Well, don’t get me wrong… I am and always will be a wild child. Even when I am a tottering old grandmother bouncing a grandchild on either knee, I will be saying “Bring on the drinks and let the good times roll…”!!
But ever since we paid the deposit on the apartment, all I can think of is how to do the place up, what to buy, where to place it, etc. etc. And it doesn’t end with this apartment… I’ve been glancing through a few home design idea books and I’ve picked up a huge number of ideas for that ultimate dream house of mine that I intend to start building in less than 10 years.
But that’s some time away. For now, let me tell you about all the things I’ve been doing in the last month in preparation for this big move into the new place. So first I said, well now I surely require some new furniture particularly since I now have two spare bedrooms to furnish.
When I was a student I had absolutely no furniture… we slept on a mattress and I had a $5 computer table and $10 chest of drawers and we had some other miscellaneous dining table/desk/shelves/TV table/low bar stools items that totalled $100. We also had some mattresses lying around the living room which is what we sat on… I’m not sure where these came from. We certainly didn’t buy them.
Then once we started working, we decided to buy furniture… but furniture, even cheap furniture, when you try to buy it all at one go, is really expensive. Anyway, we went and bought a two-seater couch, a couple of chairs that were more like outdoor furniture lounge chairs, a couple of lamps, a proper home entertainment stand, and a bed. My father visited and slept on my mattress and said that mattress was going to kill me as it did his back and he bought me a new one. He also bought us a bean bag which I love – its bright green and yellow and made from vintage 70s fabric – I really need to get it fixed though… it has been looking most limp for many months.
So now it is time for me to completely upgrade my living room and get rid of the remaining reminders of Ikea which I truly hate because it is too closely associated with being a frugal student… if you look at any uni buy/sell website, all you’ll see will be Ikea bed for sale, Ikea mattress for sale, almost new Ikea couch, as new Ikea potato peeler… yes, potato peeler… there are people who try to sell every last item in their house before they return overseas.
So anyway, the couch we upgraded a month or so ago. We bought a really nice dining set a year ago… it was such a good deal and it’s still being sold in store at almost the same price a year later. And now, I have bought a few other items, the biggest of which is a brand new bedroom suite so I can put my current bedroom suite in one of the spares. We have upgraded to a Queen size bed… I am looking forward to the extra room :-) The most annoying thing about ordering furniture is that everything takes about 6 weeks to arrive. So now I have only received my bar stools which are so yummy looking and this weekend we pick up the bedroom suite but I have to wait I’m not sure how long before I receive my new custom fabric armchairs and funky coffee table and these are really the items that will tie my living room together. Haha, watched a bit of The Big Lebowski the other night – when his dirty old rug gets peed on, his friend keeps saying ‘that rug really tied the room together dude’.
So that’s on the furniture side… there’s still plenty more items I’m planning but for now this is all we can afford. Furniture is still really expensive especially since we aren’t even going in for the cheaper Ikea options… Mr. Moonlight has decided he is carrying around this furniture with us to wherever we go for the rest of our lives. Mr. Moonlight also forcibly closes my eyes if we drive past a furniture/home improvement store...
On the DIY side, we went to check out the apartment again a couple of weekends ago and saw it all empty and as happens with apartment inspections, you will never fully notice/remember important details about the comfort, etc. of an apartment until you live there so it’s always a huge gamble. Anyway on this visit, we found out the previous tenants who’d lived there for FIVE years had decided not to give a damn about anything, particularly cleaning, and the walls looked awful and the carpet was downright filthy. The carpet, I’d always been quite sceptical about the colour and intended to change it as soon as we saved up for it and the walls Mr. Moonlight intended to paint before we moved all our stuff in.
So I started choosing paint colour schemes and was absolutely certain I wanted a feature wall and finally have chosen the combination below. That’s not my apartment, just from some paint website and the dark trim looks uneven cos I hurriedly did that in Photoshop.
So in the last two weekends, I have found out all there is to know about paint. I understand the basics of colour theory and primary and secondary and tertiary colours and what not and I know what kind of sheen level of paint is suited for what kind of surface. The only thing left to do is go in and paint the damn thing which is planned for this Friday. Every paint expert we’ve spoken to in the shops has said at least a weekend is required for a whole apartment by a professional. But us amateurs have ONE afternoon/evening… the voice in my head says, “Be afraid, be very afraid”. And we will literally have no choice but to watch paint dry.
We would’ve had at least two days if we hadn’t gotten overexcited and signed up for new carpet also. So the paint’s gotta dry before the carpet layer arrives on Saturday morning. But I’m really happy about the new carpet cos now the apartment will feel almost new with new paint and carpets. I now also know a lot about carpets and the difference between polypropylene, nylon, wool and wool blend. I have been introduced to underlay, broadloom meters, and dodge beige. We just walked into a couple of carpet stores to get a quote and before I knew it, Mr. Moonlight and Carpet King started heated negotiations with the full-on numbers on paper being passed back and forth thing and we became the proud owners of new carpet.
So this weekend is going to be very hands on with painting and moving and it’s all gotta happen seamlessly or we’re screwed. I intend to take before and after pictures and hopefully it will come out looking like how it does on those DIY TV shows. If not, I will not be putting up any pictures.
And finally, thanks to all of the above, I am more broke than I have ever been… and it doesn’t end here because there’s still more things to buy like linen and bathroom and kitchen accessories AND my parents are coming to visit me in 3 weeks…
As the voice in my head keeps repeating, “Be afraid, be very afraid”.
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