A couple of guys from Gothic Cabinet Craft spent most of the morning in my apartment installing a new set of custom-made book / CD / LP shelves. I have had a great deal of trouble finding shelves that will hold "mixed media" but do not have a spot for a television, so I went to Gothic in November, planned this out, and it was delivered today.

Yesterday mary_wroth helped me clear out all the old shelves and move them around, and I spent this afternoon and evening loading up the new ones. Lots of space! Room for everything! Lights! They are flush to the wall and bolted in, so they're almost built-in, and quite well made. Lots of cutouts for speaker wire and the like, and all the power cords and transformers and other ugly nonsense go in the little cabinet under the stereo.

This album shows the evolution of my living room since I moved into this apartment in 1995.

Tags: apartment

So today my dad came over and we started on a home improvement project I've been thinking about doing for approximately forever. I have a charming bench in my kitchen, an eight-foot long cushioned seating area that almost everyone gravitates to whenever I have people over. It's a really nice spot for reading the paper in the morning, relaxing after dinner, etc.

However, it's enormous, and the way it was originally built, all the space underneath was wasted. I've always thought it should be cabinets, instead of the blank wood front and baseboard that were there originally. Today we started making that happen.

( Details and photos )

More photos on Flickr.

Tags: apartment