furniture
http://arollingcrone.blogspot.com
Stumbling on this wonderful image of sculptural black-painted chairs on a wall of the La Gran Francia Hotel in Granada, Nicaragua got us thinking about ways to store un-folding chairs. This assemblage is a more playful, freeform take on the Shaker-esque practice of hanging uniform chairs on hooks (below).
Then, moving too fast as we scanned Remodelista, we mistook Williamsburg’s (and now San Francisco’s) store The Future Perfect as someone’s HOME, and thought, how cool is that: line up interesting chairs, and even a bench or two on a shelf, like a display of sculptures. read more…
05.16.13 |
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in furniture, solutions, storage, walls + windows, why not? |
One of many things we love about artist/designer/craftsman/journeyman Max Lamb‘s work is that he ALWAYS has an unusual take on the practical AND he loves to reveal his process, offering in a powerful lesson in EMPOWERMENT. This video shows him making a wood stool out of huge chestnut tree log he hauled home from Springfield Park, London. It especially interests us because we lugged home several fallen tree hunks on our trusty Magna Cart
after Hurricane Sandy, then wondered what to do with them, having no access or facility with a chain saw. Fallen trees are a readily available raw material for a lot of people.
The big revelation from Lamb: you can fashion rough-hewn slabs and furniture parts out of fat tree trunk by using Steel Splitting Wedges, axes, hammers, a drawknife
and a good amount of muscle and gumption.
read more…
05.09.13 |
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in art, d-i-y, furniture, how-to, paths + processes, people |
Recently we’ve been noodling around with the idea of with making a Murphy Bed with a lift-system of bungee cords. We haven’t heard of such a thing, but having seen the realm of industrial bungees available, thought it might be possible.
Then, with the simultaneity we’ve come to expect when we have an idea, we stumbled on some images of beautiful bungee cord chairs designed by René Herbst, a contemporary of Robert Mallet-Stevens and Le Corbusier, in the 1930′s. They illustrated the part of our idea that had been eluding us: how to make our improvised solution be visually appealing as well as practical, two qualities we strive for in all of our home improvisations (travel and emergencies are another matter): read more…
04.18.13 |
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in copy this!, d-i-y, furniture, inspiration books + zines, materials, people, resources |
santiagodiy.com
Reclaimed shipping pallets continue to be a material that inspires design-afficionados and diy-ers alike. Over the years we’ve posted many clever iterations of pallet sofas, beds, planters, wine racks, flat files (just type “shipping pallets” into our Search box)…As well as some serious research and info on the safety of pallets, what to look for, and what to avoid. But in all our navigating of the pallet world, we’ve never seen such a blow-by-blow, here-are-the-realities of actually making a nice piece of furniture out of found pallets, UNTIL we went to the website of one of our commenters, Santiago DIY, a new blog from Santiago, Chile (in Spanish and English).
There we found the real-life steps to making a platform bed out of shipping pallets, which is not nearly as simple as finding them, arranging and putting a mattress on top. Here they are: read more…
03.28.13 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, diy, furniture, how-to, materials, reclaim |
Max Lamb
Ever since seeing designer Max Lamb‘s polystyrene bookcases, we’ve been huge fans of his work. He loves making things and lends an artist’s eye to fine craftman’s projects, documenting each step of his process to share on his website. We’ve learned a huge amount from looking at Lamb’s projects, many of which are do-able by any handy person. Take his DIM Shelf that he designed and made with Marco of the wonderful New York City store Kiosk, highly-edited selection of local products plucked from around the globe. DIM stands for Do-It-Myself, a concept that somehow makes DIY even more possible and real.
The shelving, which appear to be inspired by Enzo Mari’s Autoprogettazione (which we wrote about while back), were made out of standard ‘off the shelf’ timber bought at hardware stores: 1″ x 3″ pine (which for some strange reason is actually 3/4″ x 2 1/2″), and 1″ x 1″ (3/4″ x 3/4″) slats, plus a few boxes of screws. Most of the building took place on Kiosk‘s roof.
Here are our select’s from Lamb’s many DIM photos of the project (you can see every step here.) Definitely DIM-able.
read more…
03.21.13 |
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in d-i-y, elements, furniture |
(Video link here.) Recently, while discussing a particuarly stylish Ikea creation, our friend Maria remarked: “I figure Ikea’s stuff is only good for about 5 years.” Suddenly, we flashed on all the discarded particle board Ikea storage units we’d seen on New York City streets. In the long run, Ikea can simply be a waste of money.
Soon after, Anthony Giglio told us about an old friend from Asbury Park who launched a “funky company called Soapbox, founded on his angst with Ikea furniture assembly”. At that very moment that Anthony had been assembling “maddenning” Ikea shelving, platform bed and dresser for his daughter’s new bedroom and was at his wit’s end. (We know of couple’s who have almost split up assembling Ikea products.)
