Desk and All of His Friends

Posted on June 28, 2011 by Kayla

We’re hand-me-down accepters. We always have been. I don’t know if it’s due to our love for thift store/tag sale shopping that makes us love old things, or it’s just simply our love (shared by most) of getting something for free.

Some of our freebies in the house we love (our Danish dresser), some are placeholders for future, proper furniture (ahem, two side tables being used as a tv console for the past 3+ years), and some we like, but just aren’t really working anymore.

Meet desk. I mean, meet desk again. This guy has attracted a lot of stuff into one room.

Desk and all of his friends are clearly having some issues keeping up with the harrowing demands of a modern office, or at least the demands of keeping up with us. We have a second printer that’s not in this photo, by the way. It’s about as big as an ottoman. The footstool, not the Turk.

We’re not quite as messy now as we are in this picture, but it’s not much better. I put the filing cabinet in the closet, moved the side table elsewhere, and cleared some of the clutter on the desk to make room for the printer. There’s less stuff now, but it still looks pretty awful. Erik’s job necessitates that he keeps computer crap paraphernalia around. My sewing, craft  materials, and gift wrap have been getting lost/damaged in big bins and bags. I hate to say it desk, but I think we need drawers. We need more counter space. I don’t think you can ever give us those things.

So I’ve been on a desk hunt. Since Thursday. Lets add in to the mystery that we’re still not 100% sure what room the “office” will end up occupying. (There are FOUR possibilities, by the way). Even once we decide on a room, it might be moved one day if we dormer out the house, have a little one, or if I just wanna play musical chairs, er, musical furniture. Basically, the desk has to be flexible. It’s like the middle child that could end up sharing a room with any sibling. I’m a middle child. I think I understand what this desk is gonna need.

It can’t be huge, but we need it to be big. It has to be able to split into at least two desks if necessary (if it ends up in a room where space is too tight to arrange it as one piece). Ideally, it should be able to function as computer space and sewing space at the same time. The heavens parted, and this Pottery Barn desk shone down:

Of course I knew we would never, ever make such a purchase. The “$149 – $499″ promise touted at the top was surely a listing of the prices for each little piece. No surprise when I totaled out the elements in the photo and came up with this price tag:

Burn. No shocker there.

Then I found a very similar-looking set from JCPenney (a knockoff no doubt) for much less, but only about 1/3 less. At $1,133, it was still way too steep. Add in the fact that the reviews said it was pretty poor quality.

Of course, after this, my mind whirred with ideas of making our own desk. We talked about it. I think building 12-odd feet of desk is like, the 10th grade level of home ownership. I don’t know what grade we’re in, but we still have snack time. We sipped on our juice boxes, took a nap, and thought some more.

Where does one look for stylin’ office furniture when solid wood isn’t in the budget? Come on now. Found this modest little cutie right away:

 

Ikea’s MICKE desk is sleek and comes in a variety of sizes. The biggest size (above) is only $70. I read reviews. Good. I checked out Ikea Hackers. Cool. I drew up a diagram of how to fit the different desk elements into the room. It worked. I emailed Erik. He liked it. Awesome.

Granted, it’s a far cry from the cozy, warm, Pottery Barn photo I fell in love with. But what was it about the photo that I loved so much? Was it really the desk? Really?

The second photo is from a guy re-selling the thing on craigslist. I guess they don’t make it clear that the desk doesn’t come with baskets, a pretty rug, and fabric samples. Look, I’m not arguing that the desk isn’t quality, because I’m pretty sure it’s really solid. I’m just saying that the desk isn’t looking so hot ($1,700 hot) when it’s not all gussied up.

Basically, I just want the desk to be white. Pure and simple. Then I’ll dress it up all PB-style. Maybe I’ll even pretentiously hang up fabric samples.

We sprung for the MICKE on Sunday. Two desks and a filing cabinet. We squeaked in right under $200. Now where to put it…

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The Green Grass Grows All Around

Posted on June 20, 2011 by Kayla

We planted grass in early May, and really feared that it wouldn’t take off. We knew the best spring time to plant was early-mid April, but scheduling  conflicts surrounding stumps and dirt got us a little behind. Perhaps this fear is the same reason we didn’t get our lawnmower fixed earlier. You know, maybe no grass will grow…right?

Of course none of this affected the fact that we had established grass in the front yard growing steadily. We left for vacation late last month and snapped some photos on our way out the door. Note the already-long grass (uh oh) as well as the baby grass sprouts (woohoo).

