apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Okay - I'm back. After eleven days of being away (in San Francisco, where I might note Valencia Street has sprouted quite a few design shops which I unfortunately did not have time to visit).

I'm feeling really behind (having missed almost two weeks) and am trying to decide whether to try to start from where I was at the end of week 2, or just skip ahead to week 4.

Hmmmmmmm.

Cool! Springer-Verlag math books in the first picture.

I can't believe I made the Cure post again with a pic, teehee!!!! GO HOCHELAGA!

Nice to have you back Betsbillabong :)

I have so much work to do this week-end - but I'm actually looking forward to it. It's a good thing it's a Holiday weekend here! I really need the extra day.

Jus so you know, I've been bloging the Cure on my blog at www.toctoctocentrez.com but it's in French. Mais oui!

I'm being a bad curee: I've had to drop the Deep Treatment for a while and concentrate on just the study and kitchen. There's just too much else going on in my life right now, and since I'm totally Type A anyhow I maintain a rolling deep treatment in our apartment that's more or less like the AT deep treatment, so I don't feel too bad about it.

Those two rooms are coming together nicely, though. We've got all our curtains and rods together, and can hopefully put them up next week. We've decided on a color for the kitchen accent wall and are debating between two beautiful deep greens for the study walls. (There's more over at the blog if you're interested.)

The only major thing we're still really stuck on is a new desk for my husband. He needs lots of space, preferably an L-shaped desk, because he works on computers; he's partial to glass; and he has very exacting requirements for height and keyboard tray width. He has found a couple of wooden desks he likes, but they're all too short (and he's not all that tall!), so we're back to glass, but just can't find the perfect desk. Budget's $250 max for that item (gotta love student loan and medical debts), so we're a bit frustrated with that right now.

Pearlandopal you're not a bad curee, you're just as busy as students can be... keep on, I'm sure you're doing great.. and altough I do not have a solution for the desk, I'm sure you'll find something.

I'm doing good but I still need to find a phone table or something to put it on (it's been on the floor for a while..) But this is my goal for the weekend.

Eve, nice to see I'm not the only québécoise (je suis à Québec par contre).

Salut Emmm, hey, I'm originally from Québec City - I moved to Montreal in '93! :)

I was looking into my office's walk-in closet (thinking about the work that awaits next week) and I just realized I have this cool retro-modern lamp my grand-maman gave last Spring, I'm going to put it up in my linving room.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/allabouteve/1492957977/

Eve! You're in Montreal! I never guessed. Why should it matter you're Canadian too? It shouldn't, but I'm pleased.

Have a grin on my face due to the presence of the math books. I grew up with shelves of those and the green ones. My dad is a mathematician.

pearlandopal - please tell us about your "rolling deep treatment." I aspire to that (although I may be too lazy), since doing a periodic deep cleaning takes so much time.

The first picture makes me want to set up a little shrine to Springer Verlag in my office. But it would just encourage my co-workers to rifle through them for information, ignoring the rest of the lovely display.

*sharp intake of air*

woah, i can't believe my picture is posted! uh oh...i submitted my photos for the color contest- is this kosher? i can remove my photos from the flickr pool. i didn't realize that it was just for the cure people. (though i guess you could say that these past 6 months have been about bringing order to my place, much inspired by the book...though i haven't been going through a systematic process).

and yay for math books! my husband is getting his phd in math and he has several shelves full of yellow (and other color) math books.

regarding the poll...

when my husband and i were first designing our place (we're newlyweds), we had so many conversations about what constitutes a good balance between the feminine and masculine. my dream home would look like it came out of an anthropologie catalog whereas he is more west elm. it's pretty difficult finding a happy medium.

One little thing about the poll -- you missed out the choice "Don't have a partner"... While I don't have someone to disagree (or support) my choices, I also don't have someone to grab the other end of the table when I'm trying out new furniture arrangements.

Those landing strip pics are great!

That would be "...to disagree with, or to support, my choices". It's little wonder people are sometimes surprised to learn that I majored in English in college. hmmm.

I've just been reading the October issue of Canadian House and Home, and I found some images I'd like to share...

This weekend I had to declare a moratorium on Cure spending (or any extraneous spending, for that matter -- see http://serenityathome.blogspot.com for details) but that doesn't stop me from dreaming (and when you dream, dream BIG).

Dream along with me...

