On the dangers of spontaneous apartment improvement
While I wish I could tell you that I spent last Friday night doing something incredibly interesting and social, or at the very least relaxing, the truth is that I spent almost the entire evening waging war with what was essentially a gigantic sticker.
You see, a few weeks ago I finally received the Blik wall decal I had ordered online, convinced that it would be the perfect way to accent the dark blue feature wall in my bedroom. This wall had been blank for far too long, and the Blik decal seemed like the perfect solution – particularly when the website assured me it would be quick and painless to hang. So Friday night rolled around, and since I was tired of staring at the giant cardboard mailing tube the decal shipped in, I decided to take action.
This is the point where those of you who know me will start to shake your heads, knowing exactly where this story is headed. For those of you without that background, I should back up and explain: I guess it would be accurate to describe me as something of a compulsive D.I.Y. apartment improver. I love – no, actually I’m somewhat obsessed with – interior design, and when I moved into my apartment nearly two years ago I became dead set on transforming it from your typical, overwhelmingly bland rental into something you might see while thumbing through the pages of Canadian House and Home or Elle Decor. Ambitious? Yes. Problematic? Well, sort of, because all my planned improvements had to be carried out stealthily, without my landlord discovering what I was up to.
The first project I took on was transforming all the kitchen cabinetry from the most hideous burnt-chocolate-coloured wood into pure white. This was also my first experience painting anything, ever, which would explain how I managed to a) paint all the hinges shut then subsequently have to painstakingly scrape them clean again, b) discover that it takes no fewer than four thick coats of paint to cover the hideous dark wood, and c) step in paint and not realize it until a set of white footprints were found meandering across the hardwood floor. The second project involved painting two walls in the living room a very specific shade of purple – no, not purple, that sounds too tacky, it’s actually what I would call a “dusty plum” colour – and that went shockingly smoothly except for the part where I managed to dip the ends of my hair into the paint can and remain oblivious to this until the paint had streaked all across my back and hardened completely.
I also painted the hallway pure white and the bedroom in two very complementary shades of bluish grey known as Manhattan Mist and Silver Hill (I’ll admit it, the names were a small deciding factor in choosing the colours) which surprisingly went off without a hitch, but somewhere in between all that painting I had decided that it would be a great idea to take down the massive and shockingly ugly ancient chandelier in the dining area and replace it with an entirely new fixture on my own, with no help at all. Keep in mind that I had never so much as flipped a circuit breaker before, when suddenly I found myself standing on an Ikea chair of questionable strength with a partially detached chandelier dangling precariously from one hand, an assortment of screwdrivers clutched in the other, strips of electrician’s tape clamped between my teeth, and just to top it all off, a freakishly large spider climbing lazily out of what was now a gaping hole in my ceiling. I’ll spare you the suspense: It ended well.
But back to the Blik decal. As it turned out, the decal was much larger than I had expected, was composed of no fewer than 11 different sections (oh, the possibilities for mistakes), and was extremely… sticky. Which would explain why I was ready to break down into tears of frustration after the decal had managed to adhere to my face, my arms, my bedspread and itself, but – shockingly – not the wall where it was supposed to go. Three hours and two glasses of wine later the thing was finally firmly in place and looking amazingly good for something with such a disaster-laden installation, but I’ve learned my lesson: Next time I decide to tackle an apartment improvement project, I’ll make sure I’ve managed to coerce an unsuspecting friend into helping out.
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