Room and Board Arrives!

Room and Board has arrived! We waited (an optional) eight weeks for our dining chairs, new coffee table, and living room console shipment.  I could have gotten the chairs and coffee table within a few days, but breaking up the order would have been an extra $40 in shipping, so thrifty [me] chose to wait it out.

I'm pleased to report that Room and Board customer service was so professional, and the delivery was like watching something in fast forward, these folks can move.

This is what we got!

Peyton Chair

Tyne Natural Steel Cocktail Table

And a 'Woodwind Cabinet', not pictured, because it was made to order.

Dining chairs! We got six, but since we don't have the new table yet, only four fit.

Over to the right you'll see evidence of our last coffee table and a hint of the new, made to order, black cabinet.

I apologize for this picture being the suck, but I was having a lazyfest and didn't want to do a whole photo shoot with the black cabinet in bad lighting.  Still, you get the gist, this is the black cabinet, which even in bad lighting is so much better than the hight extension for the Billy Bookcase from Ikea, which the T.V. currently calls home.

We're considering getting rid of the speakers and subwoofer to cut down on the mass of non-essentials in our lives.  We're also considering getting rid of the T.V. in this room, and football is making me want to do that sooner, and football is making Aaron want to do that never.  We do have another T.V. in the mancave, so he can watch football in there, but he likes to have it on everywhere.  Ug.  In other news I just found out that football does not in October, but ends four months after October, at which point Aaron will emerge from a drone-like state, and notice things like dining room chairs and coffee tables.

Speaking of coffee tables, here she is!

So in love, favorite thing of everything we got.  I've wanted this forever, if you'll remember the living room rendering I made months ago, I used this coffee table with a marble top.

I ordered it with a glass top because I wanted to be able to see our delicious rug, and because it was three times less expensive.  It's cool we did so much like the rendering; I got the couch, in a different color, same coffee table, different top, and a similar rug.  Soon to come, new and larger artwork!

I'll reveal my one misgiving about all the purchases.  I'm torn about the color of the dining room chairs.

All the other colors in the living room are so 'clean' and these are a mixed tone of gray and brown, which I thought would go well since the other colors in the room are gray and brown, but ug I don't know.  What do you think?

Aaron thinks they're great, but he is colorblind, so his opinion is less credible.  Readers, thoughts?

First Apartment

While cruising myself on Facebook tonight, I came across a historical gem, pictures of my first New York apartment.

I'm generalizing here, but first New York apartments are typically legend in the timeline of your New York apartments.  And by legend, I mean, it's so small it someone made a video for people who live elsewhere.  On top of being small, it also has mice, who have the power to digest poison as if it were Pinkberry, mmm.

Mine was classically pint sized, bustling with an unwelcome animal farm of rodents, and a shocking lack of hot water, at regular intervals.  With so much that seemed out of my control, I turned to decorating as a refuge, so at base, the place would look nice.

Welcome to 50 Carmine St.

A colleague at work once told me that she bought a couch on Craigslist, used it for two years, and listed it back on Craigslist at a higher price.  It sold.  I was amazed.  So, I bought that couch on Craigslist (Jennifer Leather), for $300, and two years later, I sold it for $350.  Oh, score.

Aaron and I bought the dining room table, coffee table, and end tables at an unfinished wood furniture store in Massachusetts called Mill Stores.  I didn't know unfinished wood furniture stores were a thing, but it turns out that in parts of the country where people have barns, people like to assemble and stain their own furniture.  I didn't have a barn, I had a 550 sq. ft. apartment, but close enough.  We assembled and stained everything ourselves.  We'll pause now for a five second lesson in staining.  Use a rag, not that foam brush thing, because it squirts and stain does not come out of anything, including human skin.

All the stained furniture ended up being the showcase of the apartment.  I also loved telling people I had stained it myself.  Also fun, the unfinished wood furniture is inexpensive, on the same level as Ikea,  so it is perfect for those on a budget who are looking to break up the we live in an Ikea showroom look.

We used saucers from tea cups as coasters for the coffee table.

Pillows were from Ikea.

I actually lit the art, so adorable.

Also, land before time flatscreens.

This was my bedroom door.  I have a picture(s) of the bedroom somewhere but they'll be for another night's random discovery.

I still have all the art from the old apartment in our storage locker, and we're still figuring out how much will creep back into our current place.  Were there any pieces you loved?

What did you think of the first apartment? What was your first apartment like? Any horror stories you would like to share?

a minimalist makeover

One Brooklyn Modern got a little fall makeover this morning!

Grab your coat, we're going for a walk down memory lane...

This was the first (and only) design of the blog.  It was acceptable in scores of modern and minimalist, but  in this new iteration, I thought we could take it further.

