Orange Glow

Motivated by a frighteningly short countdown until school starts and Eva’s rapidly approaching arrival (she moved yesterday!), I kicked it into high gear this last week. Small projects turned into big projects, big projects begot more smaller projects, and I wrote enough to-do lists to fuel a bonfire for days.

So the bathroom isn’t quite finished. Not picture worthy, yet. The weather conditions just haven’t been right for spray painting. BUT, amidst my mad dash to finish the bathroom, I actually got a couple things done in the kitchen as well.

For instance, new knobs!

Old on left, new on right.

I know, dramatic. But those old pulls were just so nineties and really put a damper on my fantasy 1960s cooking sessions. And seriously, the shiny chrome makes a big difference, at least to me. Like glitter. No, they aren’t exactly what I wanted, but they were only $1.29 each at Home Depot. $20 for 16 new shiny knobs… can’t beat that.

More importantly, I also installed this glam-ass light:

Yeah, I need to caulk around the new plastic Home Depot medallion and paint the ceiling, but DAMN, I think it’s sexy. I found it at a thrift store in (of course) Brooklyn for $20– talked down from $30, thank you– and put in another few bucks into the new medallion and re-wiring and replacing the crappy old chain. I call it the Orange Glo fixture because at night, everything is bathed in bizarre orange light. Which I think is hilarious.

Sure beats this snoozefest:

Oh, and as an added little bonus, I picked up aluminum switch plates to replace the grungy old beige ones. There are only two switch plates in the whole kitchen, but I can’t express what a relief this is.

As you can see, the toadstools haven’t moved, they still make me giggle.

And just in case there was any question that this is all I’ve been doing for a week, here’s a disgusting progress shot of the bathroom makeover, just for shits and giggles.

And that’s why I was rushing to finish. Because if Eva walked into her new apartment and it looked like this, I really couldn’t blame her if she decided to turn right back around. Luckily, I can accomplish a lot on very little sleep.

Spin-tastic!

After I completed making my desk, it became clear that my beloved little h-base Eames shell chair just wasn’t working as a desk chair. Thanks to the modern miracle of Ebay, it is now.

For about $45, including shipping, I bought this fancy vintage swiveling aluminum star base. It makes the chair a bit more comfortable and the swivel factor adds hours of fun to otherwise inactive periods of work.

This is how it was shipped to me. I just thought that was funny.

Of course (it’s me we’re talking about), the change was a little more involved than a quick switcheroo; I also took the opportunity to give the shell itself some love. The Brick House and Chairfag already have wonderfully detailed tutorials on how to restore a shell chair, so I won’t rehash the process here. A good cleaning, a little wet sanding, and a slick coat of Penetrol restore the luster and add a bit of protection, so I’m glad I took the time to do it. It’s like when somebody you haven’t seen in a while has gotten plastic surgery and you can’t quite pinpoint what they had done. Not super shiny like it’s trying (and failing) to look brand new, which I was worried about, but tastefully refreshed. Analogies, they’re fun.

Luckily, both the original h-base and the new swivel base are narrow mount, so I didn’t have to mess around with prying off the shockmounts and resetting them with new epoxy. Really sticky things can be hazardous for the accident-prone.

I also gave the aluminum part a good scrubbing with Ajax, the rough side of a sponge, and a toothbrush (this is the before shot, you can see how much better it looks in the first picture).

I considered just buying a replacement glide for the old h-base– it was missing one– but I’m so glad I just went for a new base altogether. I think it looks better with the desk anyway. Less leggy.

Made in Sweden

Back in June, I got all whiney about how fugly the living room was and how hard it is to find affordable furniture. And I haven’t really discussed it since. My bad.

Well, things are inching along in there. Now it looks less like Ikea-loving gypsies live here and more like normal people with the potential for stylishness do. This is, in part, thanks to a new coffee table!

