Today I attached mounting hooks to the shelf, Alena bought a set of wall anchors and we put it up. Finally those poor cars have a permanent place. It only took us year and a half.
This weekend was a home improvement weekend for us. Yesterday we covered up our basement storage cage with some tarp (before it was see-through), found a place to make copies of all our home keys and weather-proofed our air conditioners for the winter (wind and moisture resistant covers).
Today we finally got around to building a shelf for my old diecast model car collection. It’s been sitting in a box for almost a year now. We were unable to find a shelf anywhere that would work for this purpose, so the only solution was to build one ourselves, just like I did the last time (old one broke a long time ago).
We went to our local hardware store — Doody Home Center. I said it before and I’ll say it again — this is by far the best hardware store I have ever seen with the most helpful staff.
We picked out a set of boards and asked to have them cut to our specifications. Later on at home we glued and nailed them together and right now we’re in the process of painting the shelf with clear polyurethane. I have put several coats on, but I’ll probably finish it up tomorrow. So we figured we’ll post a couple of pictures of it now. Too bad we didn’t photograph the whole process.
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says:October 8, 2008 @ 19:57
[…] I attached mounting hooks to the shelf, Alena bought a set of wall anchors and we put it up. Finally those poor cars have a permanent […]
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As you can see there are very few empty spots left on our refrigerator. The main reason is that we try to buy a magnet every time we visit some place — with few exceptions where we forgot to find one. We also got a bunch from friends and family.
The top door has magnets of the places that we’ve visited. Majority of them are from the places that we visited together — the exceptions are Minsk and Moscow. I like to just stand it front of the fridge sometimes looking over our collection and remember how and where each one was bought. So many good memories.
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says:
August 22, 2008 @ 14:41
It seems time have arrived to buy an additional fridge 
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says:August 22, 2008 @ 14:48
Heh, I will pitch the idea to Alena. We’ll see what she says. 
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As I wrote before we went to IKEA this weekend to get some stuff for our apartment. Out of all the stuff that we wanted we didn’t find anything, but one thing — IKEA Billy bookcase, even though even this item was marked as sold out.
To our surprise we were able to find the right color bookcase and the glass doors for it at their warehouse. So that’s what we bought. I assembled it the same very evening and Alena moved some of our books and a whole bunch of trinkets into the bookcase.
It’s came out like a micro version of my parents’ bookcase that I wrote about a while ago. But even though it is much smaller it looks just as good, or so I think. 
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says:August 22, 2008 @ 12:25
trinkets? 
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says:August 22, 2008 @ 12:48
Сувениры типа.
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says:August 22, 2008 @ 16:39
:) была такая мысль, когда картинку ближе посмотрел… буду знать…
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Well, this past weekend we finally decided to do something that we haven’t gotten to in over a year that we’ve been living here — add some shelves to our office closet.
The thing is that the guy we bought the place from mean for this room to be a bedroom I guess, and he made the closet for hanging clothes. We, instead, piled up a bunch of our photo and computer bags in there, and then more then half of that space was wasted, because you can’t store anything on top of the bags.
We carefully measured the size of the shelves that we would need and went to a local hardware store — 
Doody Home Center. Now this place might not be as big as Home Depot or Lowes, but it’s by far the best hardware store I’ve been to. This wasn’t the first time experience either. Basically we just asked a guy working there where we could find the boards for the shelves. Not only did he help us find the boards, he cut them for us precisely to the right size. Go get someone to do that at Home Depot.
Went home, drilled some holes, installed the pins, the shelves, attached the moldings, done! Came out rather nice.
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It took us a little over a year, but we finally ordered a set of honeycomb shades for our bedroom. The sheers were nice, but I think it’s going to be much cozier with white shades on the windows during the evening instead of the dark night outside.
We ordered our shades from SelectBlinds.com. They often have a good promotion going, have a lot of different choices of shades and our order was delivered to us within 5 business days. Only time will show how well the cordless mechanism holds up.
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says:July 5, 2008 @ 07:40
Я смотрю, у вас становится все уютнее и уютнее.