The first thing I did was remove all the shadows on the Simple Template from Blogger, aiming for a cleaner look.  It took some digging and some coding (ah!) to accomplish this, which I did all by myself, without the help of computer engineer husband (who was not impressed enough, Aaron).  I used this tutorial for help.

Next up, it was time to revamp the header.  Um, lets lose some weight.  I stuck with Helvetica as the font but went for all lower-case and lighter shades of gray.  I then changed all the other editable colors in the Blogger advanced template, un-bolded everything, and added hints of blue, green and yellow for some signs of life.  I also widened the whole blog to give the horizontal images some breathing room.

Lastly, I thought the Facebook and Pinterest links were a combination of bold and confusing, so I just moved them up top to the link section.  I get a lot of questions about if we have a Facebook page (yes we do, it is here), so that should have tipped me off that the previous "Like Us" with our fan count wasn't actually making it clear you were liking a Facebook page and subscribing to updates in your newsfeed.

I'm working on a better Facebook integration, to be released soon.  It will eventually work that when you 'like' this blog, "One Brooklyn Modern" will show up in your likes and interests on Facebook.  Cool!

Other than that, I trimmed back our 'recommended reading' list, which will expand selectively, and I also trimmed the labels section.  Oh, and I added a 'Welcome' note for all the newbies, which I thought looked friendly.  Hugs for newbies.

I hope you enjoy the new look! What do you think?

The Altar of Stolmen

I want you to imagine being in a rural town in France.  You're strolling along a meandering path, when you hear voices in the distance.  You hear, singing.  A choir.  You finally come upon a church, and the melody crescendos.  You fling open the doors to the church and see this!

::choir sings hallelujah::

Our incredibly organized hallway closet with all-new Ikea Stolmen system! It's the new altar in the house.  Even Aaron, who hated assembling this, was excited with the finished product, and even put his sneakers on his shelf after the gym, which is amazing.  It is working.

I never took 'before' pictures of this one, but it was embarrassing  It had one bar/shelf that came pre-installed in the house, one of those wire ones.  It housed an unmentionable number of random boxes.  We kept all our shoes in that bin at the bottom of the shelf that now holds sports equipment, so if I wanted to find my sneakers, it literally was a treasure hunt.   I believed we would never feel truly at home until the closets were functional, uncluttered, and organized.  Until then, our closets were qi-sucking fiends, that needed improvement.

I did a ton of research on closet systems.  These were the final three.

3rd Place: Elfa - Container Store

Pros: Great configuration options.
Cons: Most expensive, dosen't look awesome
especially when you go with the cheapest option.

Second Place: Martha Stewart - Home Depot

Pros: Better looking than Elfa.
Cons: Fewer configurations, mid-level expensive.

Winner: Stolmen - Ikea

Pros: Good looking enough to be used exposed at retail stores, and the least expensive.
Cons: Only two fixed widths of configurations to work with (long, less long).

For Ikea, this thing was on the expensive side.  We got enough Solmen for two closets (our hallway and office closet) and the total was around $600.

These are some evolution shots of the hallway closet.  I'll preface this scene by thanking our un-pictured neighbor, Jason, who came over to help Aaron install those three bars in the ceiling of the closet.  Awesome neighbor, thank you Jason!

Our first four shelves, yay!

:: Insert four week gap where we ran out of brackets and needed to get more ::

Aaron, totally exhausted after assembling the rest of the closet,
wraps up with some hooks for the doors.

Finished shelves.  I nailed on some gray plastic mats to the shoe shelves to keep everything steady / easy to clean.
Also fun, the flip flop / umbrella bin, and a tray for all of Aaron's daily things, like wallet and keys.

Finished shot, again!

And let's not forget the other closet, the office closet.

This is where we began...

Reminds me of when we used to have stuff everywhere.

Ta da! Finished.

It's so clean and friendly and easy to find things in here! Ahh, so refreshing.  Aaron laughed at me for insisting the closets were refreshing this morning, but they are! It's a Ricola commercial every time I open the doors.

Enter Stage Left, a Canon SLR!

After years of my taking curiously fantastic pictures with our Canon PowerShot, I leveled up this week and bought a Canon SLR.  And oh, oh my my, what a difference a giant lens makes.  Readers, buckle up for a whole new level of blogawesome.

I became obsessed with a family in Florida, who I know nothing about, other than they have really cute kids and a mom who takes stunning pictures of them with her Canon Rebel XSi.  Said mom keeps a blog, and has a link to what kind of camera she uses, and a really great question and answer session with someone named Marla, who is a professional photographer.

Family in Florida with adorable children!

Anytoots, the mom, Darby, uses a Canon Rebel XSi, which came out about three'ish years ago.  It has since been replaced by the 'T' models, T1, T2, T3, etc. which all take high definition video, which I have no interest in, so an XSi was the model for me.

