Archive for: July, 2010

Oh! You Pretty Thing

Posted: Jul 27 · Comments: 39

My friend Juliet came to visit because she’s moving to New York in the fall and needs to find an apartment, so naturally I dragged her to go thrifting with me instead. My house, my rules.

And I’m so glad I did. Hello, gorgeous. Welcome to my home.

On recommendation from a superbly savvy reader, I visited Green Village in Brooklyn. It’s magnificent. Aisle upon cramped aisle of junk like you wouldn’t believe, stacked to the ceiling. Luckily, I am tiny and agile, with a kind of monkey-like strength that renders me useless at lifting anything but my own bodyweight. I was a beast at rock-climbing at summer camp; high school crew team, not so much. So the barricade of sofas, upturned tables, and assorted chairs that blocked the back corner of the store was no match for me, despite discouraging every other sane shopper from even attempting a glance.

I risked life and limb, unsure of what I’d find. And then there she was, right in front of me, poking out from a mound of crap. I pulled her out. Things toppled over all around us. I didn’t care.

The price? $35! I tried to haggle for the challenge, but my heart wasn’t in it. A Bertoia side chair for $35? I mean, come on. Oddly, he almost seemed willing to waver on the price of the chair, but was steadfast on the $35 he also quoted for a lovably fugly little needlepoint I was also eyeing because “that’s a nice piece.” To each their own.

She was grimy and looked rusty, but a full hour in front of the TV with a toothbrush and a Magic Eraser (Mr. Clean does mean “magic” literally) made her gleam like the sun. Even the grey naugahyde seat pad cleaned up okay.

You don’t even have to say it: I like the olive Eames Shell better for the desk, too. But I have to make everyone feel special, at least for a little while. Them’s the rules.

In that vein, holla-back to the groovy ladies at Re-Nest, Green Your Decor, and Rearranged Design, who made me feel pretty special when they wrote about my bed on their blogs! If you’re here because they sent you, congratulations for making the right choice and clicking that link. You won’t regret it. Did I mention you have beautiful eyes?

A Whole Mess of Staples

Posted: Jul 23 · Comments: 152

1,250, actually. That’s how many staples I mercilessly shot into my poor IKEA FJELLSE bed frame, who’s feeling a little sexier these days because of it. I PROMISE all my posts won’t be this wordy, but this one’s important. Settle in, party people.

Usually when we buy new furniture, we do so because we like it. We can imagine it so clearly in our homes, making our tokhes more comfortable or garnering compliments with its good looks. But when Ikea decides to go and sell the plainest pine bed ever for the sweet, sweet price of $49.99, then we just buy it because it’s cheap.

To review, here’s what she looked like before.

So, so naked. How rude.

Unfortunately for FJELLSE, I really like upholstered beds. They’re awesome. I needed one. Only problem? Damn, they’re pricey. I searched high and low. Even the moderately priced offerings from CB2, West Elm and Ikea were more than I was really willing to pay, but more importantly not what I wanted to sleep on. Sleeping’s a very important activity for me. And I can daydream all I want about the beds I actually like, but that’s not going to get them into my apartment any faster than it’ll get Oprah to come over for dinner. And I’ve been dreaming about that one for years.

he Ella bed from Room & Board, the Tate bed from Crate & Barrel. Both $1,399.

So I realized pretty quickly that, barring an impressive lottery win, I’d be DIYin’ it. Once that epiphany registered, I scrambled my way to the internet looking for something cheap that I could immediately destroy without feeling guilty. My only requirement was that it be fairly solidly made and have decent looking legs. Incidentally, this is also my criteria for friends. Then, bingo. FJELLSE. Cheap, solid pine, with not-unattractive angle-cut legs. I went to the store, looked at it for about 10 seconds, kicked it lightly to test the sturdiness, and added the aisle and bin number to the list. Easy-peesy.

Little did I realize at the time, upholstery fabric is very, very expensive. I’ve recently been loving anything and everything upholstered in wooly, fibery felt, so that’s what I wanted. I had clear, inflexible ideas in mind. Dark charcoal grey felt. Yes. I went to a big fabric store in Chinatown and found the most beautiful, thick charcoal wool fabric you or I have ever seen. It was perfect. It was even organic. Of course, it was also $60 a yard. At 54″ wide, I needed four yards. This was absolutely crushing. Fabric store after fabric store, that actually ended up being the least expensive. My cheap and easy DIY bed was turning into a massively expensive shit show and I was pissed.

Filz Felt. Really nice company. Really expensive $89.50/yard felt.

So I did more research. I exhausted Ebay and the online fabric shops. Knoll felt is actually surprisingly well-priced (I mean, it’s Knoll) at $36 a yard, so since I was feeling desperate I trekked down to Chelsea to the Knoll Showroom to see it in person.

