Tag Archives: decor

As promised in cohabitating with qrace: the mister’s cup, I come to you with an offering of photos from Kate and Evan’s apartment.  The photo above illustrates the difference between styles. The chair on the left is Evan’s. He found the top piece at an undisclosable junk store, took it to the car wash to get a deep cleaning for $5 and found the base on eBay. The chair on the right is Kate’s and it came from Salvation Army. Both are staying.

These gawgous library catalogs came from a craigslist seller: both agreed on the purchase. Good. We’re getting somewhere.

As you can see from this horribly dark photo (I’m still learning, sue me), the television is being supported by about twenty plastic containers until they find a suitable replacement. It sits in front of a pretty-but-painted over fireplace, in between the two catalogs. The coffee table will be absconding shortly since Evan is a carpenter and can make exactly what he wants– no fair.

Ziggy, one of Kate’s cutie-pie Frenchies, is perching upon the couch they craigslist’d to replace the sectional they gave me. Kate says the new couch is the best purchase so far and they’re working on finding likable pillows to match. Let’s talk about what’s leaving in the picture. Ziggy gets to stay but the white shelves gotta go. Ironically, Evan was the one who spray painted and mounted them after Kate picked them up at a clearance sale for $3 each. He will also be the one dismantling them.

Here is your official living-room-in-transition. I talked to both Kate and Evan today to get their thoughts on the apartment’s recent changes. Both are pretty exhausted and frustrated at living in a sort of limbo while they sort things out. In my opinion, they’re working really well together. When a couple moves into a new space that neither of them has done prior work on, or made into a livable space, it’s a lot easier to decide on purchases, what gets done first, where to put unpacked items. This is different. Kate has already lived in this space for over a year and it was set up exactly how she wanted it, with a lot of help from Evan and his carpentry and all-around handyman skills, before he moved in. Now, they have to compromise and rearrange and talk about the changes, then implement them while occupying the space, getting rid of what doesn’t work and generally organizing their lives around it. That is crazy hard and I’m impressed that they’re not pulling each other’s hair out.

Kate’s advice was to make lists and stick to them. Plan out what you want to tackle first and don’t try to get it all done in a day. It will take time; be patient with your partner and more importantly, yourself. Do the things you can get done simply first and save the big stuff for when you have time. That can be as easy as putting up a craigslist or Freecycle post for something you need to get rid of, or just giving it away so you don’t have unnecessary clutter lying around. You don’t have to put together a room a day– as much as you may want to. She also quipped about how clean the apartment is now that they’re forced to pick up constantly when moving big ticket items in and out, so there’s one thing to look forward to!

I took these photos last week and they’ve already done major work on the bedroom, with a new bed that Evan built by hand coming home yesterday. Evan, along with some muscle from the Mister, attempted to bring it into the bedroom Sunday and ran into a serious roadblock that left Kate and Evan sleeping on a mattress on the floor for two nights– the bed wouldn’t fit through the door and it had to be broken and repaired at his shop.

My next post featuring their lovely abode will be on the new bedroom and the closets Evan is putting together to store all of Kate’s gorgeous clothing, jewelry, hats and shoes in (okay, and a few of his things, too). Yes, moving in is hard. But damn if it isn’t nice to have a custom walk-in closet a la Carrie in SATC made for you by your man.