Environment upgrade part 3

Following the purchase of my house, I immediately purchased my kitchen appliances and survived for a few months with the bare minimum. Yeah, I slept on the floor and woke up feeling rough every day, but I got through it, fed myself and can happily look back in hindsight at making the right decision. I was financially unstable, had more debt than I am worth and wasn’t sure whether or not my analysis of the housing market was right. So I stopped all spendings besides the bare essentials.

BASIC ESSENTIALS

I guess that the kitchen essentials marked the first stage of part3. In which I bought the following:

Dish Washer: At $499, I guess still my proudest handyman achievement, yet the cheapest piece and most disappointing in performance by far. I thought that a dishwasher can clean tough stains, but I was wrong.

Fridge: I don’t really care about bending down, so I opted for the cheapest stainless steel model. Great looks and awesome shelving arrangement, but the stainless steel option prevents me from switching the way the door opens. Small inconvenience, but not important.

Range/Stove: Most expensive piece by itself. I made a point of choosing a more expensive model that uses laser to heat up the heating elements underneath a clean one-piece ceramic plate. Cooking is essential to my happiness.

Washer/Dryer: Front loading high energy efficiency model. Since these will be hidden in the laundry room, I don’t really care what color they are which saved a lot of money.

These are all bought in the Brick. I chose the brick after dropping by all the appliance stores to compare prices. I then located an English speaking sales person and proceeded on bartering with him. Due to my high fever at that time, I was only able to get a 20% discount. The key bargaining chip to bartering with appliance sales person relies on two important facts. Buy several items at a time and buy the extended coverage. For a sales person of high value items, principles of selling house applies. i.e. quantity is more important than wasting time on arguing about the price of one item. When you get the extended coverage, the sales person gains more commission than if he sells you the actual item at high value. (I guestimate about 20% commission on warranty and only 1% on actual item). I also chose energy star compliant appliances so I can get some money back from Hydro Quebec.

FURNITURES

Took me a while before I can start furnishing my condo, and it isn’t until November 1st till I declare that I’ve completed all the major furnishing. Leaving decoration and entertainment systems till last. The cost of these combined shouldn’t get past $1k. Stage two took a lot longer to realize because I took my sweet time to tryout each piece in between purchases. I measured and tested each one of them to the fullest. The purchases were made in the following chronological order:

Bed frame: Most important piece of my bed room. I debated long and hard between a queen size or just a single due to Feung Shui of a wall of mirror in my room. (Basically, you don’t want to wake up looking into the mirror and you don’t want people to see the bed from the door). I went with Feung Shui for the underlying reasoning of the psychological effects. I also have to measure the bed frame several times before I determine that the queen size will not violate these rules.

Dining/Coffee table: I don’t really have a clearly defined living room or dining room which is part of the reason I bought this condo in the first place. Hence it speaks to reason that one table will fit both role. The hard solid wood provides stability and orients the rest of the furniture arrangments when placed in the middle of the room in party arrangement. While in day to day arrangement, it provides the best meditation center and breakfast table by my huge window facing the soccer field.

Bamboo Meditation pad: Perfect for the seats of my table. I chose to have no back support so that people are forced to lean into the table, creating a simulated body language of interest in the conversation. The second reason is that I am a dancer and I have perfect posture, hence I’d like to enforce that on people.

Bookshelf: A bit too tall for my liking, but it serves as a room separator for the living room and the little corner where my freezer and garbage bin sits. I also have way too many text books.

Desk: I found the almost perfect corner desk at Staples. Almost perfect because its keyboard slider platform is in the wrong place and it is an ugly brown color which is the wrong color for my bedroom. No problem, some drilling, screwing and spray painting later, it is exactly the way I like it and black to match the bed frame.

Armchair: Also black and has back support. If you watch me play computer games, you’ll understand why. every piece fits together like a charm and totally unintentional too.

Kitchen island extension: Made these myself, very proud of my own achievement. I couldn’t find the exact size I wanted so I made my own.

Bar stool: I like the mediterranean feel. Notice that they also don’t have back support.

Lounge chair: I’ve been eyeing this chair since university and can never justify its function enough to buy it. I still can’t justify it now so I just said fuck it.

Mattress: It took me a while to find a cheap but firm mattres, but I finally found it at Ikea. The first choice was in Brault & Martineau where the sales person suggested a brand called “Ceramic” (Yeah, it was nice and firm) for $699. But the special is only up for 2 more days. Normally, this would’ve compelled a normal person to buy within those 2 day. But on me, it simply meant that I will check back on day 3 to see if she was bullshitting or not. She was.

Fuz Chairs: The Canadian market for huge, bigger than life bean bag chairs (a.k.a fuf chairs) is non existent. I have a hard time finding any furniture store providing even a small bean bag chair, let along designer ones. Online searches returned several American shops that don’t ship to Canada (Or for an expensive shipping and handling fee) because it is simply too big. The Canadian online fuf chair stores are… well lacking in selection. So I imported the covers from New Zealand and bought the expanded polystyrene foam beads from Walmart in November when the stuffing’s price dropped by 50%. (After quite a bit of searching, Walmart provides the cheapest and best material for individual buyers) I have to thank the livejournal community for telling me where to look.

It didn’t take as long as I thought. Only 6 months. The condo now reflects exactly what I care and don’t care about and is probably the most daring snap shot I took of my own soul. I am surprised that it’s beautiful.