This one is a little tricky, but click on "catalogue" and as the moving images go by, watch for "Merrick". I'd love to sit tucked into one of those curvy bits, and read and relax... (not practical, but who says dreams have to be about practicality?)

http://www.montauksofa.com

Now a couple of places to *really* dream...

http://www.drexelheritage.com/collection/item_images.asp?id=100-311&inum=5

http://www.mariatomas.com/

And finally, a dining table. (None of this furniture remotely resembles what I currently own... maybe that should tell me something?)

http://www.elte.com/

Well, the kitchen work was pretty intense, the hallway was much less work, and the living room is somewhere in between. My Outbox has grown so tall and cumbersome that it has become a danger to my little boy. We will be removing some tomorrow or Tuesday to go to Salvation Army, so that will bring it down a notch.

It's been harder to get work done the past two weeks because of weekend travel and getting sick, but I am happy with the progress I have made.

I also took a little longer to plan my post-cure party. We will be having a Soup Party. I'll cook up some soups and bake bread, and we will have friends and family over. Only problem is that my guest list is too big for the space we have (even our cured space), so I need to whittle that down and make up the invites. I'm really looking forward to having a party.

Phoneill--maybe re-think the menu a bit. Soup is easy to fix, not so easy to eat. You guests will need tables (pretty hard to eat soup from your lap)...maybe if you had a lovely assortment of hors d'ourvres (did I spell that right? It doesn't look right and the dictionary is boxed up) and a few great toppings for your bread, you could accomodate more people. Another idea is to have an open house type deal where you invite the first 20 at 1pm and the second 20 at 2pm. Something like that. Just a thought.

Yardsale01, again let me say I love the beginnings of your room...and I still want to know what those strips are on the floor...That huge beautiful window is begging for curtains...what if you did an L-shaped track of curtains that covered the windows and served as a divider for the bedroom...

J fer Rose...l love you landing strip...wonderfully minimal...

Greengelato, that is a wonderful shot...that blue is amazing (did we ever find out what the color is?) and you all know I'm a sucker for yellow...I love that the books (actually used not props) become a source of color...fantastic...

@Pixie - it's less of a system than just being completely anal retentive, I think. *lol* Basically, at any given time I have some sort of organizing, or sorting, or decorating activity going on. I'm a huge packrat, so I try to balance that out by going through an area - say, craft supplies - a couple of times a year and culling out anything that I haven't used in a long time or need to get rid of for whatever reasons.

I don't have that many geographically close friends, so what I've been doing for years is collecting everything I want to get rid of and sorting it into "lots." Friends can claim those lots and they reimburse me for shipping: it's like a big grab bag for them, and it gets stuff the heck out of my apartment. It works pretty well. Right now I have a kitchen, office supply, craft supply, and gaming [an old Playstation I and some controllers] packed up and ready to go out the door. It's more personal than giving it to the Salvation Army, and I know for sure that people want the things, since they've claimed them.

jess2nola- thank! yes, these books are definitely used. it's actually very odd for me to think of these books serving an artistic purpose. we have yellow books spilling all over the place...and that dresser is rarely as neat as it is in the picture. hee hee.

and i'll have to get back to you guys on the color. i think it had some kind of body of water in the name.

What with only five hours a week to devote to special projects – at least according to the organizer who took up four of those hours – I didn’t have too much time this week left over to do all that much.

But I’m very impressed by (and jealous of) everything everyone else has accomplished.

I got frames this weekend from IKEA! And I finally picked out what "prints" (pages from some Cavallini & Co. vintage travel poster calendars) to put in them.

I posted pictures here:
http://www.poweredbytofu.com/2007/10/07/apartment-therapy-week-4-recap/

and here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/poweredbytofu/

Thanks for the compliments on my landing strip! The red stripe on my wall has been there for years, but I just added the mail sorting strip. Every day when I walk in I'm so excited to see it-- it was such like to find something that matches so well!

Checking in: I finished my living room. Since I keep up pretty well with that room, there wasn't much to do in the way of fall cleaning other than washing the windows. I'm still chipping away at the kitchen and hope to have it done this weekend (today's a holiday!), but if not, I'll continue to chip away as I keep up with each chapter of the Cure. I may also start weeding through my files to get started on this week's Cure chapter, since I'll be out of town next weekend. My office alcove won't take long. The two biggies for me of everything in the Cure are the kitchen and the bedroom - those two rooms are where all the stuff is. When I did the Cure the first time around, I really cleared out whatever problems and clutter there were in all the other areas, and those only need a little maintenance during each Cure.