Глядя на фотку даже спать захотелось
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says:July 8, 2008 @ 19:41
Приезжай в гости!
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I made the last post on the parents’ apartment a while ago. I wanted to take some pictures for a while now, but I held myself off so I could post photos of when everything was ready, or almost ready.
That moment finally came on Friday, June 13th, which coincided with our 13th anniversary in United States. The final touch was the installation of curtain rods and the handing of curtains themselves, which my parents ordered a month or so ago.
There is also a matter of getting the frames for all the paintings they have, but that will not change the general feel of the rooms.
All the pictures have captions on them, so just mouse over the photo to see a small description.
I think the apartment came out really well and is super cozy. I would trade in a second. I also will take credit for a lot of it. I talked my parents into getting most of the stuff in the living room, including furniture, lights, rugs and even picking the wall colors.
The bedroom furniture was picked out by my parents themselves, but I like it a lot also.
In conclusion I want to say that I’m very happy for my parents. It’s nice to finally have a nice place which came out so great.
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says:June 16, 2008 @ 17:10
Yeah, I really like how the apartment looks like!
I also love the fact that we live so close to each other, and that we can see each other more often now.
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says:June 17, 2008 @ 14:59
We love our apartment even more after this posting. 
Thank you Danusha for convincing us to buy this lovely apartment and spending a lot of time with us in finding stuff, arranging everything in the apartment and enjoying the apartment with us. Even though not everything is completed yet, if anybody wants to see our apartment they are welcomed to come.
It’s great to have such caring children living so close to us. We are very lucky parents!
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says:June 17, 2008 @ 16:44
Nice, I like it 
Even Lina’s Pink Room 
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says:June 17, 2008 @ 22:31
woooow.
looks really really good. (trying to censor my words here) awesome.
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says:June 17, 2008 @ 22:54
Lenchik, I’m just imaging your real non-censored comment and just can’t not laugh. Great stuff, man.
Thanks for the comments, everyone!
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says:July 5, 2008 @ 07:56
Очень, и очень уютно. Особенно фотка - где Рыся дрыхнет Самый последний и самый главный штрих!
Когда перееду в свою квартиру, тоже заведу кошака
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Summer has just started and we already have problems associated with heat. On Tuesday Alena turned on our office air conditioner only to find out that it doesn’t really cool the air anymore.
Then she plugged our 110 volt unit in our living room into 220 volt outlet which was conveniently located right by it. Alex and I tried to open it up, found a burned fuse, tried to replace it, but it just keeps blowing up now. It’s probably fried for good.
Finding an AC repair shop proved to be more difficult then we thought. All the places that we knew about closed down and yellow pages don’t really produce any good results. Now we’re stuck with having to buy a new one I guess for our living room at least, but the problem will be fitting it into the wall opening.
For now I’m just trying to keep Alena away from the last one of the 3 air conditioners that we have in our bedroom. 
And if anybody planned going for a SPA, just come over and drink some tea with us in our living room.
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says:June 12, 2008 @ 12:40
Very funny and sad at the same time. 
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says:June 12, 2008 @ 12:44
Yeah, it’s a very sad story. Although I can’t stop laughing after reading Danya’s little sketch. 
What I want to say in my defense is that the freaking outlets look EXACTLY THE SAME! 
Anyway, as Danya said, now we have to replace the poor thing, which is both costly and requires a lot of physical effort.
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says:June 12, 2008 @ 14:49
Jeez Alena, don’t you use voltage testers on your outlets before you plug things in?
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says:June 12, 2008 @ 14:53
I still secretly think that it should have worked twice as well at 220V. Maybe you should try it again, but this time with an open mind.
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says:June 12, 2008 @ 14:58
I guess that depends on what you expect it to do. It works really well on electricity bill savings now.
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I’ve just realized today (04/29) that we’ve lived in our apartment for over a year already. And that was a good year!! (1)
says:
May 14, 2008 @ 12:17
(1)
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says:May 14, 2008 @ 12:17
И это еще только начало! Толи еще будет ой-ёй-ёй!
