home improvement

girl, charge your drill

SHE’S NOT LEVEL

Hello from the world-famous “Big Apple,” where I am researching something called a Naked Pumpkin Run (NPR) for professional reasons. 

When I’m done, I’m going to build a bookshelf. I’ve got a box full of heavy-duty wall mounts and brackets from Menards (these, FYI). I’ve ordered three orderly slabs of untreated knotty pine from Dyke’s Lumber on Sixth. I am prepared to shred our walls to the point of architectural instability.

When it comes to home improvement, I’m not interested in Command strips. They’re the home-improvement equivalent of completing a crossword puzzle in pencil. They’re hesitant. Noncommittal. Anyway, they always tear up your wall, despite promises of a proprietary renter-friendly super-adhesive. There’s no point. I’m into screws, baby. I want nails driven decisively into the sliver of wall between the kitchen and the entryway, anchoring a line drawing of a dog smoking a cigarette. I want a retro 15-pound lamp screwed into a ceiling joist. I want permanence! I want to stay in a place until I curl up and die!!!

My partner and I moved into a new space a month ago, and I’m doing everything I can to facilitate that permanence—at least, as much permanence as Brooklyn renters can afford. In my experience, there are two factors that’ll guarantee a semi-permanent rental situation: rent stabilization, and a negligent landlord who’ll leave you be. We’ve got both. (We also have mice, irreparably fogged windows, and a few roaches. See “negligent landlord.” Gives the cat something to do.)

Our last apartment was a beautiful, circa-1880 railroad unit in Chicago. We lived directly beneath our landlady and her boyfriend. The first time I met the boyfriend, he explained that his brother had some sort of complication with his digestive tract. “It’s the sphincter,” he insisted, gesturing wildly. “Y’know: the butthole.”

In that apartment, we had no maintenance issues and minimal pest presence. The trade-off was the promise of regular rent increases—the boyfriend literally promised us—and a constant state of mild surveillance, especially when it came to personalization. We were technically allowed to paint the walls and hang art, but conversations with past tenants made it clear that we’d be paying dearly, perhaps more dearly than is technically legal, when it came time to collect our security deposit. Plus, we could hear the boyfriend’s hacking cough through our ceiling, which made me paranoid about what he could hear. Could he hear my ghost story podcasts? Would that make him more or less likely to increase the rent?

our Brooklyn coffee nook. please disregard the busted window and the little cat prints all over the floor

Now, we’re in a rent-stabilized apartment in Brooklyn. The walls are thick. The neighbors keep to themselves. We’re two blocks from the park. I no longer feel like I’m crashing in my landlady’s living room. I do not see us moving out of this apartment. I guess something wild could happen—our building could get thrown out of stabilization, or my partner and I could get banned from the borough of Brooklyn for being too sexy, sexy, sexy—requiring us to move again. But for now, we deserve to live in a place that feels like home. Time to charge the drill!

With that in mind, I’ll be shifting the focus of this newsletter for a bit to follow my home improvement journey. These will not be renter-friendly hacks. We will be making holes in the wall. We will be painting somewhat poorly. We will be conducting basic woodworking and replacing knobs. We will be using a level. Eventually, we will build and install a giant storage bench to span one of our living room walls.

If that’s not your speed, I will not be offended if you unsubscribe. I may return to writing vaguely about creativity; I may not. I do think that working with one’s hands—and, similarly, customizing one’s space—is a pretty generative act of creativity. I also think it’s nice to know how to do some basic home stuff: cranking a damn drill, stocking a toolkit, unclogging a horrible drain. So I’ll put together some how-tos, too. If you’re curious about DIY rental stuff, stick around.

arranging my lumber,

Lil