5 posts tagged “apartment”
I have an exciting announcement to make, folks. It's been a while since I've been able to say this, but the way I'm feeling now, I'm absolutely sure that it's the right time. I've been hurt before, but the way things are going now I trust that I won't be.
Everybody... I'm in love.
...
...WITH MY NEW IKEA BOOKENDS!
Yes, the Skribent is my new love. Last night I took NJ Transit (let us never speak of this again) out to River Edge to meet my sister, who works a few days a week in Jersey and has a car, and we had a suburban adventure involving Ikea and (mmmm) the Cheesecake Factory. I was going out to Ikea for the express purpose of a rendezvous with these sexy mamas -- you see, no other bookend has ever been able to satisfy my... unique... needs and desires. As you are aware, I like the Comical Books, and I have a truly immense number of softcover graphic novels and collected editions. My previous metal bookends weren't really tall enough to hold them up -- they only hit midway up the books' spines, which caused them to start bending and flopping over and leaning at an angle. Unacceptable! Unfortunately, every other bookend I could find was more or less exactly the same height. Until I peeped these babies on Ikea's website.
They're not a cheap date -- $5 a pop, and I bought twelve of them -- but as soon as I put them up last night, I honestly can't describe the feeling of satisfaction that settled over me. And we're going to have to stop right there, because this is the stupidest, faggiest weblog post I've ever written. I know I've made that claim before, but if you can find one that tops it anywhere in my archives, I'll send you a cookie.
Seriously though, guys, I love these bookends.
My Crate & Barrel bed finally arrived, and it has already brought me great joy. Since it's clear that the entire point of the Internet is now product reviews, allow me to offer my opinion that this bed is (puts on salesman voice) a great buy! Seriously, $400 is kind of a lot for a pauper like me, but it's the cheapest bed C&B have and I feel like I got every penny of the price -- the construction process was a snap, requiring nothing but an Allen wrench. That includes a shockingly painless process of putting in the support slats, which are bowed wood and required absolutely no screws, just the simple act of sliding each one into a plastic insert that snapped onto the metal frame. That might sound flimsy, but this thing is rock-solid -- it doesn't even squeak or clatter a tiny bit when I bounce on it (not that I'm jumping up and down with all my body weight, but I tried to simulate, err, normal wear and tear). Literally my only two complaints are that the bed isn't as silver-looking as it appears on the website, which slightly frustrates my bedroom's design scheme (but I'll live), and that there is an absolutely ridiculous amount of trash involved in the packaging -- but while this is admittedly ridiculous for the environment, the bed did arrive in perfect shape as a result. So yes, if you're in the market for a bed, and you like the way this one looks, then buy, buy, buy.
Of course, unfortunately I wound up with exactly one inch less space than I needed to fit both my chests of drawers next to this new bed, making my room look kind of awkward and unfinished. I'm thinking I'll buy a new and more capacious chest to fill the space (I've got about 30 inches to play with), but literally everything I like from Ikea is 31 1/2 inches. Sigh. This thing from Target looks alright, I suppose, and it would fill the space just right...
THIS IS THE MOST INTELLECTUALY STIMULATING WEBLOG POST I HAVE EVER WRITTEN. Sorry, folks.
As several (OK, at least one) of you have been clamoring for them, here at long last are those photos of my apartment I've been promising. I did finally go to Ikea yesterday to get new living-room furniture and a desk for my computer, so even though I still need a bed and some kitchen stuff and chairs and the such, the place is in pretty good shape and I've decided to share.
I've found this apartment to be almost frighteningly cozy, to the point where all I want to do when I walk in the door is curl up on the couch and watch DVDs, which is a rare mood for me to be in... it's been pleasant, though, and the hibernatory-den feel of the place should be downright wonderful once winter sets in.
Yeah... I'm officially starting to panic about my move.
I have SO MUCH FUCKING STUFF and there is NO PLACE TO PUT IT ALL at this new apartment. I guess I could spend many hundreds of dollars adding storage to the place, but if I'm only going to be there a few months, then there doesn't seem to be much of a point. The obnoxious thing is that I've always kind of thought of myself as a minimalist... but no minimalist has the number of books, comics, and CDs that I have. And of course because I put off planning, I've got no option but to take all this shit with me to the new place and then figure out what to do with it there, instead of coming up with a solution before I have to pack and move it all.
I'm taking votes: Does anybody think I could be happy if I sold off nearly everything I owned? Has anybody done this before? What was the regret-to-relief ratio? I'm honestly curious here.
