don't seem to mind too much.  The rug draws a bit on Frank Lloyd Wright's design style (in stained glass, specifically) and definitely his color palette, and happily the brown edge is pretty close to the brown I painted my wall - I can claim in truth that I planned it that way, since this rug is what inspired me to paint the wall brown. In short, I am quite pleased.  Now I just need my dining room set to show up, and then I can buy a couch...hooray capitalism!  And delicious carpet.  You up for a little rug-burn tonight?

My Kitchen

(Backdated from Sunday night.)

It has been a long and arduous process, but I have finally wrestled my kitchen into submission and turned it from sticky, greasy, dusty, and inhospitable to a workable - if still imperfect - space.  Remember the blueprint?

The kitchen is in the upper left corner.  Now, remember that this was the kitchen in which Mom spent hours cleaning the floor with pure ammonia because nothing else would get off the wax so she could get to the dirt underneath, among various other horror stories.  Well, now it looks like this:

Plush and swanky it is not, despite my champagne tastes, but it's approaching pleasant.  I must, however, give credit for the rug to my friends from the university (K and R, the wife and husband pair who have made my time in Washington far more enjoyable than it would have been alone).  They got a pair of them in Morocco, and have one in their own kitchen, but didn't need the other because the rest of their apartment is carpeted.  They very kindly lent me the other rug of the pair until I get something of my own for the kitchen floor, which will probably be a while, since it's not a very high priority.  If I get rugs, it'll be for the living room first, because I've got to do something to kill that echo.

Anyhow, as you can see, I've got a nice pot rack, a full sized oven (hooray!), an ancient refrigerator/freezer (but they still work!), a dishwasher (which I don't use) and a built-in microwave, which I was a bit leery of, but have grown to appreciate.  I don't have to press start unless I'm using "time cook" - otherwise I can just press "2" and off it goes for two minutes, which is enough to steam frozen vegetables for my dinner.  I've also got a funky turquoise folding chair (its mate is currently on desk duty - as in, it's my desk chair), the granite-topped kitchen cart I mentioned way back (at least, I think I mentioned it), and a spice rack of my own construction to the left of the oven.  When one has limited space and limited funds, one is forced to become creative.

Here's a close-up of the part where I spend most of my time:

It's definitely a one-person kitchen, and what's perhaps most displeasing about the whole thing is that vast swathe of counter space in front of the toaster, which because of its location isn't really usable, except as a home for the dish drainer when I have dishes to be dried.  Underneath it is, of course, the Black Hole of Calcutta, which is another vast region of unusable space, and not simple because it's inconveniently located, but because I can't physically reach it.  I'm thin, but not that thin.

Along the wall under the cabinets are old cork mats (too small for place mats, but not really thick enough to be trivets) with paintings of various London landmarks on them.  And is that a fish?

Why yes, yes it is.  I got it in Williamsburg (at the Pottery) and intend to drink it sometime - with friends - when I have a good reason.  I hope the wine is good, but even if it isn't, I'm keeping the bottle.

Welcome to My Apartment

I've delayed posting for a couple of days because I wanted to have all I needed to make today's post.  Even so, I'm not going to cover everything, because I've still got organizing to do, but I thought it was high time to introduce my readers to my apartment, since I've been talking about it so much.

Apartment, readers; readers, apartment.

I suppose I should start with a blueprint because, typical of me, I have one.

You'll notice that the text in this picture is backwards; this is because I had to flip the image I acquired from my building's website to show how my apartment is actually laid out - the way this looks with the text flipped is the mirror opposite of my apartment, but this is the right way around.  In this picture up is south, but I didn't think rotating it 180 degrees was really necessary.  The entrance is in the upper right, and the balcony in the lower right.  That boxy thing above the balcony's right side is an air-conditioning/heating unit (as is the boxy thing at the bottom of the dining room), above which is a window (no window in the dining room, alas).  Above the balcony on the left is the sliding door, and the portion of wall to the right of the dining room is window.  Incidentally, that's also where I'm sitting right now, because my desk looks out that window.  The living room window is big and square, but the desk window is tall and thin; I'd be tempted to nickname them Abbott and Costello if I could only remember which of them was which (answer: Abbott's the fat one, but Costello was no taller than his counterpart, so the comparison doesn't really work.  Oh, well.).  And just to settle any questions, the accent wall I painted last weekend is the wall that faces the balcony - that is, the wall whose other side is in the dressing room and bathroom.

Anyhow, today I wanted to introduce you to the living room (living room, readers; readers, living room), because I've spent the past two days decorating it (along with the usual docket of cleaning, organizing, and running errands).  In the past "decorating" for me has primarily meant "putting things on the walls" because furniture has always been provided (dorms and furnished apartment), but although I have to supply my own furniture here, putting things on the walls has actually become more important because I have so little furniture to begin with - with bare walls I feel like I'm living in a super-sized shoebox.  But with things on the walls, it's much more homey.

