Jesse the Homemaker
While I've participated in my share of home-improvement activities -- helping Jon wire sound and light at the 5406, buying indirect lights for Justin's place, etc. -- I've never thought of myself as much of a homemaker. I certainly don't have a terribly strong reputation for cleaning up after myself in the kitchen, keeping my room tidy, that sort of thing.
But wow. Combine a really nice and virtually new apartment, roommates who are ecstatic to set the house up, and an abysmal dating life, and boom! Two and a half weeks in, and I'm just getting started. Some accomplishments to date:
But wow. Combine a really nice and virtually new apartment, roommates who are ecstatic to set the house up, and an abysmal dating life, and boom! Two and a half weeks in, and I'm just getting started. Some accomplishments to date:
- My room rocks. It's got nice furnishings like microsuede blackout curtains (which, when pulled back, reveal a power transformer in the foreground, various beauty salons across the street, and a view of Nob Hill behond), a silk bedspread, and inset halogen lighting (for which I installed a dimmer switch). What I'm even more thrilled about is that I keeps making it tidier and better arranged. My shoes are (still) organized in a milkcrate, I just hacked the top and bottom off the insert to a wine crate to create a nightstand-drawer organizer, and I have no random papers lying around. It's only two and a half weeks into the game, but I already feel like it's a very, very different Jesse's Bedroom.
- My bathroom is pretty sweet. I certainly had to work at it, especially as far as shower drainage was concerned. It was absolutely terrible (like, inches of standing water after five minutes), and two econo-size tubs of Drano didn't help much. I finally pried back the drain cover (one of the screws was so stripped that I couldn't remove it) to find a rubber stopper nearly the entire diameter of the drain pipe. How the prior occupant put up with that is beyond me. Anyway, so now my shower drains well, I've got a Speakman showerhead with the low-flow regulator disabled but with a dial to adjust the flow, and three towels with J, C, F monograms hanging from the bar of my oh-so-stylish but comically small sink.
- The kitchen is beautiful, and I'm trying very hard to release its potential for excellent workflow. I've already put pots and pans in separate cabinets, culled out duplicate utensils, added a spice collection (much of which is on order from The Spice House), reorganized the plates-and-wine-glass cabinet to hold about double the items, cleaned all the gunk off the range and oven, and wiped the counters and swept the floor every time I've cooked, which has been frequent. I think I have Aaron to thank for teaching me such good kitchen habits!
- As for the more, uh, common areas, I'm helping out, too. I've put artwork in the stairwells and installed a clothesline on the roof deck. Mom has also come through, with everything from placemats to a vacuum cleaner to a makeshift table (actually, a stool plus a loose tabletop) helping to make the place come together.
- My next, probably absurd, ambition is to figure out how to make a curtain that moves with the sun. See, we have a ~15 foot high window above the sink (I know, poor me) down which the afternoon sun makes a slow, hot progression. It's murder on anything sitting on the countertop, and the living room turns into a bit of a greenhouse. What I'd love to make is a curtain that's the width of the window and perhaps a foot tall, that very slowly descends every afternoon to follow the path of the sun. Maybe there's a way to do this with a precisely weighted pulley system and a timer? I'm no engineer, but my roommate is, so maybe he'll have an idea or two.