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A lot of things are happening, but we haven’t been writing much about it. My parents have moved into their new apartment almost 2 months ago. All this time they have been slowly finding and buying the furniture for their new home.
It’s been an exhausting, yet fun experience. Problems like these are my favorite kind of problems. At this point however they are very close to done.
The latest addition is the IKEA BILLY bookcase system. Huge thanks to Misha for helping us get all of it to Brooklyn. Without his help there is no way we would be able to get it. Long live the minivan… and its owner!
My dad has brought a lot of books from Tashkent with him. All this time they’ve been hidden away or stacked Read more…
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says:February 26, 2008 @ 11:05
Даничка!
Ты сделал хорошую фотографию и написал к ней замечательный текст. Действительно, теперь я могу найти и легко достать любую нужную мне книгу из домашней библиотеки. С некоторыми из них я встретился, как с добрыми старыми друзьями, с которыми не виделся много лет. И эта встреча, представь себе, вызвала ностальгические воспоминания. Да и вообще хлопоты последнего времени были иногда утомительными, но все же по большей части приятными. И мама присоединяется в этом к моему мнению!!! А наша новая квартира становится все более уютной.
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says:February 27, 2008 @ 16:52
Поздравляю родителей с тем, что наконец-то они преодолели все эти трудности и начинают потихоньку обживаться в своей квартире. Это, конечно, хлопоты, но хлопоты приятные
Полка выглядит очень аккуратно и здорово! Разделяю ностальгические чувства: я тоже соскучился по своей библиотеке в Одессе, однако недалек тот день, когда мы снова встретимся
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says:March 1, 2008 @ 17:58
а я вот подумал - будет ли на моей квартире полка для бумажных книг… может если только полочка.
сегодня так развита цифра, что возможно роль плотяного шкафчика для книг будет играть приличный media server.
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says:March 1, 2008 @ 19:02
Да, что верно-то верно, всё меняется. Я вот тоже книжки художественные часто читаю в электронном виде. Если честно, бумажные читать приятнее, но их не всегда можно достать, ну, и платить за них надо как правило.
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says:March 1, 2008 @ 19:15
А я не согласен. Когда появилось телевидение, говорили, что театр теперь умрет. А он жив и процветает, потому что в зрительном зале возникает особая и неповторимая атмосфера общения с живым актером. То же самое с книгой. Конечно, любой текст сейчас можно перенести на электронный носитель,но для меня держать в руках хорошо изданную книгу да еще с иллюстрациями, выполненными хорошим художником, совсем не то, что CD. А книжку в бумажном переплете, можно читать, например, в автобусе, и не надо таскать с собой тяжелый лаптоп.
Мне можно возразить, что со временем и компьютер станет размером со спичечный коробок, но все равно бумажную книгу мне читать приятнее. А еще автор может оставить на ней свой автограф.
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says:March 2, 2008 @ 08:54
А еще бумажные книги пахнут и такое удовольствие прикасаться к хорошей белой бумаге и твердой гладкой обложке
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says:March 2, 2008 @ 15:26
To Yola_k:
А мне жуть, как нравится запах старых, ставших уже желтыми, книг!
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says:March 2, 2008 @ 18:54
Я очень рад тому обстоятельству, что мой книжный шкаф заинтересовал столь многих людей и вызвал бурную полемику!
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says:March 2, 2008 @ 20:02
И что интересно, был достигнут консенсус — самое главное в книгах — это запах.
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says:March 2, 2008 @ 20:07
To Daniel:
Ну, еще в книгах можно прятать деньги. Порой бывает так здорово найти запрятанные 5 лет назад 10 рублей!
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says:March 7, 2008 @ 10:43
У нас, кстати, денежная заначка хранится в книге с многообещающим названием “Ключ к будущему”
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says:March 7, 2008 @ 11:02
по вашему адресу уже выехали любители “почитать” 
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October 9, 2008 @ 07:44
Классная коллекция! Вот только Лене пыль вытирать будет ой как неудобно
October 9, 2008 @ 11:13
Вот это точно. Всё это дело — магнит для пыли.
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