Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Come right in!

My apologies for such a long break in between posts, ironically having the internet at home is not conducive to blogging at all.

As promised in a few previous posts now, our apartment is now all together, and here is this post, to show you around our new home for our life in New York.

Sorry about the mess...

So coming in through the front door you have the kitchen to the right, our kitchen kart to the left for additional storage (we already have a wok!), and Deb's mirror for that final check before she leaves for the day. Most of our furniture you can thank Craigslist for, as buying brand new would be far too expensive.

A splash of red here...

A closer look at the kitchen, many bits and pieces come courtesy of Martha Stewart™ as she's pretty much taken over Macy's kitchenwares section. Otherwise, oven/stovetop and dishwasher are standard, as is the microwave hidden in the cupboard above the stovetop. A neat thing about our tap/sink is that the nose of tap is one of those detachable retractable (weighted) hose types. Pretty standard fare you say, but as anyone that has spent any amount of time in USA knows, they just love their pressure activated plumbing valving thingummies. Press a button on the nozzle and it turns into a spray. Very handy indeed for cleaning the sink and anything in it. I know, it's not really that fascinating in text, so I'll spare you the tedium and move on.

 A phrase concerning sardines comes to mind

Walking through the kitchen, you'll be greeted by this view of our little creative corner, where Deb can write her Broadway Musical, and lives a shelf where I can put all my little toys. Little blue Effie has come with us all the way from Sydney to watch Deb play. I think when we first walked in we just fell in love with the bright airiness because of the large windows. I will also take this moment to be proud of our automatic blinds, a wonderful little luxury if you're just too busy (lazy) to roll them up yourselves.

Somewhere to grow potatos?

So follow the room to your left and you can spot our couch and living area. Incidentally our TV is sitting right there on the larger coffee table, an unconventional choice for sure, but something we think is a neat solution to our general problem of lack of space. If you still don't know what it is, you'll see later. The couch of course is the nightmarish piece of furniture you've read about in a previous post.

Not much to explain here

Keep spinning to your left and you will see our dining area flanked by our book/media shelf and study table combination. Would you believe the dining table was free? An expandable IKEA set to cater from 4 to 6. Craiglist, oh how we love thee, we can't get over just how lucky we were to find matching furniture on craigslist. The total cost for the 4 person set was $20, because we had to buy two other chairs separately. But still, I'm sure you'd agree it was chicken feed compared to what we could have paid.

No NYC apartment is complete without Movie Star Makeup Room lighting

Shower and tub, someone must have forgotten to pay for the rest of the glass...

The bathroom is a bathroom, quite squashy in there but admirable for what it fits. I still can't get used to the fact that you change the temperature of the water rather than the flow, I try not to think about how much water you waste because of this. But I digress, did I mention the heated tiles?

And Pyjamas makes another guest appearance

Of course where do you go after the bathroom, but to bed? Perhaps the computer table instead, so it makes sense that the two are right next to each other. There's a his and hers side of course, and the inevitable tangle of wires that accompanies a study desk, but we have a solution for that too, courtesy of the Lego Shop at the Rockafeller Centre.

 Por vou?

Don't ask me why my "Not a Power Ranger" Lego Minifig is French, it just seems like an appropriate thing to say when you're holding a bunch of flowers like that, right? Really it's not a cable tidy, more a means for our cables not to fall into the all-consuming void. The little tub is your souvenir if you go to the Lego Shop and pick a bunch of bricks like you do lollies at a lolly store. If you do decide to do this, have a clear plan of what bricks you want because before you know it, you're scratching your head as to why you still only have half a tub while two hours have passed.

And that was the small tub. Whatever you do, don't listen to the salespeople telling  you to put what you want to build together before you put it into the tub. Because unless it all manages to tesselate, you won't get the most bricks. Lego is about bricks per dollar after all. Also... Truck!

See, I put a picture of us building a house up there, I poetrify good, yes?

If you didn't guess back up the top, that was a projector sitting on our big coffee table. The wonderful thing about the apartment being small is that it's only ever a few steps to control how bright it is inside. We thought long and hard about this purchase, in the end, we decided to make the leap for multiple reasons. It cost much less than the world of mediocre 40" LED TVs out there. 
It may only handle 720p, but we can't tell the difference so it's good enough for us.
It also accepts both 110V and 240V input so we can take it home with us in the case that we move back to Australia. 
Globe replacement is relatively cheap, for which you get about 5 years of life if you don't use it at it's brightest setting.  And with us being casual video media consumers, that is probably a conservative estimate still.
Really the only reason not to, is if our walls weren't freshly painted white. There is the slight omission in that it doesn't come with cables for communicating with computers, but I guess this is a less common circumstance. Where do I sign for my paycheck Epson?

So that is our humble abode here in New York. The virtual tour is done, we hope you enjoyed your stay, next week we explore Arts & Culture in New York with Randy Weston for a Listening Party, Stephen Sondheim for some reimagining, and Socrates Sculpture park for a little "what on earth?". 

See you again soon!

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