cheap + great
Since we started renovating ‘the improvised life’s space’ we’ve had our eyes peeled for solutions to various design problems. We’re finding that once we have a question in our head, inspiration and ideas can come from the most unlikely places.
Desperately needing a proper desk to work on, we hurredly devised one out of hollow core doors (below) on spray painted salvaged file cabinets. It works fine – a sleek 13 feet, but we weren’t crazy about the wood veneer, which has an unexpectedly reddish cast. Wonder what we could do to change it?: reverse-painted glass crossed our minds, as did slabs of steel or copper we found at a an internet site. Then two modernist Italian vases we saw on Mondoblogo grabbed our attention. What if we painted the desktop that fabulous red of the fifties vase by Antonia Campi, above? read more…
07.25.12 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, floors, furniture, inside, inspiration blogs + sites, laboratory, materials, resources, working |
photo: antonia LoPresti
Last Fourth of July, Antonia LoPresti sent us an email about the emergency improv she came up with for her daughter Sofia:
After an impromptu dip in the Washington square park fountain, Sofia’s skirt was soaked. A hunt to find a children’s shop yielded no luck SO I took my cardigan sweater out of my bag, buttoned it up and wrapped it around her as a skirt.
It does have a curiously chic Rick Owens-ish look to it. Just for the hell of it, we did a google search to see if we could find any fashionistas who’d tried such daring. It seems that wearing cardigans backwards is as far as things go… read more…
07.23.12 |
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in apparel, cheap + great, d-i-y, family + friends, outside |
In our wanderings online – always on the lookout for room screens – we stumbled on this intriguing room screen with huge possibilities for improvising and tailoring to your space. Comprised of a series of hinged canvas-covered panels, you can use it as-is for a neutral, minimalist look OR paint or draw designs on it – even cover the panels with fabric or photographs of your own choosing. The screen is, literally, a blank canvas. It comes in a variety of heights from 4“, 6″, and 7“ , and your choice of 3, 4, 5, or 6 panels. A 6-foot six panel screen costs $179 plus shipping, which seems like a bargain; the hard labor done, all that’s left to do is decorate it: with paintings, color blocks, writing…the possibilities are endless.
For inspiration, check out some of our posts about painting and drawing on fabric and furniture: read more…
07.23.12 |
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in cheap + great, d-i-y, elements, inside, materials, resources |
photo: sally schneider
The soap dish is one of those inventions that seem destined to NOT fulfill all the requirements we need them too. Designed to keep bar soap from sitting in water, the wet residue from the soap has to end up somewhere, either on the sink/tub surface or in the bottom of the soap dish, requiring cleaning later.
When we moved into our new space recently, finding a well-designed soap dish was not high on our list of endless more-essential things to accomplish. Without thinking, we improvised one: a simple dry sponge we’d had on hand. It absorbed the watery residue from the bar of soap with no mess, and because it barely got wet, there was no issue of mildewing. To clean it, we just wet the sponge and rinse it out. It seems we’d inadvertently found the perfect soap dish.
H-m-m-m. What if we got a nice looking sponge, like a white one ? (Is there such a thing as a white sponge)? We discovered Twist Naked Sponge on Amazon
. read more…
07.17.12 |
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in bath, bathing, cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, housewares, inside, materials, resources, solutions |
photo: maria robledo
In summer, we sometimes find ourselves spending time in the badly-equipped kitchens of rented or borrowed summer houses that can be a great challenge to cook in. So we apply the concept of makeshift: When you find you don’t have a particular piece of equipment you need, improvise a substitute or “shift” the dish you are making to accommodate it.
When it comes to equipment, makeshift is an antidote to the inhibiting, very modern reliance on matching sets of pots and stylishly outfitted kitchens. It cuts to the heart of the matter: rather than letting a piece of equipment stand in the way, you come up with a makeshift solution, as resourceful people have for eons, so you can still make the delicious dish you were planning. Use a label-less wine bottle to roll out pastry dough, a coffee cup for a ladle and get by just fine with one good sharp knife (we often travel with a folding Opinel picnic knife). We heard of a woman who pulled out her ironing board when she needed more counter space.
We’ve come up with an array of makeshift solutions over the years. The example below (with a couple of recipe) will give you a sense of possibility for devising your own makeshift equipment when you need it. There’s only one rule: whatever works. read more…
07.13.12 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, family + friends, housewares, how-to, kitchen, recipes, resources, strategies |
photo: sally schneider
Since we started showing friends around our new space, several remarked on our shower hook solution. While our plan originally was to install hooks to hang towels on the bathroom door as we had in our last space, in reality, we couldn’t bear to hang anything on the beautiful 8-foot high-gloss-painted wood door. So where could we hang our towels to dry? Towel bars weren’t an option a) because we find that they take up a lot of space and don’t still dry towels properly and b) we didn’t want to take up so much space in our wonderfully minimalist bathroom. We’d worked hard to make it’s limited space LOOK spacious, and towels-on-walls would just close it in.