So the front yard was already pretty long. The baby grass was also sprouting up pretty quickly. The backyard, not so much (womp-womp). But really, the front yard…we should have known.

Seven days later, when we got back from vacation, the yard looked, eh, embarrassing. Please also note the well-grown new grass. It’s like every picture contains bad news/good news.

Erik purchased a week-wacker (whacker?) the next day to take care of business. We still didn’t have a working lawnmower, no matter how many times I took the lid off and shook lawnmower products at it.

Here’s Erik reclaiming our good standing with the neighbors:

Nice job, Erik! He called someone to come fix the lawnmower that day. The guy said it was the worst carburetor he had seen this year. That made us happy. You know, instead of him telling us we just had a stick caught in the blade or something. Trust me, I looked.

The shady backyard still wasn’t long enough to be mowed, but it did grow. Look at that green!

I know a lot of people that haven’t had success with grass seed. Actually, a few neighbors drove by when we were planting and wished us luck, and then said their grass did horribly. That made me feel less than hopeful. We asked lots of people for advice, including  my brother, friends, Erik’s parents, my grandparents, a Home Depot guy, and This Old House. We applied lime (for the proper ph) and fertilizer to the soil and raked it in, then used Vigoro Brand Sun/Shade seed in the front and Scotts Deep Shade seed in the back.  We lightly covered it with hay to prevent it from washing away, and for  3-4 weeks, we watered it every day, morning and night for 10 minutes. Now that it’s established, we water it once a week for an hour unless it rains a lot.

In conclusion, we have grass. Yay.

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If A Tree Falls In The Driveway…

Posted on June 10, 2011 by Kayla

Last night we had a really powerful thunderstorm in our area. We left the house around 5:15pm to attend a function, but turned the car around when the storm picked up 10 minutes into our trip. We pulled into a parking lot and waited.

Eventually it cleared enough that it was safe to drive. We pulled into our driveway around 6:00pm. It was still really dark from the rainclouds. I squinted through the rain and noticed some pretty low-hanging maple branches above the driveway. This isn’t strange. Fern Gully is a force to be reckoned with. Plants grow like crazy in our yard. “We need to trim some more branches back soon”, I said to Erik.

“Oh my God. Give me my keys. Where are my keys? The tree fell down. The tree, it’s leaning on a little maple. The branches are from the little maple. It’s bending over. Where are my keys!!??!”

There was a big, dead tree hanging precariously over my car. It was too dark and rainy to take a photo of what it looked like in the balance, but I have a photo of what it looked like before this whole debacle. See, here’s where I park. Note the big, two-split tree. The trunk on the right is alive. The trunk on the left is dead. Vines killed it who-know-how-long ago, and it’s been cut off at the top, so it’s not much taller than shown in the picture.

Not tall enough to hit the house. Still tall enough to crush my car.

I ran out into the storm, down the driveway, with my keys in hand. Even though the big trunk was leaning against another tree, I was nervous as I stood there trying to get the key in the door. Don’t start cracking, tree. Don’t you crack. I jumped in the car and backed up with a squeal of the tires. Phew.

Erik didn’t seem to be nervous. He’s…crazy. He gets out of the car and walks by it. “Don’t walk under it!”, I scream.

“We have to call the tree guys to come take this down”, Erik says calmly.

“It’s going to fall down in a few hours”, I predict.

“It’ll hit the garage!”, Erik protests.

“No it won’t, it will fall riiiiiiight…there”, I say, now standing 25 feet away from the beast.

“I’ll call the tree guys”, he maintains.

“I hope it falls down before then…for free”, I say with a smirk.

We looked out the window a few times before we went to sleep. Nothing. We woke up this morning and it was still there. Oh no. We seem to pay these tree guys on a monthly basis around here.

Erik goes into work late on Fridays, so we were eating breakfast around 8:30.

*CRRRRRACK!* We look at each other. I run over to the mudroom to look out the door. The tree is still there. I say a silent prayer that I saw the tree last night and have already safely moved my car.

We take a few sips of our iced coffees. We talk about bathroom remodeling.

*CRRRAAACCCKKKSMASH!*

Both of us had sunk our heads into our shoulders like turtles. I suddenly imagined the tree was three times taller and was about to crush me where I sat in the kitchen. Clearly my turtley position would have protected me. Erik says he didn’t think the tree was going to crush him. He still turtled, though.

Guess what? It didn’t hit the garage. It actually only barely crushed one Hosta (It could have crushed them all, I say). And now, the carnage:

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