Last week, I promised you results. So today, I come bearing gifts: the outcome of four furniture refinishing projects completed over the course of a few months. The process introduced us to skills (and muscles) that we didn’t know we had; apparently, they were lying dormant, only to be revealed when our need for attractive home furnishings became too much to bear.

First on the project list was this cherry-colored mirror, which I thought would look more modern in a darker mahogany stain.

Before:

Little did we know that tackling this project might break us before we’d really gotten started. Unfortunately, the process of sanding and staining is much more onerous than sanding, priming and painting. As I advised last week, when you’re getting ready to paint a piece of furniture, you just need to sand it enough to rough up the surface for proper paint adhesion. When you want to stain a piece of furniture, however, you need to sand it first to the bare wood (see below). And that process, my friends, is no walk in the park.

During:

Once the entire mirror frame was bare, we painted a very thin coat of stain onto the thirsty wood. After 20 minutes, we wiped down the surface with a clean rag to remove any excess stain—this is important, as any unabsorbed stain won’t end up drying completely—and then topped it off with three thin coats of the same eco-friendly poly coating (Safecoat Acrylacq) we’d eventually use on the painted pieces. But these hours of manual labor paid off! We were left with a dark, glossy, sophisticated-looking mirror when all was said and done.

After:

Ah—and then there were the chairs.

Before:

What can I say? The blond wood veneer on these chairs needed to be covered up as soon as humanly possible. After Ted sanded, primed, and painted the set with three coats of Behr’s Pot of Cream—these were his pet project—we deemed these fit to be placed around our dinner table.

After:

This next piece is one of my proudest refinishing accomplishments. I needed my own little writing space, and my great-grandmother’s desk would serve the purpose perfectly—and add a lovely touch of history to the apartment, too. Unfortunately, the excessively dark, worn-down wood was less than inspiring. I handled the entire refinishing process on this one, using Behr’s Pot of Cream again for the color, and picked out a couple of finishing touches for it as well. I’ll show those off for you soon! Till then, I’ll just say this: I smile every time I sit down to write or edit photos now. And, heck, every time I walk past. I love this desk.

Before:

After:

Lastly, a piece that probably looks quite familiar to you. I thought I’d show it off one more time, though, to put it into context among all the other work that’s been done. With all the hard work behind us, it’s especially satisfying to scroll through the mismatched “before” pictures, and then look at all the coordinated “afters” for comparison—the red, cream, and mahogany accents feel right at home together.

Before:

After:

There’s much more work to be done in this little apartment of ours, but for now, we’re resting on our laurels a little bit. It’s something we often forget to do before moving onto the next big project, but I’d fully recommend this last step for anyone tackling a similar endeavor: enjoy the fruits of your labor! You deserve it.

You might remember me grumbling under my breath somewhere in these pages, complaining about all our mismatched furniture. Sound familiar? If not, here’s a primer to bring you up to speed: poor twentysomethings rely on the generosity of parents to furnish starter apartments, compile collection of well-made but totally incongruous castoff wooden furniture from different parents’ houses.

There’s a happy ending to this story, though, in which the poor twentysomethings purchase paint and sandpaper, and with a little bit of elbow grease, start to turn things around style-wise. We’ve written this happy ending, word by painstaking word, over the past six months—and now I get to share the results with you!

Well, to be more accurate, today I’ll be sharing one of the results with you, whetting your appetites for a full reveal next week. And I’ll go through the step-by-step process we used to make over each of these lovely-but-tired pieces. Sound good? Then here’s the “before” photo for our first subject, the antique bureau I pilfered from my father’s house. It has some great history, having come originally from my grandfather’s home, but the years hadn’t been too kind to it (or its brass handles—read their story here). These pictures were taken after a light scrub with sandpaper, but paint a pretty accurate portrait of what we were dealing with.

