Dreams Kinda Realized: The new Coffee Table and the Craigslist Roller Coaster

So we didn't end up building our dream coffee table, but we did get an awesome new coffee table.  My super talented cousin had a homemade bench lying around that he added a deck to, and then I waxed the new pieces, and now we have a cute little interim coffee table.  Check it out.

The hard part right now is getting the wicker chest off our hands.  I've had several bites on Craigslist, but people keep standing me up!  I've even talked to people on the phone several times, where they seemed very trustworthy and friendly.  We set up times (this has happened twice so far), and I changed my schedule to make sure I was home, and they simply never showed.  No call, no nothing!  I called and left messages on both their machines, and nothing.  And now I have this guy offering to send me a money order on the chest if I "reserve" it for him, but he doesn't know when he can pick it up, which is super sketchy.  Here it is, in all of its antique, wickery loveliness.

Until we sell it, we're using it at the foot of the bed to store comforters.  We did have another Craigslist success a few days ago, however!  I posted our old Sony television for $50, and it sold immediately.  It was a quality TV, but BIG, like heavier than my whole couch, and deep enough to stick obtrusively into the middle of our tiny living area.  S.O. originally got it from a friend, who picked it up for free from his family's trailer park when the original owners upgraded to a flat screen.  And now it's our turn to upgrade!  We're going to Costco tomorrow to make the big purchase.  Until then, it's been pretty relaxing to be TV-less for a few days, even though it was over the New Year.  Who needs Dick Clark to ring in 2011 when you have homemade pizza and good company?

Dreaming Big: New Coffee Table

S.O. and I have been vaguely discussing the idea of a new coffee table.  His problem: the antique wicker chest that we are using currently is too high, and hurts his knees when he puts his feet up.  My problem: the antique wicker chest that we are currently using is seriously not my style.

I would prefer something simple and elegant and mid-century.

Like this one, from Door Sixteen	Or this one, from CB2
Or this one, from...ummm...Google Images

But the antique wicker chest does have one big advantage over these minimalist leggy lovelies...STORAGE.  Sigh, the eternal quest for storage in the studio apartment.  We give a pile away to Goodwill at least once a month, and yet our volume of stuff just continues to grow.  My S.O.'s REI addiction is not helpful, and neither is my inability to get rid of books.  But anyhow, let's not play the blame game here. Our new coffee table needs to at least have a nice second shelf, like this Danish one.

Why are Danish things so awesome?

We're thinking that the most economical option, and the one that will best suit or various tastes will be to go DIY on this one.  My cousin, a talented carpenter on his off time, generously offered to let us use some of his extra wood.  S.O. suggested that we do something with slats, because most of the wood my cousin has is 2x4s, and apparently this might lend itself to a slatty type of table.

 S.O. is excited about this idea because it makes the table stronger.  Apparenlty bowling alleys orient the wood on the lanes sideways like this in order to protect it from the poundage of thousands of poorly thrown bowling balls.  I like this idea because it reminds me of those benches that they always have in museums, that I am totally obsessed with.  This one is actually called, "The Museum bench."

"The Museum Bench."  Super strong, like a bowling alley.  Built to sustain hundreds of butts per day.

If we built a table top like that one, we could put it on some cheap but stylish IKEA legs like these and VOILA.

We're still working on how to incorporate a little storage into the design.  It can be done.  Check this out from 54Dean.  Slats, storage, modern, leggy.  The dream.  It would take a set of tools and a level of craftsmanship far beyond what we have available to put something like this together.

The dream.

Ours will still be awesome though.  I'd like to stain it to show off the wood. I love the color of this wood on a DIY desk from Manhattan Nest.

I'm obsessed with this desk from made by Daniel, a college student who writes a blog at manhattan-nest.com

Or this bench, made from an old fence.

Anyhow, I'll keep the blog updated about our awesome future slatted coffee table.  Here's a couple of extra photos for inspiration.

Co-habitation in a studio: Fight noise with white noise

Poster from the Fight Noise with Noise campaign by artist Michael Horowitz.

My little desk is about four feet from our over-sized television, and it is not easy to do academic writing when Snooki and The Situation are screaming at each other in the background.  Sure I have an office on campus, but why would I want to lug myself up there every day when I have a workspace right here, 15 feet from my bed and 20 feet from my refrigerator?

Color block headphones by
Fred Flare.  Way cooler looking than
the ones my boyfriend bought.

My boyfriend recently purchased a pair of expensive noise-reducing headphones on the internet for a very good price, and I tried them out.  All they did was block out the white noise from the street, and make the voices of the people on the television easier to understand!  In desperation I tried to drown out the noise with iTunes, but I just can't think straight when I'm listening to music.

Enter SimplyNoise, my new best friend.  It's a free web app that plays either white noise, pink noise or brown noise at a volume of your choosing.  It will even oscillate the level for you, which is surprisingly soothing.  In case you were wondering (I was), the colors correspond to sound frequency profiles.  Just like with color, lower frequencies correspond to reds and pinks, and higher frequencies to blues and violets.  White noise (like color), is approximately the same levels of all frequencies.  It's all about the power spectrum!  Yay for fourier transforms!

Check out SimplyNoise at www.simplynoise.com.  They also sell iPod and iPhone apps.

My collection of clutter orphanages.

I'm all about "a place for everything and everything in its place." So much so, in fact, that I have trouble purchasing things if I cannot imagine exactly where they will go, even if there is an obvious need. Like, my boyfriend really wants to buy a toaster, but I can't imagine where we would put a toaster. So we continue to make toast on the cast iron skillet, because I stubbornly refuse to buy an appliance without first establishing a storage solution for it.