We've been on a gradual Zero Waste kick, which you can read more about here.  In summary, we're trying to refuse, reduce, reuse and recycle.  With that, and my lifelong thriftiness in mind, I scoured Craigslist for used models.

A few were on the market for about $400.  I bargained someone named Jenkins down to $300, met him at Grand Central yesterday, and made the exchange.  It retails for about $700 with the lens, so I was a wee bit ecstatic about the bargin basement price.  The camera was brand new, aside from the (I'm not kidding) 1,400 pictures of Michael Jackson on the memory card.  All were taken of a computer monitor, scrolling through pictures of Michael Jackson.  Um, delete.

It's brandnewness was evidenced by zero scratches and a USB cable that had never been untied.  Sizzle.

And the full desk set up.  The new camera is sitting next to the old camera.  Which was Aaron's from college.

I'm by no means a pro with the SLR, but apature, ISO, shutter speed, etc. aren't totally foreign concepts to me thanks to the photo class I took in college (where I also met my husband, so, extra useful class).

This morning I couldn't wait to get up and photograph the apartment.

Where I eat cereal.

Our living room this morning.  A painting from Grandma Gert, and the rest is basically a Williams Sonoma showroom.

Our favorite reading spot.  And your first good peek at the rug, a Williams Sonoma home steal, which was on sale for 20% off, plus an additional 20% with a coupon code.  It is heaven.

Good morning.

Tiffany candlesticks, wedding gifts.

A new addition, the Ikea Stockholm bowl, $20 of awesome.

Ahh, peaceful.

The coffee table and window shades are being replaced, don't get too attached :)

A gift from Dad, the Braque print, and our bedroom door.

So, these are awesome.  I'll admit that I took it up another notch by sprucing them up in Adobe Lightroom, which is like Photoshop but built for photos with a lot of great preset filters to add 'punch' and 'vignette'.  I don't usually touch up the blog pictures but given the new equipement and pending reader enthusiasm, I think I'll start.

Before I sign off, I'll let you in on a wee little problem I've found with the new camera.  Or, show you.

You'll notice that half of my couch, mirror, and window, are curiously missing.  After some thoughtful investigation, I found out that the issue was the focal length of the new camera, which has a lens designed to take pictures of sweeping vistas, not 300 sq. ft. rooms.

Our point and shoot had a focal length of 6.2 - 18.6 mm, and our newbie has a focal length of 28 - 80 mm.  I don't understand exactly what that means, beyond the fact that it is cutting out my couch, mirror, and window, from what would have been an awesome picture.

I looked up new lenses that are shorter, thinking this would solve my problem.  Getting an SLR lens with the focal length of a point and shoot starts at ehh $500.  Stay tuned for more on a cheaper solution to that problem.

What do you think of the new camera? Are you excited about better blog pictures? Any lens suggestions?

From China, With Love

Well we have some new happenings with the living room, which has been turning into swankcentral.  I need to update you with pictures, but we got a rug from Williams Sonoma Home that is heaven and is making me want to spend all my time here.  In additional living room news, we ordered two Barcelona chairs, except they're not from Barcelona, they're from China.

The Barcelona chairs that don't come from China cost between $5,000 and $7,000.

It's made in America, takes 14-16 weeks to arrive in your living room, and does not come with a free car.  So, I ditched the homeland, and went straight for the Chinese.  I found them on eBay, a seller called 'PrettyStores', boasting a cool 25 ratings.  Sketch.  I checked out their website, which led me to their specific Barcelona chair website.

It's hysterical.

An excerpt.

I was comforted by the broken English, as it tipped me off to the fact that this was a real Chinese knock off operation.  I emailed someone who wrote back as Sabrina.  She was lighting fast answering my questions, spoke perfect English, and offered to Skype with me at any time throughout the process.  I passed on Skype but decided to go for the chairs, two of them in chocolate brown.

They cost $250 each, for real calf leather, and a 100% solid stainless frame.  Shipping was another $250 for each of them.  Total: $1,000.  Or, a 92% discount on American retail.  Oh, and they take about 8 weeks to arrive.  Scorezies!

Sabrina told me that my chairs had been lovingly crafted, packed up, and were sailing towards me (or really, California).  They even took a picture of one of them, which was an unexpected surprise, since a part of me believed I had just PayPal'ed a grand to a rando in China, never to be seen again.

In the factory!

So good! We'll turn that pillow around so don't see the zipper.

I had to sign a form allowing a shipper in California to take possession of them and drive them to Brooklyn, and they should arrive sometime in the next two weeks, at which point I will be relieved that my $1,000 didn't go into some sort of Chinese PayPal vortex, and encouraged that our guests have something to sit on.

Would you ever buy something directly from China with PayPal?