A Whirlwind

I started to write this post in February, so will leave what I wrote and add to it a bit--it's April 9th, no matter what the post date says--

I haven't been writing much, but these past few weeks have been a whirlwind of all abode activity.

I was afraid I would jinx our luck if I wrote too much when we were actually making progress, but I'm fairly confident now that we'll actually get in, so here's the update.

It's been four months since we started negotiations on our apartment, and eight months since we started looking for real estate in New York, but on Monday, we will be totally into the place. The sellers moved out last Friday, we spent Friday night on aerobeds in the apartment (I INSISTED on sleeping there at least one night just to actually be in), then Saturday morning at 9, our painters arrived. They finished yesterday, my mom and I spent six hours cleaning today, and we have a truck and our elevator booked for Monday. D. and I got rid of the old, moldy air conditioning units this morning (between that and my four hours of window cleaning today, we now ACTUALLY can see out of our amazing windows). The painters pulled up the BR carpet and got rid of some bad shelving. I have lots of 'before-and-after' photos, but -- after all the work we did today -- it looks even better, so I'll have to take new photos before I post them.

The paint job is great, though. We stuck with some of our original plans that Benjamin Moore suggested, and modified others.


--So that was what I wrote and basically everything did work out well. We had a few snags, though. First, our painters apparently kept getting in trouble with the co-op board for such ghastly infractions such as working on President's Day (I mean, it's not Christmas or Yom Kippur), walking in the front door and not the service entrance, and parking in the building's lot "not once, but multiple times" (-from the Board hate-letter we recieved). Of course, they did not let us know this until we were fined, but that's besides the point...
Our other snag came on move-in day. After our wedding, we used many of our Crate & Barrel gift cards to buy the world's most comfortable couch. What makes it so comfortable? It is huge and overstuffed. Did it fit in the elevator of our 1940's building? No. Did my dad and D. try to bring it up the fire stairs? Yes. Did it fit? No. Did they break a light in the stairwell trying? Yes. So my dad and D. got obsessed with fixing this, and my dad found us all of these 'couch doctor' companies who take apart, move, and put back together couches (apparently this is a very common problem in New York buildings). My idea was to trade couches with my parents - so we ended up using my (free and not so crazy) idea, took a couch from their porch, and left our couch there. Frankly, I think each couch suits its new spot, but D. is still a little sad. But we'll get our couch back whenever we have a place for it. The end.
We also got - not in trouble - but - whined at by our super a lot during the move in weeks. We'd tell him we were bringing in a couch and he said "you have to let me know in advance" (well, we were doing that now...). We didn't schedule our carpet delivery or our CB2 furniture delivery enough in advance, blah, blah, blah. But since then, we haven't heard a peep from him. He was pretty intimidating at first, but I think he was more confused by us than anything (we may be the first people in the history of the building who didn't hire professional movers or a cleaning service). D., my dad, and I worked on taking out the beastly air conditioners ourselves, and we think his disappointment in us was just that we didn't have a great need for him. I think a lot of the other residents contract him to do work, so he's probably making a pretty penny under the table that we're not so much good for.

While we don't have our basement storage yet, wedo have bike storage; we're getting mail, though the previous owners' names are still on the mailbox. I can't wait to go to the May annual meeting and vote against the whole board!

Reuse, Reduce, Recycle, RESTORE!

Our first trip to the Salvation Army two Saturdays ago yielded two pieces that we bought for $90 total. The two of us spent probably a total of 8 hours working on them and I learned a ton about materials and restoration. As much as buying "green" is so trendy (and I basically agree with the concept), I think buying vintage pieces that have already been made and have been rescued from a landfill is probably the best way to go. Not to say I didn't just buy a brand new bed, mattress, and daybed for the apartment, but I guess we all do what we can (The thought of me or my guests sleeping on something used just wasn't so appealing to me!).

The mirror was painted white, which was okay, but it was a bit dirty and moldy. Since the rest of the wood in our house is medium-to-dark, I wanted to darken it. So I cleaned it, we worked on stripping it as much as possible, then I painted it a black/brown I mixed using some of D.'s old paints he had lying around. The result? Hopefully distressed-wood-look to this very solid (read heavy but hopefully quality) piece.

We loved the cast iron base of the dining table, its compact size, its square-with-rounded-corners shape, and its sturdy wood top. We weren't crazy about the very lacquered '70's wood color, so D. spent hours stripping through the layers of lacquer. I cleaned off the iron base (I may treat it with the mineral oil we used on the work table base once we move it) and we took turns trying to figure out the stain (which was more complicated than I ever thought). We still have to finish it (we bought a 'satin' finish) but it's almost there (I like the shots where you can see it reflected in the mirror, before and after).

The Salvation Army Cult

D. and I have spent the past two Saturdays scoping out our local Salvation Army -- I'm learning that there is a cult of people who do go there every Saturday morning to buy furniture with restoration potential, keep an eye on price cuts (I mean, all the money goes to charity), and buddy-up with the workers to try to get insider prices and items before they hit the floor. I don't know if we're going to become such active members of this cult, but we did get some great finds. This past week, we bought two items that only needed cleaning; no restoration. One was my pick, one was D.'s. Mine is a black roll-top desk that I plan to use in the foyer in lieu of a traditional console. I love its character, the storage potential, and general size and shape. I'm going to keep the distressed look and not try to mess with it:




D.'s pick was a "captain's chair" (his description). I'm convinced some WWII veteran died in that chair and his ghost is hella pissed that his no-good grandchildren gave it away instead of keeping it in his honor. Hopefully we can make him happy by enjoying it. D. hopes that whoever's chair it was isn't mad that he didn't serve in the military. We may have been sniffing too many cleaning supplies while working on it, but something about the chair makes you think there is a major story behind it.
(And in this photo, you can see the lovely state of my poor parents' garage with all of our possessions in it.)