So, despite my best intentions to focus on web design this week, various real-life projects have butted in and demanded that I focus on them first. I’m about to plow back into my portfolio redesign, but here’s a quick list of some of the stuff we’ve done in the last couple of days.
- Decorating: We finally got around to decorating our home, now that we’ve been here for three months. (to be fair, it was the holidays during that time, so we had temporary decorations up). Now we’ve got our prints and maps hung up on the walls, as well as all my Obey Giant posters back up in the office (which looks awesome). Photos coming soon.
- Ikea Assembly: We bought two shelves and two dressers from Ikea, and I assembled them and mounted them. The shelves took some work, because either our apartment has oddly-spaced studs or (more likely) the Swedes use a different standard. Either way, the mounting bracket for the shelves didn’t line up with our studs, so I had to learn about the wonders of drywall anchors, and a got an impressive box of giant drill-like ones that work like a charm. The dressers were a pain in the ass to assemble, but now that they’re together, they look great, and I absolutely love having drawers on casters instead of just wood grinding on wood.
- Cleaning: Obviously, the previous two projects created quite a mess, which we’re still digging our way out from under. Once it’s done, I’ll take some photos and post them.
Drywall anchor? Are those the things my father calls mollysinks? In German, they’re called dubels. All my stuff’s from Ikea. A number of people have complemented our coffee table, and then to demonstrate that it’s not real wood but actually the ikea weird fake-wood cardboard type material, I pick it up to demonstrate that it weighs three pounds.
Germany’s the first place I’ve ever had to use drywall anchors (mollysinks? dubels?) ’cause it’s the first place I’ve ever lived where things like kitchen cabinets don’t come standard with an apartment.
Well, you’ve got one up on us. ;) It took me five (or more) months to get decorated, finally . . . And I’m already thinking of changing it again. :)
Never did decorate for Christmas, though . . . But we weren’t going to be here for Christmas, so there was no real point.
I love drywall anchors. When I was doing cabinetry, we made a custom bedside table for an apartment that had no legs.
We used drywall anchors to securely mount a board (hidden behind the cabinet), and then just mounted the cabinet to the board, so it was hanging off the wall without any visible support. It wasn’t exactly that simple, but it was a really neat effect, and it was secure enough you could sit on the table without it even noticeably wiggling.
Drywall anchors are a pain in the neck. I’ve always had to use them because of the lathe and plaster construction of my apartment.
The shelves you got from Ikea don’t line up to the studs because they use the metric system. I have a shelf from there (one of the ones for CDs/movies) that weighs sixteen pounds and refused to allow me to hang it. My Dad came up to hang it for me and as he was measuring the shelf and wall he asked me if foreigners made the shelf and at first I was a little surprised but I said they had and he explained that the holes to hang it were very oddly spaced. Then he made his own holes.