Anyhow, there are a lot of things that appear all over a studio apartment that simply don't have a "place" of their own. Keys, hair ties, lighters, watches, etc. So I've started putting containers everywhere to catch this stuff, and its been fairly successful. I think of them as clutter orphanages, for stuff that has no "place" of its own.

There's the table by the door clutter orphanage.

And the random snacks clutter orphanage.

This is my bedside table clutter orphanage.

And this is my desktop clutter orphanage.

And of course the toilet clutter orphanage.

Book Piles: You call it "mess," I call it "design."

Graduate student + tiny rented studio + inability to get rid of books = a lot of books, with not a lot of places to put them. Sure I've got some Ikea bookshelves (who doesn't?), but they are packed to the brim, and I don't want to drill too many holes in my rented walls.  Security deposit, you will be mine again!!!!!

So it happens like this. I put down a book. Then when I have another book, and I want to put it down, I end up putting it on the other book because it's convenient. This happens a few times, and all of a sudden a book pile has grown in the corner of the room like some kind of fungus.

BUT is the book pile really a bad thing?  Apparently piled up books is becoming something of a design trend. Check out the artful book piles at the top of this post.  And for those who have trouble stacking on their own, there are even expensive bookshelves that make it look like your books are stacked even though they are actually shelved.  This is the "Sapien Bookcase," by Bruno Rainaldi.

So I say go for it with the book stacking.  Not only do they make you look like you're exceptionally well-read (or a total show-off), they can even stand in as "functional furniture," like with these nightstands, from apartment therapy.

In fact, who needs furniture, why not build your whole apartment out of stacks of books?

Or not.  Anyhow, I think sometimes it looks nice to have a few well placed stacks of books.  And it certainly is convenient, as it's fast (where DOES the time go in graduate school??) and does not require purchasing bookshelves or drilling of any kind.   For those of us who lust after the ultimate Beauty & The Beast library, maybe it even gives our crowded and computer dominated doctoral existence a little old-fashioned luster.

5 Simple Ways to Make Your Tiny Apartment Classier without Purchasing Anything

1. Put a fitted sheet on your box-spring. As a graduate student, it's unlikely that you have a real piece of bedroom furniture. Cover up the naked box-spring with a spare fitted sheet, and it's like you have an instant bed!
2. Make the bed, kind of. I know you're not going to believe me on this one. My boyfriend thinks making the bed is a big fat waste of 1.5 minutes of time. But I'm not talking about hospital corners here. Just re-spreading the duvet when you get up in the morning can make a HUGE difference in how your room looks, especially if you live in a studio like I do. This bed is the first thing you see when you walk into my apartment. Also, it provides sitting space. Nobody wants to sit on your crumply sheets.
   
   
   
3. Organize the cables at your desk. I will probably do a post entirely on this subject, because it thrills me to no end. A cluttered work space is not conducive to good graduate work, and it makes your space look like an undergraduate dorm room. You are a graduate student, so you don't have to live in a dorm anymore. No need to buy anything fancy, masking tape or those little ties from bread bags will do. My personal favorite re-use cable organizer is the binder clip.
   
   
   
4. Take the posters down. Leave them for the undergrads. Frames are great, if you've got them, but if not, get creative. If you aren't allowed to hammer and nail, go with little postcards artfully arranged, like Glitter-and-Spandex has in her apartment. Or hang a string clothesline across the room and clip photos or postcards to it. The possibilities are endless.
5. Use throw pillows and blankets on boring furniture. I made most of my pillows in one of my random fits of craftiness, but my family also had a closet full of them. Check out how classy my six dollar flea market chair looks with the addition of a spare pillow.
   
   
   

My So-Called Garden

This is my "garden." If you can call three concrete steps and a rectangle of dirt about 2 feet by 5 feet a garden. I love it because it gives my little gas-station adjacent apartment a false sense of permanence and seriousness. There are some herbs (rosemary, basil), and an old Kahlua bottle that I'm rather fond of because it's a little man. That orange flower is lantana, which I recently learned my uncle has a violent aversion too, after we saw some in Santa Barbara and he went off for like five minutes about how much he hates lantana. But I like it.

I got those little containers for fifty cents each at my favorite thrift store, and put some succulents in them, and I'm in love with the result. I've also got some cilantro there on the bottom right, which my boyfriend and I put in basically everything we make (I swear it tastes like pure freshness!!!!!) I found that red lantern at a garage sale for a dollar, and the cup hook that it is hanging on I actually found buried deep in the dirt when I first planted the "garden." Brush that shit off, screw it into the wood, and voila! Instant atmosphere. Below I have some some aloe, strawberries and a fuchsia in an old wheelbarrow, also a garage sale purchase.

The major problem with my garden, other than its size, is that I travel. Ah, the life of a graduate student, always jetting off to exotic locales. So a lot of what I planted last year didn't make it through the summer. But my euphorbia, a gopher proof plant with awesome structural leaves and big bushy flowers, went CRAZY being abandoned. So as soon as I got home I planted more of it. The old one is the big sage-colored bushy thing below. The new one is a darker, purple color. I put it in on the right side of the dirt bed, but my camera ran out of batteries before I could photograph it.

In my dreams I have a big garden with lots of freshly grown vegetables, some citrus trees and a chicken or two. Maybe a goat, I don't know. A girl can dream. But until then, I have my euphorbia and my lantana, and my concrete steps.