LupRocks Gossip

Lup HQ Makeover, Step 7--Hinges Sold Seperately

This post definitely falls under the "OMG are you SERIOUS?" category.  So, I mentioned on Thursday that Jessica had to make one more run to Ikea.  Of course, no trip to Ikea, even when you know exactly what you're going for, can possibly be accomplished in under two hours, not to mention getting there and back.  But fine, she did it, we got the additional cabinet, we had the guys set to come in at 9am sharp on Friday to put this thing together ("the guys" btw, are absolutely amazing....I think I'm going to start a new company being their business manager because they truly rock!), and we'd be that much closer to done.  Except when it came time to install the door, there were no hinges.  Where are the hinges??  After ransacking the discarded box, it was established that they really were not in the box.  We called Ikea in a rage only to be told that the hinges don't actually come with the door.  Because, well, that makes a ton of sense, right??  

The long and the short of this is that this weekend I entered a little slice of hell called Ikea on a Sunday.  But guess what?  I broke the record:  In and out in 1.5 hours, and at least 30 minutes of that was in line at the check out!  What's more, I prepped myself for my walk through hell with a belly full of the most delicious dumplings in the universe at Eton....you've gotta check them out, but only if you don't mind obtaining a new addiction. 

"The guys" hard at work.  We'll miss them when they're not here arguing with each other over indiscernible instructions every day. 

Lup HQ Makeover, Step 6--Managing Expectations

I told Jessica on Monday that I was determined to have this place in tip top shape by Friday.  Well, it's now Thursday night, we have to cut out for an event soon, and we're a long way from done.  We have however, made enormous progress.  After several hours of listening to drills and the strange arguing of men speaking in a bizarre mix of Spanish and Russian, our amazing new Ikea shelf is up and running, we've added the little detachable desk to our existing Expedit shelf, and the boxes that have been towering around us for days are slowly being itemized and packed behind the frosted glass doors of their new home (before making their way to influential editors, costume designers and set decorators).   We've  started to see the light at the end of the tunnel to the degree that we've declared that it will become somebody's job to stock the office with fresh flowers on a weekly basis so as to inspire our creative energy.  After another run to Ikea this afternoon, we have only one more major shelf to be built, some mirrors and magnetic boards to be hung and some (seemingly never-ending!) organizing to do and, thanks to a lot of hard work, destroyed manicures, snagged nylons and the visionary talents of Miss Randi Molofsky, we'll be working in our newly well-appointed space!
 
Jessica and Leah negotiating the organization of the new shelving unit. 

Lup HQ Makeover, Step 5--Learning to Speak Ikea

The best laid plans....I woke up this morning with a plan.  I'd get in and call the building porter to take out even more garbage from the office, the furniture would be delivered from Ikea promptly at 10am (the time slot was 10am-2pm), the guys in the building would get here at 11am, by 1:30 or 2pm, we'd be organizing all of the boxes that have been lying around into our newly installed furniture.  Well, clearly Murphy has a way of always making his presence felt.  I won't go into the bitter details of the day, but I will say that things are even more chaotic than they've been in weeks, and that's saying a lot!  On the positive side, Leah and I managed to make a usable piece of furniture from these directions:
 
Are they upside down?  I have no clue!  But we did it!  And it record time (45 minutes!).  Impressive, huh? 

Lup HQ Makeover, Step 4--Ikea Run

This morning the girls all met at Ikea to pick up furniture for the office.  Of course, what was meant to be a two hour trip turned into four hours, and though we thought we knew exactly what we wanted when we walked in, we needed to make countless calls to the Randi hot line, but we made it out of there without killing each other, and with everything on our list present and accounted for (everything plus a few items....).  Naturally, we also left with bellies full of Swedish meatballs (we know it's gross, but come on, we only go to Ikea like once a year!). 
 

After getting back to the office we did even more cleaning.  Our friend Odir came in to help us with the heavy lifting and now we're all set to put together the new furniture when it's delivered tomorrow morning!

Lup HQ Makeover, Step 3--Randi's Choices

We got the week off to an amazing start on the make-over front.  Randi came in this morning to share with us some of the research she'd done on the redesign of our office. She used this really cool application through Domino magazine where she was able to upload her selections for us from Ikea and Overstock.com (she could've pulled from anywhere on the web) so when she came into the office, she just logged into one of our machines and made a nifty little presentation.  We loved everything she selected!  We're getting a new desk from overstock.com, a really amazing wardrobe from Ikea, a new console cabinet, and a detachable desk that works with a shelf we already have.  A couple of filing cabinets, and some details like a mirror and a rug and we're all set! 
We're off to Ikea tomorrow morning, we've got transport set up, and the boys in the building on board to help us with building the shelves (none of us speak Ikea) and drilling them into the walls.  I don't know if it's too ambitious to hope that we'll have this place in excellent shape by Friday, but that's what I'm aiming for! 

Lup HQ Makeover--Step 2

At the WJA Women in the Know conference last year, one of the speakers (short-term memory being what it is I can't recall her name), who was some sort of life-trainer, told us that she suggests to each of her clients during their first session that they go home and throw away a total of 50 items, write down each of the items and bring this itemized list with them to their next session.  No, one cannot throw out 50 magazines and call it a day, "magazines" count as one and the goal is to eliminate 50 unnecessary things from your life.  One woman came to her second session and was evasive about discussing her list until she finally admitted that she'd gone home, looked at the boyfriend who'd been living with her for the last seven years, and threw him out.  

We here at Lup HQ have spent two long, dusty days cleaning out the office.  In total, we've eliminated two giant dumpsters and several construction bags worth of "stuff" from our office.  How did all of this stuff get here??  We've been wondering this for days, since nobody seems to remember bringing any of it in. 

We DO have pictures of both before and during, but we think it'll make a greater impact if you see them alongside the "after" which we cannot wait to get to!  The illustrious Randi Molofsky will be in tomorrow with some of her suggestions and selections for transforming our office!

Lup HQ Makeover, Step 1--Embarassing Confession

While we here at Lup HQ are confident in our good taste and eye for design and style, a couple of weeks ago, we finally had to admit that we weren't using these skills to the benefit of our office aesthetics.  Since we opened our doors nearly seven years ago, our business has grown exponentially, and yet beyond asking our building super to paint our walls a lovely lavender color, we've put absolutely no thought into creating a well appointed work space.  The furniture is functional at best--the folding tables we bought at Staples when we needed a couple of new "desk" areas, the shelving units that the building porters found and thought we might need, my old dining room table from that apartment I had that was big enough to hold a dining room table...you get the idea!  While we use the excuse that we're too busy coming up with great opportunities for designers and offering media fantastic designs, we finally broke down and embraced the idea of re-designing our office.  They say that admitting you have a problem is the first step so there, we admitted it. 

After making the admission, we decided to call in the big guns in the form of pint sized Randi Molofsky.  A talented and accomplished writer, Randi has an enviable flare for style and a discerning eye for interior design.  She helped me set up my current apartment, and her own apartment has been recognized by interior design blog Apartment Therapy for her elegant use of color.  She graciously accepted the proposed task--redesign our 420 square foot office space with a very limited budget.  We want it to be well-appointed, and to accommodate up to five people working at a time.   Who is this Randi person, you ask, Houdini?!  But with characteristic optimism and excitement about the task at hand, Randi assures us this is entirely possible. 

Our first job is to clean.  Our goal is to get anything unnecessary out of here, which means my Shakespeare notebooks from '99 and the handbag my mom bought me for my 30th birthday that I felt too bad to return even though I hate it are going to have to go...stay tuned!
 
A shot of Randi's apartment in Brooklyn Heights.