Man, that place was fucked up. There’s no signage anywhere, so you just have to know it’s there. It’s on the 11th floor of a building that you need a visitor’s security pass to get into. Once upstairs, there’s a front desk where the incredibly kind receptionist calls a sales associate by picking up the phone and saying shit like, “There’s a gentleman here requiring assistance with Knoll Textiles for use on furniture by another manufacturer.” I think if I had mentioned Ikea, they might have shattered a perfectly good Noguchi Cyclone table and fashioned one of those metal rods into a switch. Oh, and the felt was kind of a huge let-down.

Then, whilst moping, I realized: blankets. Wool blankets. And who makes the best, cheapest wool blankets around? The US of A Army, that’s who. God bless America.

So I hauled it to Kaufman’s Army & Navy Surplus in Midtown. I had my doubts about what would happen when my skinny-jeaned, child-sized frame entered such an establishment. Would I be greeted by a spirited, crew-cutted Hoo-WAH and then tackled to the ground for a testosterone injection? When the employee would inevitably ask me what in hell I wanted with a wool blanket in the middle of July, my plan was to lean over the counter, look him in the eyes, and clearly state “I want to cut it into little pieces.” I don’t like liars.

In reality, they were more than friendly. I found the blanket immediately, it seemed nice enough, and it was $25. P-E-R-F-E-C-T. When I signed the receipt and the cashier noticed I’m left-handed, he gave me a left-handed Kaufman’s pencil. No, seriously, the writing on the pencil reads correctly when held by lefties. Then he gave me a right-handed one too, “so people would believe me.” Good call, dude.

Read it and weep.

Here are the collected fabrics. The dreamy organic wool swatch is laying on top of the blanket. I know, it looks exactly the same. Cue happy dance.

Now, I learned a lot about wool through this, so I know there are a couple big differences between the super nice stuff that would have cost $240 and my $25 blanket. Firstly, the blanket is 30% synthetic. I don’t really care. More importantly, the nicer fabric is pressed wool, which I gather means it’s been pressurized to the point the the fibers magically bond to each other. The blanket, however, is woven, so when it’s pulled tight like I did, it does develop more of a texture. I actually quite like the texture though.

So here’s how the construction went down:

The original FJELLSE design has a shorter headboard than I really wanted, so I went to Home Depot and got a piece of 1/2″ plywood cut to be 4.5 inches higher than the original headboard. This was done by the same asswipe who cut my desktop, and I still don’t like him. Then I just screwed it onto the front of the headboard with four screws on either side and a few along the top and bottom. Yes, my computer’s open to my own blog. Subliminal messaging, duh.

Since I wanted the depth to look consistent from the side, I rigged this shoddy-ass structure out of cut 1.25″ square trim from New York Paint and Hardware and little L-brackets I had lying around. Good enough for me. Then I stained the legs (after testing a few options on one of the soon-to-be-covered rails).

Then cut the tops of the legs at the end of the bed down to the level of the rails. I should have done this before batting, but I didn’t think about it.

Like a damn cloud.

Cover the whole thing in batting, except the legs. I used fairly thick stuff from Joanne’s. I did three layers on the headboard and two on the rails. I wanted the bed to be cushy, but not so stuffed that it would lose its shape. The best advice I can give is to buy an automatic staple gun. Mine was $25 at Home Depot, which was only $5 more than the manual one. Seriously, do yourself a favor. Unless you like bruised and blistered palms. I also used 1/4″ staples, in case you’re curious.

Sorry I’m super messy and make no effort to clean up for pictures. Cutting the blanket was really easy, I just cut three 10″ strips length-wise (they’re about 85″) and used the rest for the headboard. Upholstery can be pretty simple, but it’s important to go in with a good plan to make sure there won’t be any exposed staples when you get to that final piece of fabric and realize you’ve done it all in the wrong order. Write it out. Figure out how to get it done without having to pick up a needle and thread. My plans were on sticky notes, which I subsequently spilled water on and then lost, but try to keep your plan handy and organized if you can. Or just read this.

Next comes the front piece. I wanted the front piece to be continuous, but I was okay with having seams on the front ends of the sides.

Of course I forgot to take a picture, but staple the backside of the fabric to the front corner, butting up against the edge of the underlying leg (this might be more clear in the final pictures). Then pull the loose end tight and staple onto the back. Then just go along the sides, stapling the fabric on the inside of the rails. Apologies for the woefully confusing wording, I should have taken more pictures but it’s really not too complicated.

I decided to leave the back open, which saved fabric and gives me the option of adding tufting later on. I like it just fine without it, but who knows when I might find awesome buttons. And that was it! Pretty easy, totally doable in a day, endlessly customizable. And one entire box of staples.

