Out of Sight Out of Mind

My apartment is only about 600 or so square feet so it has become an art form trying to keep the “stuff” in it to the bare minimum of essentials, not to mention locating the perfect place to store what does come into this space. There are five rooms including the bathroom and although I would ideally love about another 200 square feet, this size is actually not too bad most of the time. It only bothers me when the chaos in my house starts sinking into my mind and I want to throw everything away. Like today for example.

I am a person who likes things to be clean and orderly; there is a place for everything -- after I am done using something it lives in its home until the next time I need it. Right now I am busy working on top coating all the parts and pieces of the behemoth entertainment center Matt built out of free pallet wood and scrap plywood (in fact we only spent about $70 on this entire thing including hinges, hardware, paint & lumber). The thing is massive but everything is flat and the doors and shelves come off so one might think it would be quick to paint; one would be wrong.

Here is the piece in its finished state prior to Matt attaching the doors. This is before it came home to meet my mini roller and paint tray.


Top section will hold speakers on either of the ends, whatever in the 2 middle sections. Middle section -- random knick knack stuff in the small left side shelves, TV in the largest opening, components on the right. Bottom section will have slide out shelves and is meant to house media (all our cd’s and dvd’s are in books for maximizing storage space but since we still live in the dark ages we do still own a bunch of video tapes too). I assure you, something gets lost in the translation because this thing is huge. By huge I mean taller than me; let’s just say I will not be the one dusting the top of this sucker once it’s installed.

So Matt took it apart and he and B moved it out of their basement and into our very small apartment about a week ago. It needed a bit of wood fill on screw holes and general imperfections (on the pallet wood especially) then I sanded it down and was ready to paint.

Since the top piece is so convoluted with shelves and spaces, it made its way up onto risers so I would have more space to work around it. Unfortunately the height of the permanently installed shelves is pretty short and sadly there was just no way to get a roller into some of them so most days I have had an arm full of paint from using the brush.

Because I did not want to do 400 coats of the dark chocolate brown color we chose, I went with a deep grey primer and sealer. Free advice people, anything really dark (reds, purples, navy blue, forest green, etc.) is so much easier to paint final coats when using grey primer as opposed to white. And generally speaking the shelf grey is cheaper than a tinted primer too. But I digress…

Painting the doors and shelves was an interesting challenge because my third drop is somewhere at my Dad’s house so I had to improvise by strategically placing them on elevated surfaces all over the house, like the side of a chair or my tool caddy. Luckily there are only six doors and two shelves because this is substantially adding to the messy feeling everywhere.

Insert my hysterical cackling. Paint fumes could have something to do with this of course. Good thing it is water based paint and varnish or we would really be in trouble.

Watch in awe as the vein on the side of my head simply pops next time I trip over a brown door as I try to get into a room other than the living room!

So now I am waiting for the top coat to dry so Matt can attach the hardware tonight, flip this enormous piece so I can do the underside (it will be visible when the lower section doors are open) and then secure the pieces together before placing this baby where it belongs, thus allowing for a vacuum to roam freely throughout this house again. I can not wait to breathe clean air.

Silver lining? The house will feel huge after this is installed.