storage
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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? |
Sally Schneider
For the renovation of my 1,000-square-foot ‘Laboratory’ in New York City, my mission was to open up the space to the spectacular park view AND fluidly accomodate an open kitchen, workspace, dining area, and living area. To do this, I removed a small bedroom to dramatically expand the main room and built an office area along one 15′ wall in the big space. The pressing question then became: how to “disappear” or close-off the office so I could “leave” my work? (This is the great dilemma of people who work at home; I learned the hard way that sleeping where you work is NOT a good idea.)
I discussed the problem with Scott McFarlane, an interior designer I consulted with early on in the project. A curtain won’t do”, said Scott. “It’s not substantial enough. You need to close your work off with a WALL, that will really make you feel it’s gone.” He thought for a moment. “I remember seeing a mechanism that was basically flat panels that roll on a track to become a flush wall that would conceal the office. When you rolled them back to reveal the office again, they would “nest” in a specially built nook.”
We found the mechanism — called the Aperto 60 H Operable Wall System read more…
04.30.13 |
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in cool spaces, elements, inside, materials, resources, storage, stores, walls + windows, working |
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Spotted in Design Milk’s recent story about Rua Confettora, unconventional, international design shop in Brescia, Italy: a white-painted ladder used as the support for glass shelves: instant, rustic/modern chic, made from ordinary materials.
When we hunted around, we discovered that Lab::Istanbul’s had created a line of shelving based on the idea: read more…
03.27.13 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, inside, materials, reclaim, resources, solutions, storage |
ikea.com
Spotted on Ikea’s Swedish website LivetHemma: a bunch of cabinet boxes afixed to the wall, with space to store a bike. It’s a graphic solution to storing a bike when you have no outside bike storage, and want to get it off the floor.
Of course, bikes are beautiful hung directly on the wall, horizontally read more…
03.19.13 |
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in copy this!, storage, strategies, walls + windows |
(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 |
When we first saw the Sapien vertical book shelf, we were smitten. What a great idea: an impermanent shelf that stacks books vertically, making use of odd spaces. We bought one, well, er, a less expensive knockoff
. Once we actually stacked it with books, we realized how problematic it actually was; it was too heavy to move. We solved that by finding a set of wheels that fits it perfectly.
We still didn’t love that way it looked: a busy tower of book titles, distracting to our minimalist slightly ADD eye. Then we saw THIS solution to that problem: read more…
01.29.13 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, inside, resources, solutions, storage, why not? |
Recently,
Design Sponge featured the three-level Copenhagen apartment of
Camilla Ebdrup, half of the Danish duo behind
LuckyBoySunday, and her husband, photographer
Andreas Stenmann. Their style is a mix of modern and vintage, with many items foraged from the nearby canals, where interesting items are washed in from the sea. We especially loved the wooden ladder that they use as a pot rack.
The ladder idea came up when there was no more room in the cupboards for the pots and pans, and it looks great.
Indeed! We hunted around for “wooden ladders with round rungs” and found a huge selection on Ebay under wooden ladders:
read more…
01.03.13 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, diy, elements, how-to, kitchen, materials, resources, storage |
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: sally schneider
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…
06.12.12 |
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in cheap + great, d-i-y, elements, hard, inside, kitchen, laboratory, resources, solutions, storage, stores |
photo: sally schneider
In the days after our move to Harlem, friends came to help with the massive amount of unpacking, disposing of paper and boxes, and figuring out how to make the unfinished space as livable and pleasant as possible. As is typical with well-layed plans, ours did not go altogether smoothly. read more…
05.23.12 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, elements, inside, laboratory, materials, people, repurpose, resources, storage |
A few months ago, I bought a space in Harlem, soon to be home of ‘the improvised life’s new LABORATORY, in which to experiment with all sorts of ideas for home and daily living.
I had scoured New York City real estate listings for YEARS, traipsing from space to space in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan weighing the pros and cons of neighborhoods, commutes, space-for-the-money – a huge list – until I finally said YES to modest space with very good bones. It was a lucky find, fitting a VERY limited budget AND having the essentials I’d been looking for: proximity to great transportation, a real neighborhood, good security, and most important of all, a wonderful view that could never be obstructed. The architecture is nothing to speak of and the apartment itself needed serious work.
It has become a lesson in seeing through the superficial to the bones beneath, and envisioning possibilities. read more…
05.07.12 |
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in community, cool spaces, inside, inspiration, reimagine, resources, storage |
It seems that once we start focusing on a subject, we begin to find all sorts of solutions and iterations. Lately, it appears to be shelving…
Recently on Remodelista, we spotted these clamped together shelves used at Dyke & Dean, a housewares store in Hastings, East Sussex, England. It reminded us of the clipped together cardboard box shelving we posted about a while back, that ultimately turned into a several post riff (see Related Posts, below). Basically, Dyke and Dean’s are made of simple plywood boxes, stacked in various ways, and secured with metal clamps, for clean, industrial look.
It turns out there is a whole WORLD of cool clamps, beyond the classic “C” Clamp. We’re wondering what we could do with this pulley clamp we found at Carolina Biological Supply (a source for all sorts of useful tools for off-use): read more…
04.04.12 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, elements, furniture, inside, storage |