I found it in a thrift store that I frequent near the apartment for $75 (after the 25% furniture sale discount, mind you. Upper East Side thrift stores are run by crazy old ladies who think they work at Bloomingdales.). Steep for a thrift store but cheap by Craigslist standards. It’s a nice size and the wood is actually in really good shape. Also, it has these sexy long skinny tapered legs. And it’s Swedish. Exotic little minx.

So even though I might eventually want something a little less wood and possibly a little more metal/glass, I quite like it for the here and now. Regardless, I’m glad I no longer have to look at or think about these:

Meet the Ikea Molger Bench (awaiting a hack) and piece-o-shit table I pulled out of the trash (that I subsequently made even worse by trying to cleanse with rubbing alcohol). See that little drawer? It’s fake, that whole side is just one piece. One plastic piece… that snazzy carving work ain’t cheap.

Oh, and flower arranging credit in the first two photos goes to my friend Desiree, who brought them to my Sunday night True Blood Finale party. The southern-inspired menu included the amazing Door Sixteen Vegetarian Chili, homemade cornbread, baked macaroni and cheese, a strawberry-blueberry crisp, and a salad thing nobody really ate. I don’t want to toot my own horn, but it was all so fucking good. Which kind of made up for my Time Warner Cable malfunctioning, causing us all to miss the first ten minutes of a finale that I think we all can agree was pretty lame anyway.

Chairtalk

I know it’s unbecoming to gloat, so I guess I’ll just say that there’s still a place in the world where people abandon Eames shell chairs on the curb. This magical wonderland is called Brooklyn. And I’ll add that if I were you, I’d leave me nasty, name-calling comments, too. I won’t take it personally. Because look what I found:

Fear not, there's a satisfying "after" below.

When I say found, I mean found. Like in the trash. Like for free. In my E! True Hollywood Story, “This Magic Moment” by The Drifters will be cued now. Sure, it’s grungy, but that’s my thing.

This proves a privately long-held belief that I need to be around my friend Juliet ALL THE TIME. I always find the goods when we’re together– she also bore witness to the $35 Bertoia wire chair, the purchase of the $20 Orange Glo kitchen lamp, and was staying with me when I brought home the knock-off Breuer Cesca chair (and don’t forget the cute mid-century dresser that I temporarily stored for her after we found that on the curb too). Consequently, she thinks I have a problem, and this seemed like the appropriate moment to confront it head-on. I think the words “filth” and “hoarder tendencies” were used and “bedbugs” may or may not have been mentioned. Begrudgingly, I walked away.

But like any good scavenger, I was fixated on it. Sure I didn’t really need it, but I sure as hell wanted it. I could take it on the subway, it wouldn’t be the first time. It would clean up beautifully, and afterwards I’d occupy long hours admiring my handiwork. We’d made it about three blocks before moderate grumbles turned into manically spewed rationalizations and justifications. “But it might be a while before we have dining chairs. And I want to have people over. And where are they going to sit? Or now that I think about it, maybe I’ll sell it! That’s it, I’ll clean it up, sell it on Ebay, and use the money for things we do need! It’s easy and I already have all the supplies!” Of course I’m not selling it, but I would have said anything. My sanity is a fragile thing, and it needed me to bring home this chair as much as the chair needed my extensive DIY abilities.

Ultimately, this was about my independence. If I were to let a friend, however great and well-intentioned that friend may be, talk me out of a free Eames shell chair, could I ever respect myself again? Would I ever sleep peacefully, knowing what I’d done? This was PEER PRESSURE, people, and I don’t play that.

“You know, I read that they just found this woman dead in her apartment in New York,” Juliet said as if she’d tuned me out, like when you rush to change the channel in favor of something less annoying. “She was a hoarder and it took them two weeks to find her and dig her out. In her apartment! Can you believe that?”

“What did they do with her stuff?”

“You’re going back for it, aren’t you?”

“Yep.”

“I’ll wait on the stoop. You do realize you’re crazy, right?”