So right away we took a look. Soapbox makes veneered plywood boxes with wonderfully-designed connectors that allows for assembly without screw-drivers and Ikea angst. They are available in a range of woods — maple, cherry, walnut —, different color hardware, and your choice of leg heights. They can stand alone, stacked or afixed to the wall in various permutations that can change as your life and needs do. And since plywood is WAY more durable than Ikea’s fiberboard storage, you are buying quality goods that will last. read more…
03.06.13 |
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in furniture, resources, storage, stores, video |
Photo : Henri Del Olmo
Just as we were finishing our post about LED illuminating tree trunks, we found this image of a thick tree trunk table/stool where vivid red paint was used to draw attention to the split in the wood. It was also stenciled.
More possibilities from the tree trunk logs we hauled home after Hurricane Sandy.
03.05.13 |
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in copy this!, d-i-y, elements, furniture |
Since hauling several huge hunks of fallen trees home after Hurricane Sandy, we’ve been attuned to interesting ways of transforming them. We especially love Italian designer Marco Stefanelli‘s idea of illuminating the splits and cracks in the wood with LEDs (he embeds them in resin), and the thinking behind creating his wonderful luminous stools and tables:
I wanted to take inspiration from the research of natural objects that, in some ways, have reached their final step in the life cycle. They are for example sawmill’s outlets, pieces of urban architecture, logs carried by the river, firewood…
I have tried to give these pieces a second chance, tempting to make the light come out from the material and to amplify the sensorial experience. read more…
03.05.13 |
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in d-i-y, furniture, lighting, reimagine |
Looking through to the “bones” of this hutch by Amy Somerville London Ltd, we realize that is not that extraordinary. Its greatness lies in the clever surface pattern: blocks of color and what appears to be gold or silver leaf. Somerville’s website told the story ”satin-finished ebonised walnut…detailed in high-gloss red and green lacquer, white gold leaf and patinated brass…bespoke handles and solid brass hinges with a patinated finish.”
Ikea’s pine Hemnes wardrobe, already stained a dark black brown, might make a good base in which to color block high gloss paint (use oil-base for serious gloss; water-base can’t achieve it). But what about metal leaf? read more…
02.20.13 |
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in cheap + great, d-i-y, furniture, how-to, inside, materials, resources, resources blogs + sites |
Spotted in a the cube room, a concept room created by designer Fabian Gatermann for a design hostel in Cologne, Germany: a fab shipping pallet bed painted like one of Piet Mondrian‘s famous “Compositions” from 20′s and 30′s.
On close inspection, it appears that the bed was made to LOOK like it was made of pallets; it seems a bit too perfectly made, its wood a bit too smooth to be from real pallets.
Nevertheless, pallets provide great inspiration, and clever use of paint can take pallet furniture to a new level… read more…
02.19.13 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, diy, furniture, inside, materials, resources, sleeping |
We often take ideas from products that already exist, using a kind of x-ray vision to suss their inner workings and determine if we could make them ourselves. Danish company we do wood’s Scoreboarde, a graphic multifunctional rack for hanging coats and other things appears to be little more than hardwood boards with grids of holes bored into them at an angle; they accomodate wooden pegs whose tips are cut at an angle and painted, and which can bi configured in many ways. Do-able we’d say.
We like that they can be hung vertically or horizontally, or grouped…lots of possibilities. As is often the case, the product’s specs offer a recipe with which to riff:
- Material: Bamboo or Ash
- Colours: Black edging on board, pins in white, pink, green, light blue, dark blue
- Dimensions: Vertical Scoreboard: L100xW18, Horizontal Scoreboard: L18xW10, Small Scoreboard: L36xW17 read more…
02.14.13 |
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in d-i-y, furniture |
justin beal
Autoprogettazione, roughly translated “self design,” was a project and book by the modernist artist and designer Enzo Mari that gives instructions for building easy-to-assemble furniture — tables, chairs, bookshelves, wardrobe – using rough boards and nails. Originally published in 1974, it has been reprinted many times. Mari created the project because he thought
…if people were encouraged to build a table with their own hands…they would be able to understand the thinking behind it.
And if they understand the thinking behind it, just imagine what they could do…
Just leafing through Autoprogettazione makes us feel empowered to pick up a hammer. And we can’t help but think the rough boards Mari envisioned his readers using resemble – indeed could be culled from — the wood from shipping pallets.
Taking Mari’s basic approach and inspiration, many artist’s and designers have made their own iterations. We love Justin Beal‘s bed with a fab hot pink mattress, above. And we WANT Kueng Caputo’s Lampada lamp: read more…
02.07.13 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, furniture, gifts, people, resources books + zines |
At
Design Milk, we came across these cool, full-of-possibilities “Chopped” tables by designer
Yuval Tal. They’re made of packs of wooden towels strapped together with a metal ring — no screws or glue needed. We were mulling where to get metal strapping and how to get it tight enough to hold the dowels securely in place, and we found the answer at
Uline, one of our favorite online resources for weirdly compelling and really useful industrial stuff. You can buy stainless steel strapping and seals that you tighten with and a tool called a tensioner. Uline offers have a great
instructional pdf that gave us the gist.
read more…
01.28.13 |
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in copy this!, d-i-y, furniture |
