spring cleaning to the extreme

On Friday we mentioned we were anxiously awaiting MDW in order to get a lot done around the apartment. Our apartment "ghosts" promptly responded by allowing the apartment to fall apart, and our list get longer. In case you missed it, we moved into this unit in our building 2 months ago, and waited until finals time to get done all the super fun stuff to make it more like home. If you want to see some of our apartment look at this post from our Favorite Things week.

Today we'll chat about what we got done around the house, and tomorrow we'll let you know how we took advantage of our first long NYC weekend!

On Thursday we went to Ikea. We'll admit this is one of the not-so-fun things about NYC. There are no big box stores close by. So we walked 10 minutes to the subway, took two subways for 20 minutes, then a 20 minute bus to Ikea of Brooklyn.

These are the strong feet of a man who carried a coffee table from Brooklyn

Once there, we purchased this awesome Hemnes coffee table. It really brought the room together. Because our apartment is black, white, grey and beige tones and very modern, Ikea was our best bet for an affordable coffee table. Who knew how necessary a coffee table was?!

The perfect size rug is tricky. We had a 6X9 area to fill, which is pretty large. We were expecting to have to spend a lot. But Law Student's mom recommended an outdoor rug. They are much cheaper and easier to clean (for example, when Havi threw up on the rug 5 hours after we laid it down). We also found this awesome Web site, Home Decorator's which had 20% off outdoor rugs and free shipping.

While at Ikea I could not resist, and picked up this corkboard for the kitchen. I recognize we have a magnetic fridge, but it holds our collection of magnets (we collect a magnet from every place we go together). So this corkboard is perfect for invitations and bills.

I also insisted on 2 flower pots and a watering can. Ill actually blame this on Two Pitties in the City and Love and a Six-Foot Leash, because they gave us ideas we couldn't resist to spruce up our balcony. We visited the Union Square Farmer's Greenmarket (more about that tomorrow) and purchased bright orange lillies and hot pink pentunias as well as compost soil for this awesome look.

This table and chair set were inherited from our last apartment via Target.

While we're on the balcony...Dental Student purchased a George Foreman grill on Amazon. Our old roomie had this in our old unit and we LOVED using it every night of summer. We're even hosting our first BBQ today! The only difference is this time we purchased a cover. We're really close to a major NYC highway and we don't want the grill getting yucky. We tend to eat in 6 meals a week, so this will be abused!

We bought these great Ikea lights that we mentioned during our Favorite Things Week. Unfortunately, because we hung them vertical, the lights burnt out super fast. While we were at Ikea we bought the halogen replacements and see a major difference!

On Saturday we painted the apartment. Havi insisted on holding the drop cloth...

We painted the wall behind our couch a deep grey and a smaller, adjacent wall with chalkboard paint. We headed with the pup over to Home Depot and bought Behr's Deep Granite in flat finish and Rust-Oleum chalkboard paint. Although paint chips are helpful, nothing beats seeing the actual color. We recommend spending the most time on the taping - its really the hardest part! Make sure to buy tarp. The chalkboard paint splatters easily and is very hard to get off all surfaces.

Havi wanted to model the before picture:

We kept Havi lounging on the balcony most of the day, because we were scared she'd get sick from the paint. We thought she had pretty sweet digs...

But she seemed to want to come in and help paint!

We still need to buy a few items around the house, but our next big project is hanging up our picture collage above the couch and our blinds - but that's for next week!

What's you spring cleaning routine?