Little Apartment in the Big City

After one month, 30-some-odd hours over four days in IKEA, and a lot of elbow grease, our apartment has gone from looking like this…

…to Ta-DAAAAaaa!!!

(as in, I really like our little space now)

(except for the cockroaches. I don’t like the cockroaches*)

I took advantage of Ellie’s nap to straighten up and take a couple of pictures. Here’s a look at the place as it is now.

Living/Eating Area

We originally bought the green rug for Ellie’s room, but decided to use it out here because the one we already had was too big for this area. Now the only thing left to do is hang our pictures, which will add a little needed color to the walls.

Other than hanging pictures and a few minor organizational issues, I
also really really hope we can replace our dusty, bent-up mini-blinds
here and in the bedrooms with some curtains. Hopefully. soon.

Kitchen

My pride and joy. I spent four days cleaning this tiny little kitchenette. (Not four days straight, I can really only do it while Ellie’s sleeping. But still, four days of my “time while Ellie’s sleeping.)

I even kinda like the yellow and orange. I’ve always wanted red and yellow in my kitchen, so here all I had to do was add some red pieces and I’m all set. If only i had more than two burners, then I could get a cute little red kettle to keep on my stove, but alas. We still haven’t bought an oven yet, if we do get one it will go on top of the fridge (and we’ll lose that area for keeping fruit and vitamins, something that must be considered).

Bedroom

Yeah…oops. Woke Ellie up from her nap taking pictures.

When I walked in here the first day my very first thought was, “Wow! This is a lot more closet space than I expected!” Then I opened the right side to discover–to my equal parts intense disappointment and intense elation–that the entire right side is devoted to our air conditioner. And you couldn’t pay me to trade in my AC for a little extra hanging room.

Really, really love, love, love the new bureau though. It’s big, it holds a lot. And I’ve always wanted some black furniture.

This is pretty much it for the bedroom. The door is just to the left of my little pink hamper and the bed is pushed against the wall.

Ellie’s Room

Once Ellie was awake she expected to be IN the pictures.

Ellie’s room doesn’t have a closet so we needed a wardrobe for all her clothes and bedding and things. (Can you believe we have two drawers FULL of baby blankets?!?) Gotta love the red! Then there were toys and books and diapers to store. Plus keeping in mind that we still need room for another baby and all the trappings. So some of the kids in the seminary ended up with some “new” toys. Wink. (Actually, we ended up giving away a good amount of stuff, not just toys. We discovered it’s a good way to get your new neighbors to like you.)

And, yes, another crib will fit in there. We measured many, many times.

The only thing left to do in Ellie’s room is install the runners for the plastic colored bins on the shelf so they work like drawers. And here is an example of one of the difficulties of living overseas. We haven’t gotten around to the bins yet because, well, we don’t know where to buy screws. They just don’t have Lowe’s or Home Depot over here, and figuring out where to buy milk, coffee, and good bread (finding a good bread store it is essential to life in Asia) has been higher on our list.

Bathroom

Our bathroom has the same yellow and orange color-scheme as the kitchen. But I was thrilled to discover that I already had a shower curtain that matched perfectly. That, and that the best color to match yellow and orange in the bathroom is pink! So, Yay! for fun pink bathroom accessories. I think my next toothbrush will be Hello Kitty.

What I might change if I could…

That and maybe the orange toilet. Oh, and the cockroaches, definitely the cockroaches. On second thought, the orange toilet can stay.

And that’s where we live now.

*The cockroaches we have here are much much smaller than the ones we had in Taichung. And slower too. With softer shells. So my kill rate has improved, but I still hate them just as much.