Let's get this settled: Post II

At some point today there will be three of us living here. For the past week there has only been two, and for the first few days it was just me. With each new addition comes more organizing and more motivation to get settled (and opinions of what should go where) I approve of this. :)

This has also motivated me to settle my own room more, which I spent most of yesterday doing.

My Room

I'm pretty proud of how my little set-up is coming along. Though, my dresser issue has not been resolved. Right now I am trying a remedy my roommate's mother suggested of this sponge-thing that comes in a plastic container that is designed to get rid of odors. I've been rotating it throughout the drawers, it (the sponge) is supposed to get smaller as it gets used up and sucks up odor from the air...I guess?

In the mean time, this is where my clothes are, if they aren't hanging up. Everyone and their mother (literally) has given me suggestion for what to do about the smell, but honestly, I have this feeling my clothing set-up is here to stay...

The wrinkle in my tapestry aside, I am happy with with my sleeping area. Those little white dots in the wall-gap are my LED star lights, maybe in my next update I'll get a shot of them in action!

We've also rearranged our living room and done the best we could with the kitchen table and it's stupidly large chairs.

Living Room

Before & After

Like our paintings? One of my old roommates found them on the street.

Kitchen

Now, with the kitchen, what may be hard to tell is that the table is much too big for the space, add on 6 chairs (two with arms that the previous tenant shoved into a bedroom) that all have large wings on the back and you've got a pretty cramped kitchen.

In this first picture it may look like there is tons of space, but then notice how close the table is the drawers & stove. It's right up again them, blocking the oven and the pantry, which does make more room for the the refrigerator (behind the shot). In the second picture the table is pulled out from the oven and pantry and it still looks like there is room, but what you can't see is that to the right of this shot is the back door and the kitchen window, which the table is pushed up against. (These photos were taken by my roommate before we moved in, so this is how the landlord had the kitchen set up.)

This is how we have our kitchen set up now. When I first moved in my dad and I flipped the table so it was going across the floor instead of up & down. Since my roommate has been here we've slowly moved all the large chairs away* and replaced them with chairs I had brought with me. While it's not the ideal situation it's working much, much better, and we can open both the oven and the fridge at the same time (though the fridge got the short end of the stick, we can only open the door part way before it hits the table.)

Other Things

This is our backdoor, which is in the kitchen. While our kitchen window has a pull-down shade the door had no shade or curtains at all. My own personal fear of first-floor windows (at night) aside...it was kind of awkward because our landlord and his family were always in the backyard, and also, working on fixing the porch, so it was like being in a fishbowl. Not fun.

Thus I took it upon myself to fix this problem. It also fixed the problem of creepy night-windows...

Curtains: Two large Command hooks, a piece of twine and two pillow cases I got from freecycle. Yay for resourcefulness!

This is a moose-head bottle opener I bought back in March when my family went on vacation in Waterville Valley. Unfortunately the test run didn't turn out too well...not sure if it's because the beer was actually a twist-off (seriously, a twist-off beer?!). In either case, it still looks neat.

Here is my lovely roommate making dinner. I really just took this picture to show off our supah-cool dish towels. Our kitchen has some what of a fish theme because in the back of all the cabinets is this teal wallpaper with fish on it. (Pictures to come, my camera just died...)

We also had beer that night, which, of course required cookies to go with (my favorite dessert combination). Surprisingly, despite being a twist-off top, this beer was pretty good.

I think that about wraps up this post, my next challenge is my studio, which is full of broken-down cardboard boxes right now. Monday is recycling day and it can't come soon enough!

* Where are all the large chairs?

Hiding in my closet. Being used for a desk.

Pulling weight in the kitchen

.

Being unwanted.

We also have the two large end chars with the arms on them. When I first moved in my dad and I asked the landlord if he could at least take those ones off our hands, since they were so bulky and horrible. He said he'd think about it. We put one of them out on the porch before my dad left last week (on Friday) and it's been there ever since, landlord hasn't said a word. The other one is now being used as a desk chair in my other roommate's room.