This town is kind of like a ghost town

Hey readers, I know it's been a while since I've been on here. Suffice to say life happened. Things will be pretty light here because my new gig requires 12-hour days, but it's only until the end of the month.

So here's the good news:
I've got a mission. I want to get the apartment ready to compete in the Apartment Therapy small, cool contest. Seeing as I've got only 272 square feet, I'm comfortably under their smallest category (Teeny Tiny)'s threshold of 400 sqft. And I've done pretty good work with the space. But there's more to be done.

Bathroom:
Hang some sort of art print. The room needs one more pop of color.
Consider getting matching towels.

This one should be super easy. I'll tackle this first so I can keep the momentum going into...

The Main room:
Hang art. I've got some old posters that I can hang up, and I can't wait to show you.
Refinish dining chairs. Sell other set of chairs. Maybe get new ones?
Consider painting the folding chair some sort of fun color.
Consider making a cover for the heater that I refuse to use. This is Southern California, it's always too warm for a heater.

This one also has some really easy parts, but a couple more intensive projects. But when all is said and done, those chairs will be nice if I do good work. That hopefully will be the push I need to tackle..

The Kitchen:
Add some accessories to the bar.
Something else pretty big.

Yeah, the kitchen is awful. I'm not sure whether it's the industrial beige cabinets, the faux granite counters, or both of those things together, but I need something to bring it to life. Temporary wallpaper? Cover the cabinets with something lighter? I'm leaning that route, but I'm flummoxed. I'll consider any project that doesn't involve a sledgehammer.

So, now that I've publicly said these plans, I'm going to feel really silly if I don't come through on them. But let the games begin!

Quick update

Much as I enjoy making fun of design trends and motifs I think are a little bit weird, I actually have an apartment and career to consider.

Exciting news #1 I purchased a vintage poster for the apartment. Should arrive soon. My pop art was kind of lonely all by itself.

Exciting news #2 I found some leftover initiative in the back of the fridge and I looked into a design-based masters program. Their head of admissions liked what I had to say. It's in interior architecture, which is like actual architecture divided by knowing how to build a building. So, I can make a building, but only the inside parts. On the other hand, I'm told one of the million dollar designers only hires from this program. Nothing's set in stone.

If looks could kill

Anytime they suspected their dinner guests would overstay their welcome, they prepared in advance by wheeling out the minotaurette statue. By the time the dessert course came out, even the most stout-hearted guest would check their watch and anxiously eye the door. No-one was immune to the steely gaze of the minotaurette.

Image lovingly stolen from Desire to Inspire

Being green is not hard. Really.

Apartment Therapy recently trumpeted green as a great way for people in the northern hemisphere to keep that sense of spring and summer alive into the colder months. Some of the suggestions were less successful than the others. Without further ado, I present a little version of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

The Good:
The character and aged patina of the cabinet plays well against the white walls, while the more abstracted floral motif in the wall hanging is echoed in the plants on top of the cabinet.

The Bad:
The green carpet and very light and clean feeling office furniture keeps this feeling very 60s. But not in the cool retro kind of 60s, more like the 'isn't it about time they renovated?' 60s. Not a fan of the green carpets.

The Ugly:

If the green carpets were the early, business-like, Mad Men 60s, these walls are the 1967 Summer of Love long hair kind of 60s. And it's a bad trip, baby.

And now a beautiful moot point

One upside about living alone in a very small apartment in a temperate climate zone is that my energy bills tend to be pretty low. My only guilty pleasure is that I enjoy long, hot showers. I'm sorry planet. I'll make it up to you somehow.

If, however I didn't have all those advantages, I'd want to have a way to keep the bills low, the planet from becoming all hellish and apocalyptic, and most of all, I want it to look pretty. This is where Nest comes in.

Nest is like that beige box that's connected to the heating and cooling in your space, except they made it look pretty. One dial, a screen and some graphics. It's straight out of the Dieter Rams school of design. Mainly because it's been designed partially by the man behind the iPod.

Here it is in action, if you like the youtube.

The best part is it's a learning robot. It has either an advanced computer algorithm, or straight up magic that learns when you do and do not use the heating/cooling system and it turns the dial for you. It's like Skynet, but instead of being evil, it keeps you warm when it's cold out, and cool when its hot out. I'm totally installing one of these in my future hypothetical house, once I get things like money.

Image lovingly stolen from Nest.

Windows, vista

A bit of backstory: When I toured the building, I had the option of two apartments: one in the middle of the building with one window in the main room, and one at the back of the building with two. Not wanting to lose out on the building with the shortest commute, I decided to put a claim down on the one I thought was less desirable that nobody else with better credit would beat me to. I miss windows. The one window doesn't provide all that much ambient light. In that vein, let's look at this inspirational image, lovingly stolen from Design Milk

In which I accept that I am a bad housekeeper

Ideas? loads of them. First steps towards those inroads? Usually pretty good.

Follow-through? Not so much. For a case study on my procrastination, consider my Case Study cabinet.

As seen on Apartment Therapy!

I purchased this because I decided what my apartment really needed was a little more of a work surface in the kitchen. Plus I did some measurements and it was going to fit well in the kitchen. It's where my recipe books and (eventually) big ol' Kitchenaid mixer will go.

The problem? One bolt was missing.

The lovely folks at Modernica said they would provide a replacement part. Keep in mind that I'm not the original owner, and they still offered me the missing part. That's customer service.

The point of this story is that I had this email in my inbox telling me to come pick up the replacement screw for probably 2 months. I picked the screw up today. Has anyone else ever let a small task like this go undone for a long time? Or are y'all the sort of get it done now types?