And here’s the glorious “after,” in which the dresser is slicked with four coats of Benjamin Moore’s Vermilion. What do you think—does it fit into our color scheme? Don’t the brass handles pop against the lipstick-colored exterior? And doesn’t the pretty woodwork on the legs shine through all the better now? Spoiler alert: I think so.

Now, for the step-by-step guide to painting your own piece of furniture. It’s really not so bad; if two overgrown kids without DIY experience could swing it, chances are that you can, too.

1) Gently sand your piece of solid wood or wood veneer furniture with a piece of sandpaper—or, better yet, an electric sander. You’re simply trying to rough up the surface of the wood, to give your paint something to adhere to, not to sand down to the bare wood. For an older, more worn-down piece of furniture, this will be extremely easy; you can use high-grit, smoother sandpaper (we used 180 grit) to get the job done. For newer furniture with a glossy, protective coating, start with a low-grit, rougher sandpaper (60 grit), followed by a pass with high-grit paper to smooth the surface.

2) Wipe down the furniture to remove all sanding dust. If using a damp cloth, allow the furniture to dry completely before proceeding.

3) With a small paintbrush, and in a well-ventilated area, apply one or two thin, even coats of primer—I used Kilz latex-based primer. This step will help your paint adhere properly to the wood and go on more evenly. (The key in these next three steps is applying paper-thin coats to avoid gloppy patches of paint, air bubbles, and obvious brushstrokes.) Let dry two to four hours between coats.

4) Apply two to four coats of the paint of your choice, preferably in a semi-gloss finish for maximum wipeability. Remember to brush the paint on paper-thin! Again, let dry completely between coats.

5) Apply two coats of polyurethane coating in extremely thin coats; a little goes a long way. I used Safecoat Acrylacq, a (rare) eco-friendly poly that seals in fumes from the primer and paint you just applied, in case you didn’t choose low- or no-VOC options. (This last step is actually optional, but will help protect your furniture from nicks, scratches, and everyday wear and tear.)

6) Once it’s fully dry—wait at least three full days before handling—enjoy your beautiful new piece of furniture! You’ve earned it.

Happy Friday, my friends! I’d like to celebrate the impending weekend with some end-of-fall photos—a perfect segue into winter, I guess, as we Chicagoans celebrated our first snowflakes of the season yesterday.

But the story behind these photos, I think, is even nicer than the results themselves. A few weeks back, I met up with the extremely talented Jacqui of Happy Jack Eats; we wanted to capture Morton Arboretum, in all its autumnal glory, on film. I took the train out to meet her, through new-to-me villages with sweet storefronts, and ended up having a blast. (I sincerely believe that the best part of moving to a new place has to do with the new relationships that follow. Between meeting lovely people like Jacqui and Maggie in person, hanging out with my hilarious coworkers, and reconnecting with high school and college friends, my heart has been quite full lately. So has my social calendar, but that’s something I can learn to live with.) We talked about photography and our futures, got ourselves just a little bit lost, ran into a troupe of zombie-actors, and had an extremely satisfying meal at Honey Cafe. Basically, there was no room for improvement.

So enjoy these snapshots (Portra 400 for the win!), then call up a friend. You know, just to chat. They make the transition from autumn into winter just a little bit less bittersweet.

In the comments section of last week’s Business post, I heard this question a couple of times over: how does one learn how to budget? So, my lovely readers, I’ve returned with a few thoughts on the subject, and the promise of more details on the horizon.

Why the #@&$ do I need a budget?

Let’s be honest: budgeting doesn’t sound like a very sexy undertaking. Why even bother?

It boils down to this: most of us don’t have a lot of money to throw around. (See: Great Recession. Employment insecurity. Depressed salaries. Exorbitant student loan balances. Widening wealth gap. Sound familiar?) What we do have, then, we need to spend intentionally, in order to maximize our financial security and our enjoyment of life.

Like it or not, budgeting is the practice of intentional spending. Handling your money with intention helps you emphasize things that are important to you, cast aside the things that aren’t, and help you stay afloat next time you’re faced with a financial tsunami.

