The "Office"

The word "Office" is in quotes because right now it's nothing close to an office, but I do have a plan. Plans, even. And I got G to mostly agree to them, while conveniently ignoring that half of it was his idea to begin with.

Cameras covered in chocolate take horrible pictures of horrible rooms

SO MUCH CLUTTER

I think I used these photos months ago before the previous roommate took his stuff away, but this is a good representation of what it still looked like a week ago, but take away the computer and add a broken guitar to the shelves over the TV. Plus, I've thought a lot about how ugly this room is. I feel the need to write about it some more. The TV stand is huge and cheap, and the couch is broken and not that comfortable, and you can't walk through the door without knocking into it. Forget opening the other door. The other door, that doesn't have a doorknob, by the way. It has duct tape over a hole. And the paint job is terrible. And those shelves above the TV make the already narrow space feel like it's coming out to eat you.

Honestly, it's as if painter's tape didn't exist

At least the last problem has been solved! In a leftover fit of organizing madness from a weekend of decluttering another room, I, wait for it, took down the shelves. It was very impressive. I removed the guitar first (pro-tip: remove things from shelves before taking them down), G unscrewed the highest screws and I took out the rest of those mothers. We still need to yank out these black things that the screws went in, which will apparently cause showers of plaster, so that's waiting until all of the furniture moves into a different room, which it will. At least it's more open now:

Exciting blank walls

I also organized our books. He's not happy about it. I separated his Hesse's.

Yes, I realize using books as a decorating ploy is SO plaaayed, but I've gone through enough practical organization systems in the past (genre then last name, Read vs Going to Read vs Never Going to Touch Again, etc.) that I feel entitled. Look how awesome this is:

Via hola! design and Pinterest

So I did this:

Not sure about the red shoeboxes, and I need to figure out something to put on the empty top shelf now that I took down the, ahem, CD tower from the 90's, but I still know where everything is if I need a book and it looks vastly improved already. Especially considering that if I had gotten lazy and quit halfway through the process, the room would look like this, with a bonus dead body because G would have killed me:

Yes, I started organizing CD's by color on the lowest shelf.

Sorting. Not quite there, but at least books are on shelves?

I did all of that on a weekend when he was at work. It's hard to describe the franticness that sets in when you realize a room looks like the above picture and you only have an hour to put everything back or in a closet before your boyfriend comes home and starts asking questions, but it's weirdly exhilarating. COMPETITIVE SPEED BOOK ORGANIZING.

I'm not going to lie, I went to the Strand and bought a few $1 books with brightly colored spines to augment the shelves, but I made sure they were books I also would want to read (Vonnegut, The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language, and three or four other interesting unheard-of books). Mmm, books. I'm finishing up with The First Word and it's pretty fascinating.

The Current To Do List:
Rip out the screw-holes and spackle over them
Fresh white paint (including the wooden shelves, and ideally the door and closet door that aren't pictured, but that's not happening)
Install a doorknob to replace the duct tape, chic as it is
Bust out a white lacquered Parsons desk, but a homemade version because that's a lot of money for five rectangles of wood
Move the bookcase from the second bedroom, AKA FutureDen, to where the couch is, ideally painted as well because it is old and unattractive
Desk lamp
Figure out laptop storage
Art (I have a big, super-colorful, stylized portrait of myself that's sitting in storage in FL, but that feels strange, to have a portrait of yourself in your office. But it's stylized! And by a legitimate artist!)
A chair would be nice

My dream, if I had a larger space and I'm guessing thousands of dollars to spend on that chair, that table, and those bookshelves:

There's no great source for this picture, but it's Isabel Lopez Quesada's work. Via here and Pinterest

It was G's idea a while back to turn this room into a home office, but I couldn't bear the thought of having a room in my home dedicated to work. I leave work every day for a reason, you know? That reason is that I'm done working. But a place to put my laptop aside from "on my lap on the couch" would be cool. Nothing specifically work-y will go in here, though. No rolly desk chair. No task lamp. No obvious desk-desk, hence the Parsons table. In my head, I've already made all the changes and painted and everything, and it's slightly disconcerting to walk in and see the couch and TV stand and stuff everywhere.

Oh well, time heals all impatient redecorators. Or something like that.

Next up: FutureDen, and my attempts at making mood boards and floor plans.

Ceiling Books: Not Just for Houses Anymore

Books. On a ceiling! What could be better than that? Which is why I kept this pin as a hypothetical future home idea. Since I live in a rental apartment, though, I didn't think it was possible to set up, since it requires built-in shelves and the ability to do things without worrying if a landlord is going to yell at you.

