Spring Awakening Ikea Style

It's spring in New York. And at Chez Hainz, progress is busting out in every corner. Here are some of the latest developments...

The view from our window is green again!


And where there once was just a blank kitchen cavity...



We now have cabinets!


The rest are here (btw--our cabinets are white not blue--that's just the protective plastic)


Today at Ikea, we discovered this nifty little bumper that makes the doors close softly. It's amazing and brought us tremendous joy. Seriously.


We installed them ourselves.


In other news, our first MR16 recessed lights were installed in our den.


And our celings that have long been cluttered with wiring, j-boxes and other junk...


Are now all cleaned up and awaiting some our new lights.


Estimated date of completion: June 15th. Fingers crossed.

The Agony of Choice, the Ecstacy of Delivery (And Still Liking It!)

We've made a lot of choices through out this process. And there is always that scary moment after you've ordered, paid, coordinated delivery and then that choice that you've made actually gets INSTALLED PERMANENTLY into your home. You pray that you still like it.

This day finally came with our flooring. We chose to replace the terribly damaged old floors with an environmentally friendly bamboo flooring that we like a lot. It's called Teragren and you can read all about it here. We chose the Synergy Strand in Chesnut and thank goodness we did because it is beautiful AND also very hard, durable and made from a sustainable material.

Did you know bamboo is actually a grass?

Presenting...our new floors.



A little nervous that they are going to get scratched, but Idriz promises to cover them up


The floorboard work station


Nick tests out the Teragren

Pocket Door Power

We've got high celings... which is one of the features of our apartment that we love the most. The only catch is that high celings require tall doorways, extra-long window coverings, long lightfixture cords, etcetera, etcetera. And all of those things are hard to come by and often need to be CUSTOM. A scary word when you're on a budget.

Our doors needed to be custom and for a while we tossed and turned, stressing out over how we were going to build pocket doors that are 8'6" ie. 102 INCHES (that's a large door) that wouldn't warp or weigh so much that we couldn't open them. The whole process kind of reminded me of what it's like when I'm trying to find pants that are long enough for to fit my tall frame.

In the end, Garrick came up with a solution with Halit executed on BRILLIANTLY. It required routing (i.e. hollowing out) two pieces of MDF and then gluing them together. Clearly, I'm simplifying. Here are our first two doors. We love them and the glide like butter.

Entrance to the back hallway


And...OH YEAH...look at that door just slide on in


Entry from living room to master bedroom open


And closed

Gettin' Some Nookies

The driving architectural concept behind our apartment design was to start by envisioning the space almost as a solid mass and then carve out middle and create these sort of "punches" into the mass. Do you follow? No worries if you don't. The bottom line is...we've created some customized nooks and they are really coming together.
Check them out:

This is the entry nook--for putting keys, mail, etc.


This will be our built in bar. More details to come...


Build-in desk will live here. How cool is that?


Another view of the entry nook with what I call the MegaNook above. Again, taking suggestions as to what to put up there.

Rub A Dub Dub: Our First Fixture

After much consternation, the tub is installed..

We Got Drywall (Week 8)

Technically it's sheetrock that has started to flesh out the scrawny skeleton of our home. After so many months of using our imaginations, the smooth surfaces enable us to see our place as it will be. We dig it.

BEFORE--The Skeleton


AFTER--Cool Nook
If you have any ideas of what we can put in here--let us know.

 

BEFORE: Entrance to Family Room



AFTER: Stunning

Houseguests!

This weekend we entertained at Chez Hainz! Our first guests were our lovely and ever patient neighbors who were curious to know what was behind all the banging and buzzing. We toured them through the maze of framing and clouds of dust. I think they were most relieved to see that we were putting double sheet rock and lots of insulation in the wall between our house and theirs. :)

Our second set of special guests were Nick's sister and her husband in from Chicago with our utterly adorable nephew. They wasthey scampered like mountain goats up onto the dropped ceiling and checked out the views from above. We hope that they next time they visit, we might actually have walls and even some furniture.