How to budget

1) Figure out your baseline. Review your personal expenditures—using credit card statements, receipts, or a handy online tool like Mint—to see what “normal” is for you. How much money are you making each month? Can you survive on $50 of groceries per week, or do you need $150? Maybe you find that you don’t spend much on bar tabs, but you really value a certain expensive hobby (or your Friday night tradition of ordering take-out Chinese). Either way, these numbers will help you paint an accurate portrait of your current habits, and may help you identify places to cut back.

2) Embrace the zero. I use a system called zero-based budgeting, and would highly recommend it to others. Using the tool of your choice—a simple Excel or Google Docs spreadsheet works perfectly—start with your monthly income at the top, and deduct each monthly expense until the remainder is zero. This way, you’re planning to spend only what you make in a month, and not a penny more. Dave Ramsey has some very helpful worksheets on his website that will help you set up a zero-based budget and identify all of your monthly expenses, so you’re sure to plan for all of them up front.

3) Handle variable expenses like a pro. It’s easy to predict what some of your expenses will be in advance; gym membership fees, cable bills and auto insurance payments, for example, tend to stay the same, month after month. But what about the bills with some variability?
- For expenses that fluctuate each month: For heating and electric bills, you can look at last November’s bill to estimate what yours will look like this November. You can also overestimate your bill intentionally (so you’ve got some wiggle room), then reallocate the excess when your bill turns out to be lower than you planned for.
- For expenses that occur a few times per year: Every December, I buy Christmas gifts for a dozen people; every three months, I go to the salon for a haircut; and once a year, Koko has a vet visit that inevitably ends up costing us $400. So I’ve set up a separate savings account for these things. You can, too: simply tally your expected expenditure on these kinds of items over the course of a year, divide by 12, and set up an automatic monthly deposit from checking to savings. Next month, when the holidays roll around, I’ll have all my gift money sitting there, ready to go. It’s easy and stress-free—no need to rack up a credit card balance.

4) Allocate the excess. If you don’t have any money left over after necessities are taken care of, then you’ve got to make some sacrifices. If you do have some excess, though, you get to decide how exactly you want to invest in yourself. Put some away for retirement. Allocate some for apartment redecoration. Set aside Sunday-brunch money for you and your friends. Get rid of your debt and gain financial freedom. Whatever’s important to you—security, friendship, hobbies, food, freedom—put the rest of your money where your mouth is.

5) Crown cash as king. There are certain personal expenditures that you have lots of discretion over, such as your groceries, or your going-out-on-the-town money. For these kinds of expenses, consider giving yourself a fixed cash budget every month (and no cheating with the ATM!). When you run out of grocery money, you’re done for the month, and you’d better believe that gives you the willpower to make it last. If you find that you haven’t allotted yourself enough for any one particular expense, then readjust next month—but using cash for your daily expenses will keep you honest like no credit card can.

How does that sound to all of you? It’s hard to get things rolling the first month, but it gets progressively easier as time goes by—promise. Fire away with your questions! Once you’ve got the basics down, we’ll go into the intricacies of saving and spending.

Decorating an apartment sounds like good, clean fun, but in reality, it involves a lot of sweat equity. There are walls to tape off and paint, furniture to refinish (more on that soon!), and—inevitably—way too many Ikea purchases to weld together.

In my opinion, the best part of the decorating process comes before the big move: picking out a color scheme! In our previous abode, I made the mistake of winging it when it came to the color palette, and those random stylistic decisions never came together as a cohesive whole. This time, I vowed to be more strategic about the whole process.

Here, my friends, is the result:

After living with blue walls that were just slightly too vivid in our old place, I knew I’d go for neutral paint this time. Enter: light gray, which is more fun than beige but just as low-key. A sane wall color would allow for pops of cheerful pigment elsewhere in red, gold, and navy—a modified primary color scheme. Against this palette, I figured that bright white trim and deep mahogany wood pieces would make for especially crisp accents.

