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…
Our friend Margot Wellington sent us a much-passed on email of improvisations and hacks seen in the parking lots of Walmarts across the country. Being a parking lot, all are car related; we can only imagine what else these creative folks have cooked up in their everyday lives.
Most boggle our mind with their desperate brilliance, resourcefulness, and “I don’t care what anyone thinks…I’m doing my thing” attitude. The car above has a singular stylishness… read more…
Over the years we’ve been given a number of beautiful oversized platters which we love to use for celebrations of all sorts. We’ve discovered they are too oddly-shaped to fit stacked on a shelf in our renovated kitchen cabinets, but would if we could find a way to stand them up. Using wire plate display stands for each platter would prove unwieldy and take up too much room. So we started to look around for another option.
We found it in the form of an inexpensive plate holder from Crate and Barrel: basically two wooden bars held in place by dowels, with dowels placed vertically at about 1″ intervals to hold plates: a tinker-toy of a plate holder.
Our platters need bigger spacing to balance upright properly so we decided to try hacking the plate holder read more…
Nina Saltman, ‘the improvised life’s construction and building consultant, is really good with her hands, and even better with extensions of her hands—namely, tools. Nina was one of the first women in the country to wear a hardhat. She’s worked her way up from apprentice carpenter to general manager of massive construction projects (see About).
Now that we’re doing a lot of projects for the Laboratory, what we wanted to know from Nina was: what tools does she consider to be essential? Nina thoughtfully organized her list of recommended tools in a hierarchy of essentials that you can tailor to where your life is and how ambitious your repairs and projects are.
BTW: Nina doesn’t use a tool box. She prefers a tool bucket, with a “bucket buddy” to organize the extensions of her mind and hands. This week we’re bringing you all of the hand tools and important accessories that can fit in your bucket. Next week we’ll be back with power tools and tools for more ambitious woodworking.
With just these, you could probably do most things, maybe not so well, or efficiently, but it would be possible. I once repaired locks at my brother Dave’s house with my Swiss army knife because his ‘tool box’ consisted of a couple rolls of wire and a pair of pliers. read more…
We recently discovered Easy Home Tricks, a pinterest board from Remodeleze.com. A lot of DIY home sites involve repurposing everything to the point of absurdity, but while this board has a little of that - covers up a bathrooms window??!! - for the most part it’s extremely USEFUL. We think of it as a more modern Hints from Heloise.
So far we’ve discovered a lot of great everyday home solutions, many of them ‘green’, including read more…
Le Corbusier’s beautiful table “Tronc d’arbre“, designed in 1956, made the hairpin leg table famous, and brought notice to its simple formula: a wood slab or plank top + a set of hairpin legs. That formula has inspired a multitude of iterations over the years; it is a relatively simple and impressive d-i-y project, made even easier by a hairpinlegs.com, a whole website offering different kinds and sizes of hairpin legs: read more…
Now that we have a terrace with a fatso view, we’ve been looking at minimalist planter options and found this image of a cool one at Houzz: a four cabinet file cabinet with drawers removed, turned on its back. It is one of a series of file cabinet planters made by Minimis and has a pricetag of nearly $800. Yikes! So we poked around for other options and found several people had the same idea. Check out this d-i-y before-and-after we found at Pretty Shiny Things: read more…
Among the many projects we’re working on, is creating a standing desk – or perhaps better put – a standing area for our the 13-foot desktop we’re creating, so we can sit AND stand during many ours of blogging. We’ve seen many iterations on the internet, not to mention research as to why standing while you work is beneficial. Wirecutter’s recent article rounds up much of it, and shows the lengths, and cost, the standing desk obsession can take you to.
From our recent renovation we’ve discovered that in designing anything, it’s good to keep in mind the simplest, most bare-bones iteration; read more…
(Video link here.) Artist Tom Sachs, who we’ve posted about a number of times, recently made a video about plywood. He LOVES IT, uses a lot of it in his work, and has learned a great deal about handling it, which he summed up in this charming, illuminating video. It is totally after-are-own-hearts: in our the ongoing renovation of our Laboratory, we’ve made – and are making – all sorts of things from plywood…like the floors read more…
We’ve written before about the Fixer’s Collective, a group of improvisational fixers and menders based in Brooklyn, NY as well as Chris Hackett and the Madagascar Institute, who are devoted to facilitating “out there” creations – especially flamethrowers – for just about anyone who shows up. But lately we’ve been hearing about a number of similar projects coming out of NYC’s most forward-thinking borough–collectives of folks bonded together by a common purpose or interest, offering services at fairly low – or NO – cost.
But this isn’t about Brooklyn or the particular brand of young people associated with its DIY culture. It’s about a really compelling model of learning and service provision that could work anywhere there are willing people (and indeed, other cities have similar crops of great projects).
This makeshift pull’s austere beauty comes from having been made from Gorilla Tape, a super strong opaque black tape made by the Gorilla glue people. Our friend chose it because the pull had to be able to open a door held closed by strong magnets (which he’s using to gradually “train” the 8-foot warped plywood door to straighten out…which it is.)
We love the pull so much, and think it looks SO good, we might just leave it… read more…
As a tribute to the 80th anniversary of Alvar Aalto’s famous stool “60″, Artek commissioned Mike Meirè to make a fresh interpretation of that icon of Finnish design. Here, the artist painstakingly handpaints the simple elements of the stool: 3 bent-ply legs, one round seat (showing just how difficult it is to paint a straight edge). It gave us new ideas for transforming the fabulously versatile stool (which we’ve blogged about at great length), copies of which are available at Ikeas in Europe and on Amazon (prime them before painting as the wood has a sealer on it).
The video is also a curiously relaxing, mesmerizing 2+ minutes mediation on paint and process, with lovely music… read more…
We love the surprising “flower arrangements” created by Sania Pell, author of Homemade Home for Children. Carrots, radishes, herbs and other market treasures give earthy charm to a glass vase of flowers. Great!
May offers a brief window when the markets are flush with fragrant local strawberries. We’ve been given a couple of cartons by friends who actually had time to get to the greenmarket: sublime little sweet bites perfect as is. But we were reminded of a recipe for Strawberries in Beaujolais Sauce from Sally’s A New Way to Cook that would be the perfect way to use up what remains of the spring’s strawberry harvest.
It’s a versatile sauce/stew that can be served hot or cold, and alongside or over any number of plain cakes and desserts, as well pancakes, french toast, and especially a fine vanilla ice cream. (We like to eat it by the spoonful as a midnight snack). It’s simple to make, and the flavors of beaujolais (or other fruity young red wines) and strawberries marry beautifully; it’s an excellent way to use up an open bottle of wine. read more…
(Video link here.) When we checked in on Pascal Anson’s YouTube Channel and saw a video called “The Present”, we thought we’d see Anson demonstrating a clever way of BEING present. Well, we did, sort of: Pascal Anson’s inimitable way of…giving real presents/presence.
for each platter would prove unwieldy and take up too much room. So we started to look around for another option.
, or a 
+ a 
.
, a super strong opaque black tape made by the Gorilla glue people. Our friend chose it because the pull had to be able to open a door held closed by strong magnets (which he’s using to gradually “train” the 8-foot warped plywood door to straighten out…which it is.)
. Carrots, radishes, herbs and other market treasures give earthy charm to a glass vase of flowers. Great!
that would be the perfect way to use up what remains of the spring’s strawberry harvest.