Here’s a pretty good view of how the corners are finished. I don’t mind mixing wood tones, so I used Minwax Fruitwood 241 since I thought it looked the best with the fabric and the rug.

Oh, and don’t forget. Wool fabric does shed, but I vacuumed the whole thing and it seems to have stopped.

So how much did all this nonsense cost? Here’s the materials breakdown:

1/2″ Plywood: $17.50

Fabric: $25

6 Yards of Batting: $36

1.25″ wood trim for frame: $9

Minwax stain: $6.50

TOTAL: $94

But I try to keep it real, so remember I also bought an electric staple gun ($25) and a box of staples ($5).

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a naptime appointment I really can’t reschedule. Have a good weekend, y’all.

The Picture of Domesticity

Posted: Jul 17 · Comments: 20

Confession: I love 1950s/1960s kitsch. I do. I’m not really talking about classy, Mad Men-style glamorous here. I’m talking like crazy atomic barkcloth, wacked-out color schemes, and toadstools as a decorating motif. I know, right when some of you thought I had decent taste. Hear me out.

The good news for our apartment is, I don’t really want it in the living room, bathroom, or my bedroom. I have no intention of living in a time capsule, despite our inclusion of vintage furniture and otherwise retro stuff. I respect people who go balls to the walls mid-mod, and I feel like I could be friends with a modern-day rockabilly, but a modern mix is more what I suppose we’re after.

Except in the kitchen. God, 50s kitchens are cool. Those ladies were organized, they had cute stuff, and between sneaked sips of the cooking sherry, they really seemed to have their shit together. They did weird things with eggs and they could ice a cake with their eyes closed. I want to get in on that. Between you and me, I’m pretty excited for Eva to move in and thoroughly creep her out with exciting casseroles, the leftovers from which I’ll then “refresh” into different exciting casseroles on subsequent evenings. We’re going to have a blast.

Our undeniably 1980s kitchen is sort of primed for the retro treatment, too. Which is a good thing because 95% of the stuff in it came from the incredible Regina, Saskatchewan thrift stores. And I’m exceedingly proud of my kitchen stuff. Once, I saw the matching tumblers to my ice bucket holding scotch for Don Draper on Mad Men and I almost peed myself.

Back to our kitchen. Almost everything is some shade of washed-out pink. The countertops are pink faux-marble formica, the cabinets are a vaguely pink laminate, and the floor is  12″ square pink and grey faux-marble ceramic tile. Sometimes I wish it was pinker. Like, come on kitchen. Commit. Go big or go home. Like this lass:

Photo from Retro Renovation.

Like I said, the kitchen is totally 80s and a little ugly. I think trying to force any sense of cool, beautiful modern in there would just be sort of lost on it. So even though the bones we have to work with aren’t quite so amazing as that picture, I’m not sure I can stop myself from incorporating a few lessons of 50s kitchen design in the hopes that the kitchen accepts them gracefully.

For instance, check out the avocado green paper holder I stuck to the tile wall with industrial-strength velcro! I love it, and it makes my shameful paper towel use oh-so stylish. It also holds tin foil and parchment paper. In a perfect world, this would be built into the wall like my grandmother’s or Louis Armstrong’s.

See, Satchmo himself had one in his swingin' 60s kitchen. Photo from Apartment Therapy.

Moving around the room, we find this strange little built-in next to the stove. For about a month I had no clue what to do with it and then I had the most tremendous epiphany. It’s perfectly sized for the tacky tins that hold my baking ingredients!

Snug as a bug.

Please ignore that hideous mound of grout where the pipe goes through the floor. Something must be done about that. But it’s kind of like the shelves were just made for those tins, right?

In a display of very questionable decision-making, I also affixed these ceramic toadstools next to the fridge. You can’t see them when you walk in the door, so it’s kind of like a special surprise when you actually walk into the kitchen instead of just through it and into the living room. They may or may not stick around. I think I’m going to replace the beige switch plates with cheap aluminum ones, only in the kitchen though. It’ll cost like three dollars and I’ve convinced myself it’s the right thing to do. Speaking of things I’d like to change are these really boring knobs. I’m thinking some shiny polished chrome would really liven up the place.

Snooze.

Okay, enough with the crazy. As I mentioned, one of the things I admire about vintage kitchens are the organizational tactics. But when vintage isn’t coming through for you, sometimes you have to go to IKEA.

I’m pretty please about this little organizational innovation. The Rationell baking sheet holder is supposed to be hung on the interior sides of the cabinet, but this seemed like a better space-saving solution.

And I’m completely smitten with my Rationell Variera spice racks. They’ve been bookmarked on my computer since Anna installed them at Door Sixteen a year and a half ago. Yes, these are the things I dream about. And now they’re mine!

