Category Archives: The Apartment

City Life, Design/Living, Home, The Apartment

Kitchen things

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Ben ordered the new stove, and we’re thinking about hoods; scary and exciting stuff. Here’s what we’re thinking:

Hood: We need a recirculating hood because drilling through to the outside for ventilation will be a nightmare. Not sure what to do yet.

Stove: I saw the white enamel Viking in Domino at least a year ago and flagged the page, never imagining I might actually have a place to put it. Over the summer I saw it in person at the kitchen showroom where E worked. Stunning. Supposedly it is coming Friday! We will see if the plumber can actually detach our old stove in time, and come hook up the new one. Sadly, I leave for London Saturday night so I won’t get to play with the new stove much at all. (The photo is of the 36″ version–we’re getting the 30″, which will free up some space on that side of the room.)

I have ordered a bunch of prints over the last couple months (for all over the house), and when the last one arrives I will start thinking about how to frame them. I mocked these up at Frames by Mail… I’m thinking these first two, with some other stuff, would be good in the kitchen:
Amy Ross, Manshroom

Keep Calm, Tea

I adore Etsy artist Sk8ordiehard, and I’ve been eyeing her Fungi poster for many moons. But the bright colors definitely send things in a different direction than those mellow browns. Hmmmm.

I already have those first two prints (well, “Tea” is on its way), but they could live in other places in the Funghi poster seems like a better fit in the kitchen. What do you think?

City Life, Home, The Apartment

Table time?

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We have a beautiful dining table, a 1790 antique drop-leaf made of New England maple, but it seats four and we can’t patch together that and the kitchen table as easily in this apartment as we could in Hanover. Meanwhile, the table we’re using behind the couch (first thing you see when you walk in) is too small, and the dining table would be perfect in that spot, as a landing pad and grounding element. We need a dining table that can seat six, and hopefully eight in a squeeze, and yet won’t be too big for everyday. The dining room is almost square, with the door in and the door to the kitchen diagonally across from each other, so that a table in the middle of the room will force an annoying weave through the room. Oh well! I want a chandelier, and that needs to be centered, and the table needs to be centered under it. But it does mean I think we need a round table that expands to an oval, and this weekend we saw this one at Pottery Barn and finally were ready to bite the bullet. We’ve been looking and looking at antique stores, flea markets, every furniture store we pass…Nothing has been quite right. This one *is* solid wood, which we felt strongly about. And it’s nice and simple? The photo in the right finish shows it unexpanded, which will be the everyday size (45″):

>

Here it is expanded, with giant chairs and not my style of stuff surrounding it (why is there Sooooooo much stuff on it? Weird.):

Simple, right? Next up: Chairs. I like these from West Elm, but maybe we’ll get something really plain and upholstered, like these from CB2.

West Elm:

CB2:

And then there’s lighting. We saw some promising specimens at Restoration Hardware this weekend:


(Ok, that last one is more like something I’d want in the living room…)

But I think I’ll at least give it another couple months of looking for something vintage before I give in to the box stores on the lighting!

City Life, Home, The Apartment

Kitchen: One more pic

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Ok, we’re just missing cabinet pulls, lighting, art…The fun stuff! I ordered cabinet pulls but something mysterious has happened to the order so I think I need to try again.

I also need to do some more treatments of the counter to make sure it has a good thick finish on it. But at least we have cabinet doors! I also added a couple more recent living rooms pictures to the apartment Flickr set.

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Big thanks to Scrappy Girl and Another Shade of Gray, both of whom have given nice links to the blog in the last couple days! I’m touched and flattered; I love both of their blogs.

Xander, a world traveler who is currently living in Bangkok, writes about travels, food, and culture at his blog Primitive Culture. I am always fascinated by the gorgeous photos he posts of daily living around the world–he has a great eye and captures a lot of details that you don’t see in vacation pictures. Today he launched a new series, Bangkok Colors, which I think is going to be so inspirational. Today: Pink! All those pinks and spring greens are so preppy and the opposite of the autumnal colors that surround us here in Boston right now. Fun.

And finally, a random obsession. I loved love love white ceramic and porcelain stuff, and have been slowly building up a few pieces at home. In today’s House and Home section there was a fun slideshow about hits and busts at various home stores, and I was pleased to see the porcelain logs that I adore posted as a hit. The same shop, Koo de Kir, said a Jason Miller porcelain Hostess Cupcake was a total bust for them. But I love it (it’s down at the bottom)! So fun.


(photo from Koo de Kir)

Home, The Apartment

The Kitchen: Nearly there

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By the way, we are two cabinet doors (and some baseboards, and cabinet pulls, and more coats of oil on the counter) away from finished in the kitchen. I need stainless steel cleaner; that stuff gets fingerprints like crazy. I don’t understand why they haven’t worked that out yet–our SimpleHuman trash can is fingerprint resistant and always looks great. Well, dented (thanks, construction guys!) but print-free.

Can you guess where the missing doors go? Isn’t Ben’s solution subtle?

City Life, The Apartment

Renovation weekend

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Well, we’re nearly there! To recap, as of Saturday morning the kitchen looked like this:

At eight p.m. last night it looked like this (the bearded fellow is my brother Tom, who is overqualified for Ikea assembly):

This morning it looked like this (we like to clean up at night!):

After a very busy afternoon and bullying Tom into spending one more night here, we have this:

Why yes, it is a new color! And yes, I’m thrilled that I spent ages painting that blue “backsplash” yesterday, and then repainting most of it when the paint bubbled off the wallboard after I used painter’s tape on it.