Maybe it’s true. But when the men in white coats come, at least I’ll have fab furniture to cling to as they dig me out of my mess.

When I brought it home, even the other Eames chair was against it.

I followed all the same restoration steps that The Brick House and Chairfag told me to follow when I did this the first time (minus prying off and re-gluing the shock mounts). Most of that grime came off with a little scrubbing, the scuffs and gauges were fixed with some Mr. Clean Magic Eraser action, and a little wet sanding and a coat of Penetrol finished the job. It’s super easy. And just look at her!

I’m not really sure what was going on with the old base, but I guess it somehow got very bent out of shape and somebody tried to keep it from collapsing with packing tape (I mean, come on, at least spring for some duct tape). Luckily, I hadn’t gotten around to deciding what to do with the old h-base from my other chair, and the shockmounts were already narrow-mount on this one, so it seemed like a super easy swap! Right?

Well, things didn’t quite work out the way I planned- the shock mounts are this close to being properly aligned, but I couldn’t get the holes to line up for all four screws. For a few days I dreaded the thought of prying all the mounts off, re-sanding the entire back (since this was after the Penetrol dried, I didn’t think to check any of this beforehand), and reapplying them with epoxy and redoing the Penetrol. But then I just said “fuck it, good enough.” Since it’s resting on the mount anyway, I don’t think this is presenting any risk to the chair or those who sit in it. Oh, and I harvested one of the glides from the old broken base to replace the missing one on the less-old h-base, in case you were wondering. Anyway, she’s feeling pretty good about herself.

That’s What’s Up: Coney Island Beard and Mustache Competition

Partially as evidence that I actually leave the apartment (well, sometimes), partially to point out design-y stuff outside our cozy walls, and mostly just because I want to, I’d like to start writing occasional posts about some of the other things I enjoy besides the aroma of drying latex paint and the sweet melody of my electric screwdriver. To kick things off, I present to you the annual Coney Island Beard and Mustache Competition.

Aside from being one of my very favorite places in this fine city, Coney Island boasts a pretty cool mix of design elements. Colorful hand-painted signage everywhere, graffiti, extensive use of neon– it’s dazzling. It’s a haphazardly layered testament to 90 years of history, a constant contrast of old and new. At once charming and revolting, it never fails to warm my heart.

I sport neither a beard nor a mustache, but hold a great deal of respect for people who do. Growing one seems like a difficult and humiliating process, a true labor of love. It takes gumption. Which is why, once a year, it’s important to recognize and support these brave pioneers of facial foliage while drinking locally manufactured beer on the southern tip of Brooklyn.

This dude should have won, but he didn’t.

I was enchanted by this couple, and I wish their fetus the best of luck with its hair-growing aspirations.

As a show of support, we donned fake mustaches with the help of some eyeliner. Here I am, applying a trucker-style ‘stache to my friend Emily.

The judges were some of the characters from the daytime sideshow acts, including the sword swallower, an elderly gentleman who looked like Buffalo Bill and performs a lasso act, and, appropriately, the bearded woman. That’s our emcee, Donny Vomit, assisting the sword swallower.

The “Best Natural Mustache” (as opposed to styled mustache) came down to an extremely tense arm-wrestling competition. The guy on the right won, but it was close.

The assorted winners. In the back row: Best Natural Mustache, Best Natural Beard, Best Sideburns, Best Styled Beard, Best in Show. Front row: Best Styled Mustache, Best Bearded Woman, Best Fake Mustache, and Worst in Show. The awards were their red fezzes.

I didn’t want to show this. But since I had to see it, so do you. The show ended with the other emcee/sideshowman feeding a small rubber tube through his nose, out his mouth, and then feeding whisky into it through a syringe for people to take “shots” from. It was disturbing and I could have watched the procession of audience members all night. No, I did not participate, I was raised right.

My friend Maya and I wore our mustaches all the way home because they suited us so nicely. Which kind of goes without saying.