Wow -- not only am I also from Montreal, I live in Hochelaga, too! I'm always happy to see other montrealers online, it feels like a secret society or something.

I haven't made a whole lot of progress on remedying the music room, but we did do some sorting/outboxing over the weekend. I'm hoping to finish most of the sorting this coming weekend so that we can hop on the storage-buying train.

Here's a question for you all: i'm not sure what color to paint the room. We have some neat old show posters (Johnny Cash, Howlin' Wolf, others) that I'd like to hang up, but the colors are quite bright-- primary yellow, red, and black. I'd like to paint with a warm neutral or medium brown, but I'm concerned that it would make the posters look gross. What do you think? Is there a neutral that looks good with bright yellow?

Oh, and JonathanB, how did it go with the organizer?

Gray lady -- look for a beige or brown that leans toward "golden" rather than toward gray or toward that pinky cocoa color you sometimes see. (Think "tan," not "taupe.") Because that kind of neutral shares a base tone with bright yellow, they should get along fine.

I feel sore from cleaning and hauling things out of my LR this weekend. Still not done, but it's on its way. I've loaded some new pics

Thanks, Wende!

gray lady -- I've put some things he said into play immediately and others I'm tracking -- seeing if the amount of time he estimated is accurate -- so far it's been close enough. It has made me rethink a number of time spending habits I have that may not add up to my advantage.

In terms of the actual books and files, which started it all, I now have a plan of attack. It will probably take longer than I would have hoped, but as long as I can see regular progress, I don't have a problem with that. Although he reacted more strongly to the stacks of books, I'm tackling the files first.

I'll keep everyone posted as this goes on.

Sort of off topic, gray lady, but are you related to The New York Times?

I admit I've been lax this week. Lots of work, a few houseguests, and I had reorganized my living room only a week before the Cure began officially, so there wasn't much to be done. Or at least I thought there wasn't.

We really need to get to painting though. And the bedroom. Those are the next two tasks.

JonathanB-- Nope. Should I be?

At'ers, I have a "poetry in motion" poster that I cannot find a proper frame for (I've already check the MTA store website). It's an odd size - 11X28. Any suggestions on places that to find custom frames downtown?

thanks.

My roommates don't understand why I couldn't live with the bathroom's ugly peeling paint and hideous over-the-toilet storage. I finally got permission from the landlord to paint and did it yesterday. It's now a lovely shade of blue. Next step: finding a cabinet to hang over the toilet to replace the plastic storage unit that was there.

I've been so busy curing, I've only just had a chance to properly catch up with what everyone is doing. And everyone is doing so well - a big cheer for everyone (with an extra sympathetic grimace to JonathanB for his 'five hours' discovery).

Last week, I got all the 'furniture' side of my kitchen sorted - painted the chairs, stained the table and painted / fitted out the secret clothes-drying radiator cupboard. I'm especially pleased with the table and chairs and have spent some merry hours this afternoon planning table settings, etc.

The floor tiles arrived this morning, just as I'd finished and invoiced for the contract that's paying for them. Good psychological timing! This week, I'll be painting the ceilings and walls. It's still all systems go here.

gray lady is or was a nickname for The New York Times.

Hehehe Faksara - nous sommes partout! ;) I'm on Ontario street, at the old Biscuiterie Viau that just got turned onto condo and loft units. But I lived on Pie-Ix near the Stadium for 8 years before that, so yay Hochelaga!

As for week four jobs, I still need to take care of the home theatre hookup and to clean the couch. I was way too busy... But hey, the night is still young!

I finally managed to find a buyer for the kitchen island (thanks to a neighbour - it's getting picked up next week) and did cook a lot and have some friends over. My loft is starting to feel like home. :)

I'm in agreement with mrk. Springer-Verlag!

sydney alexis --

thank you.

gray lady - I was going to say a "warm gray" but after reading wende's suggestions I feel completely off... whichever you choose, bring home a bunch of paint cards and hold them up to all the posters (btw- those posters sound really neat, can't wait to see them when you're all finished!)

The curtains are finished!!! and I managed to purge three sacks of clothes from my closet...

See pics here: http://blackwhiteyellow.blogspot.com/2007/10/week-4-accomplishements.html

Any suggestions on your favorite brand-free bottles for the shower...

AmandaC -- Have another cup of tea and feel "on" -- warm gray would also work. (I'm having one of those "What was my reasoning in NOT thinking of that?" moments, that's how ON it is.)