(Tiny) Apartment Living

As we got settled in the apartment we realized there wasn't nearly enough space for things like ... eating ... and storing all our cooking supplies.  After a couple episodes of cooking dinner and having to use the sink and/or the floor for holding my mixing bowls, etc, I had enough and we took a trip to Ikea.  I had never been before, but quickly discovered Ikea is a small slice of Heaven where you can get most any furniture piece and customize it to your liking.  The trick is that the customization part includes building furniture from very tiny pieces of wood or plastic with minimal tools.

Anyway, we happened upon a lovely birch island that would fit just perfectly in our kitchen/living room/dining room combo, and decided to give it a try.

Island pieces, next to homeless kitchen supplies

A quick trip to the neighborhood ACE Hardware to get paint and stain.  I may or may not have gotten high from doing this in 700 square feet.

Much concentration is required to hand screw in all those slats in minimal lighting!

Plus some acrobatics

Taa-Daa!  Finished product!

Once the dishes had a home, we then realized we didn't have a place to eat other than the couch/bed/floor.  We absolutely didn't have room for a table, but again Ikea got us inspired.  We saw a drop leaf table there that only took up about 6 inches of space when it was closed away.  It looked a little sketchily made so we decided to make our own!  Well that turned out to be quite an adventure.

Fine dining in the guest bedroom/den floor with Mardi looking on

First was a trip to Lowe's where we had a lot of differences in opinion coming up with our table design plan.  My dad is quite the handy man, but I learned that a wife consulting her father on construction projects doesn't always do great things for her husbands mood.  But we made it through the trip okay, and Stuart had way more fun choosing 2x4s than he did at Ikea.

Once all the pieces were selected, we got the handyman working there to saw some stuff for is.  However, as luck would have it once we got home everything didn't quite perfectly fit.  We didn't want commute the hour back and forth to Lowe's again, so instead we got the saw out of storage to fix the problem ourselves!  Let me first say this was Stu's idea more than mine ... Let's just say that I was convinced we would be evicted for disturbing the peace before we were done.

Winston didn't like the noise all too much.

After all the sawing action was over, it was time to build!  This too made me nervous as we were drilling quite a bit and again thought we would be evicted - but everything worked out okay!  This was the trickiest part I think ... mostly as the wood we picked was quite heavy and we had to figure out some creative ways to keep the finished table braced well enough so it wouldn't fall off and tear a hole through the wall.  Once done we had a pretty nice and space-saving table that thus far hasn't broken!  We just have to instruct dinner guests to not aggressively slice their meat or lean their elbows on the table too much!

Finished product with a cherry tomato on top to see if it was level.  It was!