So it was somewhere in the back of my mind, but not realistic. Now, I have a bunch of fans that my sister brought back from Spain years ago, and I've been telling G for ages that I want to hang them up on the entry-stairwell wall. 

This wall.

Keep with me, this relates. A few weeks ago, we were both finally home on a weekend, and I forced an agreement out of him. I got to work setting up the fans for hangability, since they're not meant to be pinned to walls. I know this, as I've tried unsuccessfully in 4 previous apartments to get them to stay up, with nails, poster tape strips, whatever I (aka my roommates) had in terms of supplies.

I got to work with my first-pass supplies: wood glue, super glue, thin bendy wire, scissors and a Sharpie.

Not sufficient.

I tried super-gluing the wire onto the back of the middle fan... strip... thing. Whatever the individual parts of a fan are called. I determined the middle by fanning it out and holding it up by different strips until it looked even, then marking the correct one with a Sharpie. That's the Sharpie's sole use, by the way. Using the super glue in this way was not a good method. I let it dry flat for almost double the recommended drying time, but as soon as I picked it up by the wire to test its strength, the fan fell to the floor. Fortunately, my fans are used to being dropped.

Fan + Wire + Glue = Failure

New supplies: Wood glue, scissors, Sharpies, wire, and a cardboard toilet paper roll.

The winning team.

The super glue crapped out on me, so I switched exclusively to the wood glue. Have you ever sat at a table, staring at a super glue dispenser with a plug in it, and waited 10 minutes for a tiny drop of glue to come out? I don't recommend it for either entertainment value or practical purposes. After I stopped agonizing, G suggested that after gluing the wire onto the back, I smush a small piece of cardboard against it, so the glue has something more solid to stick to. He's so handy. When using this glue, you're supposed to keep pressure on it for something like half an hour to make sure it dries and bonds correctly, which I was not about to do for 6 fans. I did the next best thing by closing them up, making sure to keep the cardboard slice in place, and sticking a Slinky on top of them.

Is there anything a Slinky can't do?

This time the wire was secure, so I tore G away from his phone and hung them up in a diagonal line, measuring the distance from the chair rail and the previous fan to keep it consistent. I had to buy some small picture-hanging hooks, which were what we measured, and once they were in, we looped the ends of the wire around them, spread the fans out, and congratulated ourselves. G soon got bored and went to gaze lovingly at his iPhone some more, and I stayed behind to gaze lovingly at the wall.

First, the real Before photo, from when I first moved in and there were two couches in the living room, one up against the railing by the stairs. There was zero need for this extra couch. G and his friend dumped one on the sidewalk, moved the others around, and we ended up with the living room feeling much more open. Especially while you're walking in, your first impression isn't the back of an old couch. I don't have any photos from this time, so I replicated the look as best as I could in Paint:

A surprisingly good likeness of the couch, in a shockingly bad editing job.

And After:

Ahhhh.

There's a break in the wall that you can see just past the red fan in the below image, which messed with the spacing, so I decided to ignore the previous method and hang up two fans on either side of the wall with only the merest of measuring. I am out of control! It ended up working well. Since one of the fans is white and blends in with the wall, it can hang out on its own wall without drawing attention or looking out of place, but it keeps the immediate entryway balanced.

The view from the doorway.

As I was taking pictures, I realized that ceiling books were doable! Look:

Cozy

There's a small shelf tucked under the stairs. Our apartment has a lot of little nooks and cutouts like this. As G's old girlfriend remarked when she first walked in, "It's very... Catholic." (The cutouts are for Jesus and Mary figurines.)

Holy Friends

I ran to get some books, and once I determined they would fit perfectly, I cleaned off the shelf and piled 'em in. Since this area isn't easily accessible and will surely get dusty, I only chose books that I have no interest in either re-reading or finishing.

Ceiling books! Sort of!

These stairs probably looked nice 20 years ago.

G even got in the spirit, looking through all of his books for additions. Most of his were either too large or held too much value for him to abandon in a dusty netherworld, but it's the thought that counts. I had enough by myself, and I was in love.

I don't know what is wrong with my brain, though, because by the next day, I had grown accustomed to the fans and ceiling books and barely gave them another thought. Maybe I spent too much time thinking about putting the fans up before I got a chance to do it. On to the next consuming obsession that will give me no lasting satisfaction once it's been completed!