our living room wall is HUGE. and of course, there’s a big fireplace in the middle so there isn’t room for a large credenza or console. just one cute skinny fireplace right smack in the middle.

the boyfriend and i spent a month going over how this would look and be configured. drawings and measurements and arguing. we wanted something useful but tasteful, and pipe shelving seemed too permanent and complex (but we loved the look). so we settled happily on this, with custom measured/cut/stained shelving to compliment the wood of our floors and the black of the brackets.

the best part of doing custom is that we were able to customize each shelf in consideration of size and contents, so we specifically measured for the TV, the record player, and the campaign rast. (and we can change the height of shelves whenever)

i believe i drew this sketch 50 times before we settled on the design.

WALL MOUNTED SHELVING

six twin track 70″ uprights
26 brackets
12 pieces of wood at 3/4″ thick :
(4 long)
(2 medium)
(6 small)
wood stain

the project was all about the planning. it would have been a lot easier had we been able to just do one big unit without the fireplace, but we wanted to make each side symmetrical without being identical.

we configured on paper (like i said, fifty times) where the uprights and the shelves would sit, and had the wood cut in three sizes.

we then hung the uprights after measuring and remeasuring and leveling and stud finding and all that boring stuff.

and then i sanded and stained 12 pieces of wood. we live in an apartment with a small balcony. so yeah. that took a day.

once all the wood was ready to go and we then decided where each shelf would go, and screwed the brackets to the shelves. and that’s about it!

sawed, stained, delivered … it’s shelves!

so here she is. our new coffee table. basically the closest we could get to the rugsusa one and under $100. with my days and days of internet research, i found this raw steel metal base for $58 with local pickup. (they now cost $60, probably because of me not bringing exact change)

the base was raw steel, so we chose to spray paint it matte black.

after spending a good amount of money on the wood for the fauxdenza, we wanted to do this wood for cheap, thinking we can replace it whenever. it’s really hard to find wood that’s an inch thick. we settled on crappy plywood, which they told us would be $60 for the whole piece that we only needed 1/6 of. but they were able to find some scrap of it and we got it for $13. you can tell it’s cheap because it turned orange after we stained it. don’t know what that’s about, but i’m learning to live with it.

DIY COFFEE TABLE

metal base – $58
plywood 41″ x 21″ – $13
spray paint - $6
3/4″ long screws – $1
wood stain – about $6
feed n wax – already had

we spray painted the base and heavily sanded the piece of wood, really smoothing out the corners and edges.

i added a light coat of what i thought was a very natural wood stain. i think this wood has a very orange undertone, which the stain totally brought out over night. i had wanted to have a more sand colored wood compared to the rest of the room. unfortunately, before noticing how saturated the wood was getting, i used feed n wax to finish the wood. so now we’re kind of stuck with it until we feel like sanding it off and re-staining.

once everything was dry, we measured out where the center was and carefully drilled in six screws.

and we finally have a coffee table again – that cost us $84!

but is it too orange?

i’m kinda feeling that weird marbled stripe on top, makes it feel like his and hers. except that would make my side the smaller one.

the rug is from rugsusa (ugh) / white lacquer tray from west elm / gold wishbone from jayson home and garden / ezc playing cards /bert stern adventures book was $1 from a yard sale /
agate coasters were super cheap at the nyc natural history museum

i’m not sure if everyone is desperate need of more storage at all times or if it’s just me forever. but like i’ve said before, we needed more storage. this time in the bathroom! i saw this adorable little medicine cabinet DIYed by door sixteen and thought hey i love first aid too. but we needed tons more storage. like medicine cabinet storage. so we bought a lillången cabinet at ikea.

before assembling the cabinet, we took the door out of the box a month after buying it. with a yard stick, a pencil, and siri my math wizard, we lightly drew out the pattern right onto the cabinet front.

until we finally got the perfectly proportional plus sign.

how did i do such a masterful job taping you ask? well i did damage the door front a little but i used a ruler as a straight edge and exacto-ed the corners of the tape. little scratches aren’t noticeable!

now i bet you’re wondering how’d you screw it up? here’s how! acrylic paint. we tried to prime it but using gesso – it was all we had. it didn’t work and you can’t REALLY tell but the paint job is horribly blotchy. every fix up coat made it worse. so we went back to the original plan that i didn’t mention of just spray painting. we should have done that in the first place and this would have looked perfect. but why would i want it to look perfect? ugh.

ok so here is the TEXTURE from the painting job. i don’t know, maybe the texture like adds a lot of oomph. i’ll go with that. at least my taping job was swell.

IKEA FIRST AID MEDICINE CABINET

a white cabinet
yardstick
t-square
ruler
exacto knife
painters tape
pencil
spray paint

1. remove the cabinet door from the box or cabinet if it’s already been assembled.

2. find the exact center point of the door by making an X from corner to corner, mark it with a pencil.

3. use the t-square to draw a cross through the center point at a perfect perpendicular angle. measure to make sure the lines are the same length on either side of the center point. make sure you’re happy with the size in relation to the cabinet.

4. use the t-square to draw the “tips” of the cross. make sure they’re all equal and centered.

5. swear and cuss when they’re not. fix if necessary. ask siri if you’re sizing up or down, she’s good at math and decimals. basically, the width of one “tip” should be one third of the entire line.

6. connect the ends, forming the cross. erase overlapping lines.

7. tape off. start with the easy lines, when  you get to the corners, overlap tape and carefully trim off excess with a ruler as your straight edge.

8. cover the rest of the white with a trash bag, spray paint. remove tape. be happy.

we can fit every product and then some in here! we don’t use a ton of products really, but it’s all in here! yay.

despite being jewish, i like easter (and christmas). but i don’t have kids. so as much fun as i would have painting easter eggs, in a house full of cats, i’m not bothering. doesn’t mean i don’t love beautiful easter eggs! here are some easter DIYs i’ve been loving.

(L to R) 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9

last time i posted about our kitchen, it looked really really bad. i don’t know who these people are that only need four cabinets, but i am not them people. as you can see from the photo, it looks like they went the cheap way with it and said it looked enough like a kitchen with the one wall cabinet and saved the money and left.

but here it is now! stuff everywhere!

in order to do shelving across the whole wall AND the corner and small wall on the side, we didn’t know how to go about it for cheap. we considered getting wood cut but the price and math and thickness worked out that we went with ikea lack shelves.

because of the weird lengths of our walls and ikeas three size options, we used three 74 3/4″ long lack shelves and six 11 3/4″ long lack shelves. meaning we had to use two tiny shelves instead of medium sized on the other wall.

here is the only process shot. it was a nightmare getting these to line up.

because the mounting hardware for the lack shelf is hidden in the back, it’s a matter of lining up the hardware versus where the shelf actually sits. so basically it’s too hard for the normal civilian. there was a lot of swearing happening.

where they all meet is good, it’s not perfect at all. i’m used to it now, but looking at these photos makes me cringe a tiny bit.

we were freaking out for the first few days that they’d just collapse so we put a couple of hopefully invisible brackets on the long shelves and painted them white.

and if there’s an earthquake, we’re fucked. i mean. when there’s an earthquake. ugh.

until then, i’m super happy.

yeah, those corners need some fixing.

also, where the hell do i put that gross microwave? i don’t feel like buying a new one. where do people put microwaves?!