The only good news is that I'm taking Friday off, so I have the whole day to go buy more boxes, pack, clean, etc. I'm going to need every fucking second, apparently. ARGH.
I made a big mistake.
At the end of June, my roommate, Ashley, informed me that she intended to move out of our apartment at the end of August, i.e. one year into our two-year lease. She intended to move to Park Slope with her friend Gem. I was not invited. I found this to be quite annoying, since I was the person who did all the legwork on finding both the apartments we've lived in in NYC and I feel like I've caught nothing but crap from her about both of them -- the first one (literally a block from her school) was too expensive, the second one (in a gorgeous, safe neighborhood 20 minutes from the Village and Midtown) was too small and she didn't like the neighborhood, even though it is awesome. I would've been a lot angrier with her if our landlord had not let us out of our lease so easily; as it stands, I've just decided not to be all that pissed about it. It's been pretty obvious that we were growing apart (I've sensed a real feeling of contempt on her part for all of us who went to high school together), so maybe this was the best thing.
However. I made a mistake. I decided, shortly after she told me this, that instead of trying to find a new roommate for the apartment we're in now, I would move out as well, and try to find something here in Greenpoint that had more space, as the room I currently occupy is 7' by 9' and the rest of the apartment is not huge either (the other bedroom is a decent size, about 9'x9' or 10'x10' overall, but the living room is not enormous -- the whole brownstone is quite thin). My rationale was that while this place was cheap ($1400 a month), and I could afford to pay $750 or $800 for the larger, nicer bedroom and offer the small room for only $600 or $650, the apartment on the whole was simply too small for me to share with someone I didn't know well (nobody I know was in need of a room right now, so I would have had to just find somebody on Craigslist). So I decided to go out and find a Craigslist apartment share for myself.
I saw a lot of places I liked here in Greenpoint, and some nice places in Astoria too (I wanted very badly to stay in Greenpoint, as I love the feel of the neighborhood and it's starting to seem like I've put down roots here, but I was maintaining Astoria as a back-up neighborhood), but initially none of them panned out. Trying to find a room share combines all the worst aspects of straight-up apartment hunting and, essentially, speed-dating or auditioning for a play -- you've got to come across as exactly what these people want in the space of a five-minute meeting, while ensuring that they match what you want or need as well. Ultimately, I did see a place, at the northern tip of the neighborhood, that I was offered and wound up taking -- it's a basement apartment, in nice shape, with a super-cool guy who couldn't be friendlier and is into a lot of the same things I am (his eyes lit up when he heard I worked at DC). The room is $800, which I can swing (though I'm in a fairly serious financial crunch right now), and I was pretty much at peace with how things worked out -- the block the new apartment is on is farther from the subway and amenities, and is not as pretty as the block I'm on now, but it is close to the bridge into Long Island City and the 7 train, which makes the late-night commute easy (at least in good weather, since there's an 8-10 minute walk).
However, I went over there today to give him the checks (deposit for the old roommate and first month's rent for the landlord -- the latter I had to get from my parents, unfortunately, which I hate to do since I'd been so financially independent up until now), and was disappointed to realize that the room is not as big as I'd remembered it in my mind's eye -- it's really only about 7' by 12', without much closet space, and with an angled door that makes furniture layout slightly problematic. At the same time, Ashley moved her furniture out today while I was with my sister and mother, and walking around the apartment I'm realizing how nice it would have been to have taken her room, and how much I really appreciate the block I'm on now. But it's too fucking late. I've paid for the new apartment, and while the checks haven't been cashed I can't ditch the guy who needs a roommate just days before he needs one; the landlord has already started showing our current apartment to potential new renters as well, and I suspect one pair has already taken the place. So I'm left sitting here tonight in a half-empty apartment (packing my hundreds and hundreds -- thousands, actually, in total -- of books, comics, and CDs is going to be a nightmare) coming to the realization that I faced a crossroads and I took the wrong path. It's not pleasant.
Between this whole mess, and my distressing inability to save any money, I feel like I'm really just moving in the wrong direction entirely in my life. Perhaps the new apartment will work out better than I'm expecting, but right now I'm glad to not be on the lease, because I may just want to stick around for six months or so and then try to move on to something better. In any event, the last thing I can really take right now is another period of time where it feels like I'm just killing time, treading water until things can get better. That's what living in this tiny room has felt like for the last year, no matter how much I loved the neighborhood, and unless I can get this new place to feel significantly different, then I just don't know what I'm going to do. Life should be getting better, y'know? It's not like it was already so good that a little setback doesn't sting. My happiness was contingent on a few fragile things going right and they're just not doing so anymore...