Ben got a bee in his bonnet that we should paint before installing everything (which, to be fair, was something I’d been saying but then had figured was impossible. He single-handedly put at least two coats on, with a brush, this afternoon. The big counter and the sink aren’t really installed yet, we’d just placed them to cut the slot to fit the sink into the….never mind. The plumber and electrician are supposedly coming back tomorrow, at which point the sink will be installed and we will screw the countertop on. On Wednesday the dishwasher and fridge will come–the fridge came Friday but was dented so we have to try again. We built that box to slot the fridge into because slide-in fridges now come with stainless steel fronts but the regular shiny black pebbly fridge material on the sides. We wanted everything to be paler than that, so we bought these sheets from Ikea and built the case.

This weekend we’ve eaten falafel, sandwiches, bbq takeout, and pizza. I can’t wait to have a sink again–if this works, it will be one week from demo to completion!!!

Home, The Apartment

Renovation pics

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Ok, here are some photos of the in-progress kitchen… The cabinets and counters have arrived (courtesy of an incredibly rude and insulting outsourced delivery guy) and are in the dining room, along with the old fridge. (Anyone need a fridge?)

I added pictures to the Before and After photo set on Flickr, though I need to update that now that our living room looks totally different.

Meanwhile, here what it looked like until Wednesday morning if you looked into the kitchen through the butler’s pantry (well, the fridge wasn’t usually pulled out like that…):

Here it is now:

The sink (sporting a stylish map of where the electrician needs to install outlets):

R.I.P., gorgeous but enormous and impractical sink. Someday maybe I can have one like you again. If only you weren’t four feet wide. (Anyone need a huge cast iron double-bowl sink, with drain board?):

I’m now waiting for the new fridge to arrive, which is very exciting.

City Life, The Apartment

Renovation in progress!

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The lightening kitchen reno is underway. We picked the cabinets, appliances and counters a week and a half ago, and the plumber and electrician came yesterday, swapped around radiators, took out the huge sink, and roughed in the outlets! The fridge and cabinets/counters come tomorrow, as does my talented brother, who will be helping us install everything this weekend. Next week the plumber and electrician will come back and finish everything, and the dishwasher comes on Wednesday!!! The wall behind the counter is less damaged than I expected, though it’s pretty scary. I will shoot pics tonight.

City Life, Design/Living, Home, The Apartment

On the road

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I’m in NYC for a while, and hopefully will be able to cook soon–our accommodations do have a kitchen and internet access!

Meanwhile here are some before and not-quite-after pictures of the apartment. I haven’t even started to hang art, really arrange the furniture, etc. I’m struggling with how to balance out all of Ben’s very traditional furniture, along with the formal and traditional style of the apartment, with my more transitional style. I’m thinking once I get to lighting fixtures and rugs I will go sleek.

rmClick for the Flickr set!

City Life, Cooking techniques, The Apartment

A peek into the pantry

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Yesterday I managed to get the oven turned on! This is big news and a big relief. There is actually an active oven pilot light, I found out when I took apart the bottom of the oven. It just doesn’t do anything unless you turn the oven dial to 400 or so, get it lit, THEN turn it down. Of course!

Last night we spent the evening wandering the aisles of the Container Store rather despairingly, and brought home a large number of items aimed at imposing order on the pantry. The kitchen doesn’t have a single cupboard or counter–not one–but there is a lovely butler’s pantry and a regular pantry right off the kitchen. I had heaved everything out of boxes and onto the shelves, and it looked pretty awful. I also had no way to organize all the sort of gadgets you’d normally keep in a drawer, like peelers and graters and measuring cups, since I don’t have any drawers.

Here are the results:

Before:

b

After:

a

I promise the difference is more striking in person.

Another view, since I’m pleased with my creativity in….shelf organizer selection:

Before:

b

After:

a

Note the in/out box trays used for gadgets in the lower left. It’s hard to see the desk-top cd box holding various boxes (brown sugar, corn starch). I’m very pleased with the different extra shelf thingies we got–smaller ones for the top shelf (there is a lot of space above the top built-in shelf; I may eventually put in another shelf or two for long-term storage) and a big one to use on the floor under the bottom shelf. I also used a big one on the lowest shelf, which is quite large. And the cleverest gadget I found was the thing that clips onto a shelf above it and gives you a place for sheet pans or other flat wide things. At last, I won’t have to unload every single other pan I own to get to the quarter sheet.

In case you think I’ve stopped cooking….you’re almost right. Hmm. I did make a nice pasta dish the other night, and Ben’s family was in town this weekend so we had a barbecue. I made caprese for that, look!

Mediocre tomatoes, sadly–I was hoping they’d be good but they let me down. That’s a BIG letdown, since caprese is only worth it with great tomatoes and great cheese. Luckily the mozzarella, a Vermont-made one, was extremely tasty.

t

I drizzled it with a dressing I made very quickly by pureeing a bunch of basil with olive oil, salt, and a dab of balsamic vinegar.

t

I want to try again with awesome heirloom tomatoes!

Coming soon: A whole slide show of house before and afters! Also a very tasty lunch.