An equally important consideration in choosing this color palette was the opinion of my roommate (the boyfriend, not the kitten). Ted is pretty chill about most things, design included, but I wanted to keep the aura boy-friendly. Honestly, I could’ve gotten away with painting the walls Pepto-Bismol pink, but this place is supposed to feel like a refuge for both of us. Thus, the modified primary color scheme: red, blue, and yellow feel masculine together, but this particular red has orange undertones—evoking a pretty tube of lipstick—and the yellow component became a sparkly metallic. The result? A perfect compromise between masculine and feminine.

I’m excited to share more details soon! Till then, tell me about how you use color in your homes, and how you compromise on decor with the wonderful people you live with.

It feels good to have my own space again. My belongings are finally unpacked (well, most of them, anyway) and put away in closets, cabinets and atop shelves—a sure sign of permanence in a housing situation.

There’s a supreme comfort in having your possessions accessible to you, isn’t there? As soon as I unpacked my cookbooks, which had remained sealed in storage since Virginia, I couldn’t stop tearing them from the bookshelves and rifling through their photos and recipes. I was ravenous not for the food, but for the return of a sense of ownership. Even if I wasn’t planning on making anything—and for awhile, the fridge and pantry were too barren to raid—it was still nice to know that Ina Garten’s Tuscan Lemon Chicken was there, just in case my eyes (or my soul) got hungry.

As we got used to the quirks of our vintage building (Exhibit A: radiator heat), rediscovering the trappings of our old home made the transition easier. There was our old patterned tablecloth, with its familiar red patchwork. Here was the dining-table-plus-bench we bought when we moved in together, overwhelmed but optimistic about the prospect of filling our empty apartment. There were our heavy, cheery cherry cast-iron pots and pans, which have been burned and battered but still, somehow, keep on going strong. Everything is a little bit wrinkled, scratched and dented from the move, but it’s ours.

This week, we’ll be using Rick Bayless’s Mexican Everyday no fewer than three times. On Sunday night, Ted cooked up a panful of his red chile steak with black and pinto beans. Tonight, we’ll be whipping up red chile chicken and rice (arroz rojo con pollo—I just love the way that rolls off the tongue). And over the weekend, I made a whole-wheat, browned-butter pineapple upside-down cake from the same book.

Maybe it’s because Rick’s the go-to celebrity chef of our new home city; maybe it’s because dropping temperatures call for the self-assured heat of ancho chile powder. Whatever the reason, I feel right at home making and eating this food. And I felt proud of this dessert, which landed on its feet despite having been put together backwards and flipped around more than could have possibly been comfortable.

Come to think of it, this cake and I are a lot alike. Fortunately, I think we both turned out more than okay.

Ingredients
- 6 Tbsp. unsalted butter
- 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
- 3 cups pineapple, diced (or substitute an equal amount of other berries or fruit)
- 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1/4 tsp. baking soda
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg
- 3/4 cup buttermilk or plain yogurt

Preparation
1) Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit, with a rack set squarely in the middle.
2) Melt the butter in a heavy, 10-inch ovenproof skillet. Continue stirring the butter until it begins to brown; remove pan from heat before butter burns. Pour melted butter into a medium-sized bowl.
3) Spoon the brown sugar evenly over the surface of the buttered skillet, and top with fruit in another even layer.
4) In a large bowl, stir the flours, salt, baking soda and powder until mixed together.
5) Add the granulated sugar to the browned butter, stirring thoroughly until butter mixture is light and fluffy. Add the egg, then the buttermilk or yogurt, stirring until combined.
6) Pour the butter mixture over the flour mixture, stirring until just combined. Do not overmix.
7) Spoon the batter evenly over the fruit in the skillet, then bake for about 35 minutes. The top of the cake will be golden brown, and a toothpick should emerge cleanly from the cake when tested for doneness. Let cake cool for 10 minutes.
8) Using a plate large enough to hold the cake, invert the skillet onto this serving platter in one quick movement. Slice and serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

The one downside of dispatching with all your student loans? When you emerge debt-free on the other side, you have to figure out a new set of motivations for your financial life. Not that I have much money to throw around, even now, but I’m a very intention-driven person: with one goal gone, another must follow.