Glamor shot

Anna has far cuter handwriting than I do, so I bought some little round labels from the Paper Source and used their handy Word template to print these out.

So that’s where things stand. The kitchen needs a lot of work. There’s nothing on the windows and it hasn’t seen a lick of paint. I’m thinking about a color. One that isn’t pink.

Flea Find!

Posted: Jul 15 · Comments: 20

Look who came home with me on the L train from Brooklyn this weekend.

Everyone, this is Vintage Lane End Table. Vintage Lane End Table, this is everyone.

I’ve been looking desperately for a good flea market. The old fashioned kind, where the vendors have missing teeth, crazy old ladies haggle until they’re red in the face over a jar of buttons, and stuff smells funky. I tried a few. The Brooklyn Flea: too crafty. PS 321: too small. Hell’s Kitchen: too expensive.

The Meeker Avenue Flea: just right. Well, not as podunk as I like them, but probably the closest thing I’m likely to find in NYC. Here are the reasons to love it:

1. It’s indoors, and there’s almost A/C. I know, I’m a pussy. But damn. It’s been hot.

2. They’re open 7 days a week until 7 p.m. This means there’s basically no strategic day to go, or time frame. This is good news for people who operate on chronically erratic sleep schedules and spend their days being generally indecisive. That’s a respectful amount of time to decide to haul your bones to the subway and still get there before they close.

3. Stray cats. One let me pick it up and snorgle it while I was haggling over another table. Did I get the table? No. Did the dealer get bored and walk away? Maybe. Was it worth it? Most def.

4. Funky smell. Breath through your mouth and linger in that really rank corner that people keep speeding through. There might be good stuff.

5. You can haggle. I used to be better at it when I was younger and I could kill them with cute. People would practically give me stuff. “You want this antique box, slightly sad, soft spoken, precious little boy? For you, five dollars.” And then I’d get it for two. Now, I just try to kill them with kindness, but it’s not quite as effective as being cute. “You catch more bees with honey than… anything else,” as my landlord once said.

Having said that, you shouldn’t go there. Cool stuff needs to be in my house, not yours.

It was all like a secret backroom deal. I find the table. The table has no price. The real vendor isn’t around. I walk over to one of the wonderful ladies running the joint, ask about the table while subtly pointing out the chipped veneer and water damage. She looks conflicted. She quietly informs me that it used to be priced at $75, but (she leans in and whispers) since there wasn’t a sticker, how did 30 sound? We shook on it. She asked me my sign. Libra. I asked hers. Pisces.

Listen, when that’s adjusted for Magical-New-York-City-Vintage-Wares-Inflation (MNYCVWI, it just rolls off the tongue, try it), I think I paid like 6 cents USD for it. Maybe 7. I probably could have gotten down to $25 if I worked at it, but I figured that since I plan to be back often, I didn’t want to be known as that lil bitch who haggled for five bucks. You gotta play these things smart, kids.

When I got home, I slathered some tung oil on it and the dry wood looks a little better.

Before and After, spliced together. Call me Busta Rhymes.

I looked up how to get rid of those rings and found this semi-interesting tidbit: apparently, those dark rings are cause by the iron in the water rusting after it seeps into and destroys your wood (veneer). See, we’re learning stuff. This also means that the only way to remove them is to sand and re-stain. Not gonna happen, at least right now. But when a lamp is on top, problem solved. And the chipped veneer isn’t noticeable when it’s facing the wall. So it’s essentially mint.

Oh, and you can sort of tell in the first photo that I lowered that little weaving over my desk about 2.5 inches. That was driving me nuts, and now that picture of the desk is everywhere (everywhere important, that is. If you want to write about it too, you can also be… important.). Speaking of:

Welcome, Re-Nest hippies! You love the environment, and so do I. Let’s be friends. What’s your sign?

Hot Diggity Blog!

Posted: Jul 13 · Comments: 18

Well, smell me.

When Anna Dorfman over at the exquisite Door Sixteen speaks, people listen up. And now it looks like our little dog n’ pony blog is making the internet rounds: here’s my DIY desk over at Apartment Therapy today! Jess Watson in San Francisco wrote up a nice little post about it . There was even controversy in the comments. Nothin’ makes me happier than stirrin’ the turd, as it were.

I have a TAG. Pretty sick.

And Ms. Watson nicknamed me and everything. We’re tight like that. I’ve been Dan and Daniel lots of times, but never Danny. But Jessie, if you want to keep writing about my goings-ons, you can call me whatever the hell you want.

So if you’re here because Apartment Therapy told you to, come on in! I love house guests and feel free to wash the dishes, I won’t stop you.

Life
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