This is my little office area in a room otherwise designated as the dining room.  It is a small room right next to the kitchen with no closet, but I don’t think we’ve ever sat down to eat at the table here.  It’s more of a catch-all, which isn’t the best thing!  My thoughts in the future are to get a smaller table in here….but long long term plans are to knock down the wall in between this wall and the living room, increasing the living space and having much more of an open feel. 

There is a whole lot of ikea going on in this corner.  The white filing cabinet is an ikea buy, as are the shelves, the desk, the flower pictures (a steal at $7 each), and the the green magazine organizers and boxes.  I am not handy, but i did put the filing cabinet together all by myself – and I love the sleek white design. 

BEFORE:

yuckapalooza

Here is a shot of what we found underneath the cabinet we (or shall i say my dad) tore off the wall.

yikes

here you can see the old backsplash (which I attempted to paint over and then ultimately chiseled off)

http://sites.google.com/site/lizandwillaregettingmarried/

The “welcome” sign was from the $1 bin at Target.

gotta love the hyphen

The key ring underneath holds keys (obviously), but also holds a lint brush to hit up on your way out the door, because our cat Cotton inevitably marks every piece of non-white clothing in this house with his fur.

For instance, back in September, I picked up these “closet organizers” from Kmart for our new bedside tables for $10 and change a piece (way cheaper than a conventional bedside table)

closet organizer turned bedside table

The only issue with them is that all your stuff is out in the open….so I’ve been on a search for the perfect baskets to put within the tall, skinny openings within.  Well, tada(!!), I found them today.

it fits!

At $5.99 a pop, I can still buy enough of them to fill the holes on both of our tables, and it is STILL cheaper than buying a garden variety bedside table.  After my text tutoring session, I’m buying some mo’. 

I also picked up :

 a do it yourself herb-growing kit (basil – and $4, since you asked),

2 super cute little white flower-pots ($1.29 each)  

some frames for the photo collage I’m working on behind our bed

a tray to go under the cats’ food bowls ($3)

 and a cute little rug to go in front of the sink ($13)

and some other cute, cheap little things.  After going to IKEA, I find it hard to shop anywhere else and rationalize spending more money on similar stuff.

here is a tile half chipped off and my done-in-vain attempt to repair the hole beneath via joint compound.

 Once the tiles were off…things got interesting.  You can’t just pour joint compound into a hole behind the wall.  Apparently the sheetrock – or plaster, or whatever it is, ended behind the tiles.

the existential void behind the tiles.

One of the nice parts of co-op living, aside from the lack of yardwork, is the presence of a superintendent of the property who general takes care of odd-jobs on the public living areas.   A good super will take up small jobs in his spare time, which ours did when I ran to find him to query about how to remedy the hole in my wall.  He repaired the plaster….see below.

the backsplash, repaired!

Afterwards, we decided to paint the back of it with chalkboard paint – only $15, and way more budget and time-intensive than tile…which just isn’t an option right now.

behind the sink...with Will's map to the sink

the stove will eventually be replaced, but here is more backsplash!

The total cost of the project, including a tip slipped to the super, was less than $80.

This September, we bought the place.

I immediately removed (or my dad did, at least) a set of built in cabinets on the left hand wall.  Unfortunately, the adhesive underneath tore off a chunk of plaster in the wall, leaving us with a concrete dent the size of a cinder block in the wall.  I told my dad I was going to throw up when I saw it, and he told me to stop overreacting.

Afterwards, I went over to Home Depot and picked up some joint compound and filled it in.  Joint compound is just a fancy word for the spackle type jazz that you need to use to fill in holes in your wall that you cause by being an asshole.  This was a fairly easy process, but one that took a fair amount of patience, as joint compound doesn’t just dry into a magical new wall.  It needs to dry in layers, and honestly, now it’s dry and all and no longer a massive hole, but it’s best hidden behind a baker’s rack.  More on that later.  I can’t find a picture of the hole, but here’s the kitchen “before”.

on the left of this photo, there used to be more built in cabinets. That is also the site of the infamous hole.

It is now March, and I am finally tackling the kitchen re-do.  Back when we bought our place, we talked to a contractor, who told us that a complete renovation would run between $5 and 10K.  We were “property virgins” and really didn’t realize how much things cost – even a renovation in a kitchen as small as ours can cost you quite a bit.  We retreated from the room and decided to revisit the situation when we had more money – ya know, when Liz had a full time job and we were rolling in it.

Well, five months and two leave-replacements later, I again find myself as a per-diem sub with a bomb-shelter kitchen.  I decided that a cheap renovation would beat no renovation at all!  I decided to finally tackle la cocina del infierno…or, the kitchen from hell.