With a huge chunk of my paycheck back in my pocket, safe again from the grubby fingers of Sallie Mae, I started to mull over what I wanted my money to do for me. And I wasn’t content to consider the question as a false dichotomy (splurge on luxuries with the excess, or hoard it for a rainy day?). After much thought, I came up with a mission statement for my money: I was going to invest in myself.

One aspect of investing in yourself is pretty stodgy-sounding, albeit important: socking away money in emergency and retirement savings. Those two things are the first things I do with my paycheck every month. And I’ll definitely sit you down here at some point, hand you a stiff drink, and talk to you about the intricacies of both of them.

But honestly, I think the other kind of investment in yourself—the kind where you figure out what you’re passionate about and educate the hell out of yourself to make yourself proficient in it—that’s the hard one. That’s harder than determining a proper 401(k) investment allocation, or setting up automatic deposits to your savings account. It requires you to dig down deep in yourself, ask some difficult and painful questions about why you’re here on this earth, and then believe in the answers—even, or especially, if they scare you. Most importantly, it then requires you to become the first investor in an (unproven) venture based on that dream.

But if you do it right, I think you could be the safest investment you ever made.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve come (slowly) to a big, frightening realization: I want to be a film photographer. There are innumerable hurdles, of course. My artistic education, which started out pretty strong in elementary school, fizzled out as I grew up. I know embarrassingly little about the basic tools I’ll need to employ. And I have no freaking idea how to tell a coherent story through a series of photographs.

But all of my insides are crying out to learn how. They want to know about film stocks and light meters, and they want me to get out of my house already and start practicing, goddamnit. So I listened to those voices, and I put my money behind them too: each month, I’ve got a line item in my budget for film and development costs. Next year, after shooting a ton of test rolls, I’ll be going to an amazing, three-day film photography workshop (and yes, I’m out-of-my-mind nervous). It’ll be a looong time before I’m able to dip my toe into the water as a professional, and maybe ten years down the road—because this is a long-term investment, mind you—I’ll see some sort of financial return on those efforts. More immediately, though, the intangible benefits will make the monetary outlay so completely worthwhile.

So what are your insides crying out for you to invest in? Your health, your friends, your relationship to the outside world? Put your money where your mouth is. Invest in a pair of running shoes, or a brunch date, or a trip to someplace new. Invest in what’s important to you, and you’ll start reaping the dividends.

Moving day came and went—our fourth move in two and a half years!—and now we’re steadily building our nest together, twig by twig, in Chicago’s lakeside Edgewater neighborhood. We still look around slack-jawed on a daily basis, unable to believe that all this high-ceilinged glory is ours. We don’t have nearly enough stuff to fill up the myriad closets and cabinets (three cheers for storage space!) and highly doubt that we ever will, given our minimalist tendencies. And while half of our belongings have yet to be unpacked, and the walls need a fresh coat of paint—Benjamin Moore’s Moonshine, if you were wondering—we already feel quite at home.

Want to take a look around?

I’ll lead you around from front to back. Above is our little dining nook, with its big south-facing windows.

Directly in back of the dining area is the living room and kitchen. We’re sort of in love with that peninsula.

Here’s a better look at the kitchen, as we walk through the central hallway…

…and here’s a view of the hallway, looking toward the back deck.

Off this central hallway is the bathroom, which holds a walk-in linen closet off-camera to the right (this concept is awesome, but very foreign, to me).

Here, we’re looking from the bathroom back into the hallway.

One room past the bathroom is the bedroom, with its own walk-in closet. Seriously, I don’t own nearly enough clothing to make this necessary, but I’m not complaining.

And finally, in the very back, is our deck. That is not our table, unfortunately, but we’re hoping that if we get in good with the neighbors, we might obtain sitting rights. Here’s hoping.

