Terry's Profile

Fantastic. You have cool stuff and a great eye. I do hope you win.

I know you won't take my advice because this is a subjective question of sensibility, but the change I would make would be to paint all the wood furniture you have along your television wall one color to unify the span. It's too busy for my taste, but apparently not for yours.

Anyway, I congratulate you on your fantastic taste and do hope you win.

I'm with those commenters who are appalled at the arrangement of books by color or size and so on. I am a serious reader and need to find my books, thus, I have always used the Dewey Decimal System.

A couple of years ago I did a serious cull, since I found reading on my Kindle fantastic and the prospect of saving space wonderful. Well, I highly recommend this. One tiny device can hold an entire library — well, not art books and such, but certainly unillustrated books. I await the day Kindle incorporates the Dewey System into its devices: it's sorely lacking.

I did keep a couple of shelves of books: 1) art tomes and 2) signed copies or books I knew I'd never find again. Everything else is being scanned by Google and Amazon and will be available sooner rather than later. Now, having only a couple of shelves, my house is far less dusty (actually, it's seldom dusty now), and I know that what I cannot get on Kindle I can get via the New York Public Library.

Finally, if I went to someone's house and they arranged their books by color, I'd be sniggering under my breath. That is no way to show respect for the written word.

Wood. It's much, much cleaner and you will sleep better as a result. If you feel compelled to put your feet on something soft when you get out of bed, put in a small area rug, preferably the kind you can stick in the washer.

You've gotten some good advice here. Personally, I would concentrate on the things that you will live with for a long time to come. For example: I'd rather buy a good sofa that will last me for years than change the fixtures in an apartment (unless they're god-awful, in which case, please change the fixtures!). If you decide to live in the apartment for a few years, then it's a good idea to do some changes. But for 12 months? I think not.

Not a fan. A nice console table or a dresser would have been better. Kudos on the carpentry and shimming though.

I've worked this out. Take a look at http://cooperstreetviews.blogspot.com/2011/08/sandys-design-dilemma.html. It has a floorplan, drawings and a suggested shopping list.

I did this as well. It's completely worth the time and really inexpensive.

I have a tip for people with window AC units. If you have water collecting under the AC on the inside of the window (the frame), the AC probably needs to be cleaned.

I couldn't afford professional cleaning this year, so I took the AC out of its casing and cleaned the bottom out. It was full of gunk, which was impeding the air flow and forcing water out the bottom. Then I took a steam iron and pointed it at the gunkiest areas: this dissolved the dirt, and I was able to clean those parts with paper towels.

Steam cleaning runs as much as $200 - $300 in NYC, so I saved a lot of money. The whole cleaning took less than an hour.

Gray. Two shades, as recommended above.

So here's my advice:

1. Get rid of everything that your friends don't like. (Obviously, the essentials have to stay, but that leaves you with a small list of things to buy or replace.)

2. Have your friends do a clip file of what they like from shelter magazines and the Internet.

3. Go slow. It's very possible to live without junk and it's very possible to live with a very few pieces of furniture. Don't let them buy anything that they don't absolutely love.