As you can guess, my decorating is no minor affair, so without further ado, my two newly-decorated walls:

This is the brown accent wall over which I labored so hard on Saturday, and again yesterday.  At floor level you can see the makeshift couch I've put together (six layers of cloth, and it's actually pretty comfortable).  To the left is the one shelf my landlady left in the place (she took down three more above it, which makes about as much sense as...well, never mind).  You can also see that the stuff on this wall has given me a little trouble - I woke up to find two of the maps and one of the pictures on the floor because I hadn't secured them enough (I'm using masking tape, because it's what I have and it's usually gentle on paint and paper alike, but too little and things end up on the floor).  As you can see, Southeast Asia doesn't want to stay on the wall (Taiwan wants its independence), so I'll have to re-tape it in a bit.  None of the six big maps are ones that I've displayed before, so they'll have to be beaten into submission.  Interestingly, the post-World War II World and Africa are the only ones which haven't given me trouble - 1950s Germany and Middle Asia were both on the floor this morning.  (Blow this picture up to see more detail.)

Here's today's effort, the wall to the right of the accent wall, or to the left as you enter the room from the foyer (are you referring back to that blueprint?)  There are fewer small things on this wall because I used most of them up on the accent wall yesterday, but that's just as well, because smaller things mean more work.  Spain, the Heavens, and the world at night are all reappearing after a successful stint in Chicago, but the United States is new (I didn't display it in Chicago because it's so big) and I've retired my old map of Italy, which was falling apart, and replaced it with a Traveler's Guide to Italy version.  Normally I shy away from "traveler's guide to" maps (I have one of the British Isles which I don't like at all), but this one is actually quite well done.  Italy's just so photogenic.

Once I've cleaned up the remaining rooms in my little kingdom I'll have pictures for you (don't you want to see the Black Hole of Calcutta?), but in the meantime, it's back to cleaning and organizing for me!

The Color Purple

12:00

I have a wall.  It is purple.  See?

In the cool northern light that comes in from my balcony, it almost looks slate gray, but I promise you that it's purple.  Remember the Christmas tree from Williamsburg Pottery?  That purple.

When I came to see this apartment at the beginning of August, I thought the purple wall was fine.  It was a bold accent color, and it's not a huge wall, really, so I didn't have a problem with it.  However, once I moved in I realized something I hadn't earlier - without furniture in front of it, the purple wall revealed a problem: it was unevenly painted.  You can see some of this to the left of the cable outlet in the picture above (blow it up and see what else you can find - there are some weird spots by the thermostat too, and up near the ceiling).  So, although I am willing to live with a purple wall, I am not willing to live with an unevenly-painted one.  Therefore and forthwith, I'm painting the sucker.

What color, you ask?  Well, you'll just have to wait and see - I'll be back later in the day with more photos.  But one thing is certain - you can kiss the color purple goodbye!

2:00

I have a wall.  Now it's white.

Sorta.  As you can see (though not very well in this picture - it's clearer and brighter in real life, promise), the purple refuses to go without a fight, something I was told to expect when I went to buy primer and paint.  So I've put on Primer Coat #1 and will let it set for about an hour before I apply Primer Coat #2.  Hopefully two coats is enough, but I reckon I've got enough paint to do three if I have to.  I hope not, though, because if I do there's no way I'm making it to church tonight...

4:00

I still have a wall, but now it is definitely white.  See?

 
This, however, raises a quandary.  It's 4:00, and the Saturday evening vigil Mass at the local church is at 5:15.  If I let this primer dry for an hour, it'll be time for me to leave for church.  I could go tomorrow morning or tomorrow evening, but I've already been to those Masses, and I want to see if the vigil of Saturday is any different.  Alas, it appears that I won't be able to do that, because if I do go, I'll get back around 6:30 and want dinner, and by the time time I'm done the light may not be good enough to paint by.  So no church tonight - I'll have to go sample the vigil Mass next week.

Not Quite 7:00

I have a wall.  It is brown.  And it is also a miracle.  I will explain.

 
I had it on good authority (my parents, who have both painted walls in the past) that all I would need was a quart of paint (the saleslady at the hardware store wisely recommended that I get a gallon of primer).  So after the primer had dried I got out my paint roller (blessings on the person who invented them - they're amazing) and started on the left side of the wall.  But as I was nearing the right side I began to panic.  Would I have enough paint?  Surely not - there was hardly any left in the can!  What would I do if I ran out of paint?  Desperate, I began painting more and more lightly, hoping to conserve enough paint to allow me to touch up the edges (which I couldn't do with the roller, unless I wanted to paint the ceiling too).  I finished everything I could do with the roller, but there were still edges and hardly and paint left to paint them with.  Grimly, I reached from my brush.

And then I had a Hannukah moment.  (Wait, what?)  I'll explain.  The story behind Hannukah comes from the Jewish tradition and, as you may recall, describes a menorah in the Temple in Jerusalem which burned for eight days on a single day's supply of oil.  I could have sworn that there was hardly any paint left in my can, but I managed to paint all four edges and touch up the spots I had painted more lightly, and there was still paint left!  My perception of volume is obviously faulty, but aside from that, I am relieved in obscenely gigantic proportions that I didn't run out.  Is the wall perfect?  No, it's not - you'll probably be able to see some some brush strokes when it's dry (there are some still-wet ones at the far right of the picture), and I need to touch up the baseboard (it's white, so I'll use leftover primer), but it's done - no gaping white holes to be filled with a paint that wouldn't quite match (of course), and no emergency trip to a hardware store which I've yet to locate in this city.  And in any case, it's far better than what preceded it, so you'll hear no complaints from me.

Whew.  I need a beer.