So, then. Ted, Koko and I all agree that we’ve lucked out: Ted and I have room to grow here, and Koko has a million closet shelves for her jumping, nestling and napping purposes. This new chapter is beginning after a few years of hardship for us all, and we couldn’t be more excited to welcome it with open arms!

In a beauty contest pitting Chicago’s neighborhoods against each other, Goose Island wouldn’t exactly make the top ten. She might have some great insights to share during the interview competition—about the amazing beer brewed on her shores, or the fact that she’s the only island on the Chicago River—but even an evening gown couldn’t hide her homely features.

Nevertheless, I found myself walking around there the other week, around those streets flagged with banners proudly reading “Chicago’s Industrial Corridor,” in order to find Calumet Photo. It was there that a bespectacled guy named Fred taught me how to use my new Yashica Mat 124, loaded it up with a roll of Tri-X, and sent me out to capture the world on medium format film.

Unable to contain my excitement, I shot my test roll there without the guidance of a light meter. Somehow, the gritty black-and-white film, the striking square frames, and the eerie emptiness of the neighborhood made for some pretty cool shots. I can’t wait to see what else this thing can do!

I’ve been occupied with preparations for my upcoming move, to a totally cute city neighborhood that feels light-years away from Chicago’s Industrial Corridor. But for better or for worse, this is a side of the city I love. In a strange way, it’s this kind of place that draws us into cities in the first place: for the excitement, the bigness, and just a touch of the seedy underbelly that gives everything an air of danger.

Goose Island, you’re about to become my new neighbor, and I think we’re going to be marvelous friends. I’d lend you a cup of sugar anytime.

Here’s the best definition of home that I can offer you: home is the place you always come back to. In a literal sense, it can be a physical place, defined by the boundary of your abode’s four walls, or a set of latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates you can pin down on a map. In an emotional sense, home is the place you come back to for comfort at the end of a long day (and who you are after your public or professional persona has been turned off). More broadly, it encompasses everything from the relationships you share with your partner, family, pets, and roommates to the community that surrounds you. In some cases, home might be a constant, something you could set your watch to—in others, it might be a fluid thing defined by some aspects more than others (like, say, your relationships, more so than place). So when I talk about “home,” I mean different things in different instances: your living space, your values, your people. It’s your personal sphere of influence, whatever that looks like.

As young adults graduating into the world, we don’t exactly lose our old homes, but we are expected to create new ones for ourselves—a heady task that probably requires more guidance than we’re given by our parents, educators, and society. I’m no expert on this matter, but that’s the point—none of us are. We’re leaving a previous life of structure for an undefined new existence. We make our way as best we can, and glean knowledge from our mistakes and experiences.

Through trial and error, however, I’ve found that a happy home life seems to rest on the balance of three things: business matters (household administrative and financial duties), matters of beauty (the art, style, and design details that allow you to personalize your place), and matters of bounty—a more intangible kind of emotional fullness (the people you invite in, the food you serve, the hilarious conversations you have around the coffee table). When properly attended to, these three elements—beauty, bounty, and business—constitute a properly-balanced home life.

Going forward, I hope to mirror that balance in the post content here at A Little Ginger. My talented boyfriend whipped up perfectly illustrative banners to represent each concept, which will run at the top of each related post from now on. Have a look:

It’s no accident that you’ll find the word “our” on each of these banners. Although this is a personal blog, where I share my thoughts and experiences as they relate to my own home, many of the issues I face are of universal concern. I hope my words can spur discussions that relate directly to you, and the issues that we all face (and where they can’t, well, that’s what guest posting will be for!).

So, what do you all think? Do you generally agree with this equation for a balanced home life (beauty + bounty + business = balance), or does it leave something crucial out? I’m sure everyone prefers to weigh these elements differently, too; some want to spend as little time as possible on the “business” aspect of their household, and some others don’t particularly value the interior design considerations included in the “beauty” component. What side of the fence do you fall on?