Our solution, at first makeshift, now permanent: we hung pot-rack hooks over our shower bar to hang towels on. read more…
07.10.12 |
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photo: sally schneider
The other day, we got a snail mail note from a friend. While snail mail is inself a rare gift these days, there was an added surprise. When we opened the envelope, a cascade of pressed flowers fell out. In addition to bringing a charming blast of ‘garden’ into the apartment, the flowers were like little symbols of care and regard; our friend had taken the time to press the flowers and thoughtfully include them in her note.
We loved it. Pressing flowers (and leaves) is easy: you pick them, dry them, press them sandwiched between clean sheets of paper in a thick heavy book. Time does the rest. (There’s a great visual how-to here.)
But really, this is about the possibilities for enclosing surprises in a note or letter, that give it a totally “other” dimension. read more…
07.09.12 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, gifts, how-to, materials, nature, resources, strategies |
store.kaufmann-mercantile.com
As is our nature, we started to deconstruct this strangely beautiful fly swatter, thinking it could easily be made with a piece of hardwood and a bit of leather. Then we thought: why bother? It only costs $12.80 + $5 shipping at Kaufman Mercantile.
We figure it would make a great, slightly odd, original and much-appreciated house gift for summer weekends. After all, most fly swatters are ugly and made of funky plastic. This one allows for chicly WHAMMING the occasional fly or mosquito, while being nice to look at during its off hours.
Kaufman Mercantile has some swell pricier items that provide inspiration and self-evident-how-tos for making them yourself: read more…
06.29.12 |
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in cheap + great, d-i-y, elements, gifts |
A couple of weeks after we posted the versatile tinkertoy plate holder we’d bought at Crate and Barrel and hacked…er…tailored it to suit our big platters, we discovered that Crate and Barrel had done some hacking as well. They added an edge and painted them rustic white, and are using them throughout the store to display all manner of goods, from CD’s to framed pictures (photo at bottom). We bought another set, thinking we’d found the perfect customizable holder for all kinds of things…
That is, until we stumbled on the Rationell Variera storage rack at Ikea. For $4.95 you get an accordian-style expandable stainless steel base read more…
06.26.12 |
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in cheap + great, hard, housewares, inside, resources, storage, stores, strategies |
photo: adam mørk
After we posted about clear white board paint, which would allow you to write/and erase any wood or painted surface, Diary of a Tomato alerted us to the very cool alt-whiteboards spotted at Noma Foodlab, an ambitious restaurant and food “experimentarium” in Copenhagen. In the huge high-design loft space, big slabs of glass are afixed to the walls to display notes and lists.
Just to make sure you really could write on glass and then erase it, we tried marking the bottom of a jelly glass with a Sharpie… read more…
06.25.12 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, hard, how-to, inside, materials, repurpose, resources |
Months ago we clipped a post we’d seen about a Tyvek shower curtain sold by Grain design. We filed it away as a possibility for our soon-to-be-renovated bathroom, since it was touted as being completely waterproof, mildew-resistent and fabric-like (you can even draw on it) with no off-gassing like regular plastic shower curtain liners. The photos on their site showed a pristine, creaseless shower curtain that looks as though it had been ironed.
read more…
06.18.12 |
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in bath, bathing, cheap + great, elements, inside |
photos: erin boyle/readingmytealeaves.com
Recently, a smart, lovely article by blogger Erin Boyle on Urban Foraging made a connection that we knew but were somehow too tired or blocked to make: that the stunningly fragrant linden trees in bloom in many parts of the country (and in New York City) are the very same ingredient used for an age-old tisane, or calming tea, served commonly in France. Its leaves and blossoms can be picked judiciously without harming the tree, and easily dried to make an herb tea to have on hand all year.
Erin told the story of getting up the courage to actually “forage” some linden in her Brooklyn neighborhood, read more…
06.15.12 |
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photo: sally schneider
Since moving, we’ve realized the insane number of details that comprise “a life”: where is a good dry cleaner in our new neighborhood, what to use for hooks for towels until we find ones we like?…it is endless. We’d bought a nice-looking toilet roll holder only to discover to discover that it would be “a project” – time we don’t have – to install on our sheetrock wall. So we devised one out of…rocks that we’d brought from the other apartment. (We’d hauled them from the beach years ago because they are so incredibly useful and wonderful to look at: a sculptural bit of nature.) read more…
06.14.12 |
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photo: monocomplex design studio
We love this chair by monocomplex design studio because it illustrates an essential lesson about cardboard: when sheets of it are glued together they become an incredibly strong material, a homemade laminate that can be used like wood. Here, the designer glued together 127 pieces of cardboard (recycled boxes, not pristine sheets) until he had a big roughly-arm-chair-size block. Then he sculpted it with a grinder and saw, gradually tailoring a chair to fit his body.
You can watch the process here, a 1.5 minute revelation. read more…
06.13.12 |
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