Meet the new vertical storage to the left of our stove. Here cutting boards, trays, sheet pans, bread pans are stored efficiently and ready for easy access. But it wasn’t always that way. When we moved in, there was a counter to the left of the stove shoddily propped on top of two pieces of […]

(see below for image, product sourcing) After a long hiatus from working on projects around the apartment, I’m ready to shop get back to work. Fortunately, items 4, 6, 8, and 9 are already taken care of. Inspired by almost-black walls spotted on Apartment Therapy and Design*Sponge at the time, I painted the bedroom in June […]

I dislike spice racks–those awful powder-coated ornamental metal racks with pre-labeled, pre-packed spices and their counterparts in beechwood with Lazy Susans built into the base. They just don’t make sense for most cooks or most kitchens. They’re merely decorative at best but, as I remember the one mounted behind my grandmother’s range, more often covered […]

About 10 minutes ago I was going to write about my first adventure in laying out a gallery wall (I suppose this handful of sentences somewhat counts). I bought a number of Ribba frames from IKEA to go with one I already had and used the papers inside to test possible layouts on our bedroom […]

I’ve read a lot about “IKEA hacks” online but I’ve never attempted one myself. In fact, it’s probably still true that I still haven’t. I had help (the hands you see in the pictures below are my friend Rod’s), and it was more of a careful edit than a hack. Last month I came home with […]

When I painted our bathroom orange last summer we purchased a new shower curtain at IKEA for $8, pictured below center. I wanted something brighter than the brown one we’d been using from Tom’s old apartment (you can see this partially below) to match the crazy brightness of the walls I’d created. Perhaps too crazy…? I […]

Living in a city with an IKEA (as opposed to the nearest one being 2 [2006-08] or 6 hours away [2005]) can be dangerous. I may or may not have been there twice in the last 14 days. I didn’t see any of these items when I was there last week… so they must be […]