(Video link here.) Tracy Metro is a designer and the host of I Live with My Mom on SpacesTV, where she makes over bedrooms of twenty- somethings who are still living at home with Mom. “I rid them of their soccer trophies, Legos and stuffed animals in favor of an adult launching pad for life.”
She’s applied her own small-space thinking to The Retro Metro, a houseboat she and her husband bought a few years ago. When we saw the before-and-after photos, we had to know the story. So we interviewed Tracy and spliced-in pictures and plans to show you just how big a project it was. read more…
When I finally got the space in Harlem - blessedly empty of the previous owner’s massive furniture – the first thing I did was haul up my trusty lightweight, reclinable French beach chair so I could hang out and just mull. I’d wander the rooms, feeling the space, able to envision its possibilities better now that the furniture was gone. The place was pretty bleak, the wear-and-tear showing on old carpeting and dingy walls. read more…
One of the amazing and surprising responses to our going “dark” last week were Comments and emails the came in from ‘improvised life’ readers – whom we’ve never actually met – sending words of support, understanding and gratitude for what we’ve been doing over the past year or so. It knocked us out, reaffirming what we learn daily as we post, that there is a huge vein of generosity coursing through the world and the internet is a powerful conduit and connector. We are grateful for our virtual, curiously tangible, community.
We also got a shout-out from our new blog discovery Mike and Molly’s House, just as we were planning to feature their unbelievable Snaptastic Room Divider, an ingenious modular wall made up of an array of panels that are fit together with slotted connectors. Their way and spirit are totally after our own hearts, as we appear to be to them. They nailed ‘the improvised life’ in a post called “A Little Help from Our Friends“: read more…
We’ve long loved Dutch architect and designer Gerrit Rietveld’s elegant, elemental, iconic wood furniture. When we read that there was a book of his built-it-yourself furniture designs, we were thrilled….until we discovered that it cost $145 new and $78 used at Amazon. Darn. (Curious, a few days later we found that it IS available on Amazon though we had searched and searched before…)
So we went on a hunt. And found it! How to Construct Rietveld Furniture is available for $39.95 at Tools for Woodworking. Here’s its enticing description:
Rietveld’s furniture is really easy to make. The joinery is well within the skill of even a rank beginner, and you come out with world class 20th century furniture…The designs range from his famous chairs to tables, stools, a magnificent sideboard, a few pieces scaled for children, and some lamps from his more architectural work. read more…
Recently, we’ve been on the hunt for great lighting, that is, lighting that is cool looking and gives us the option of as much light as we want to adjust hi-or-low with a dimmer. We keep finding wonderfully designed lights with really low wattage bulbs, like 40 or 60, which rule them out. We want at least 100 watts worth.
As always when we can’t find what’s in our heads (which is surprisingly often), we look around to see if we can make it ourselves. For a while now, we’ve been a fan of lighting designer Lindsay Adelman’s free d-i-y lighting plans (there are four on her website) which give you a basic plan, parts, where to buy them, and how-to’s - information that makes it possible to improvise. A note in the You Make It section of her site says:
“Experimenting with off-the-shelf parts is how Lindsey got started before designing and manufacturing the custom system for the Bubble Series.”
We’re inspired. We’re already looking into read more…
Every since we saw the videoAndrew Carmellini, mastermind of the great Locanda Verde, made to build buzz in his soon-to-open NYC restaurant, Dutch, we’ve been FEELING the restaurant as it comes together in the crazed couple of weeks before opening. Maybe that’s because Sally actually worked nearby at the old Soho Charcuterie on Sullivan Street; she made pates and terrines all day in the basement prep kitchen and would take breaks in the bocce court next door (now long gone, along with the neighborhood’s Italians). Restaurant memories live in the bones.
Maybe it’s because the video (possibly even better with the sound off) conveys a sort of chef head of late night foraging around town, of all the things that fly IN to that head that end up becoming a dish.
We were so intrigued, we took a screen shot of the quickly uncrumpling blueprint in the video so we could take a closer look at the new restaurant: read more…
London-based designer Kenyon Yeh has developed a wonderful premise for hacking Ikea furniture (one of our favorite past-times): He buys standard Ikea flat-pack furniture and throws away the instruction book; then he assembles it the way he wants, adding new elements like an old English chair leg he cast in resin…It seems to us like their are HUGE possibilities for improvising here. Said Yeh (using some mighty weird language):
“The process is liberating and brings a limitless attitude of possibility creating unique furniture instead of doing such a thing that made by forces”
Since we first set out on our mission to find good looking clips to make shelving out of boxes, we came across Indie Furniture‘s site. (That’s what happens when you hold an idea in your mind: answers and iterations start to appear). The folks at Indie devised a clamp/joint that can fit different sizes of wood, with instructions for using them. They are so passionate about creating a do-it-yourself shelving system that would allow people to configure their own unique shelving, that they even published a manifesto: read more…
Ten years after it was built, my kitchen still looked great EXCEPT for the counter tops. The speckled black-white-and-gray granite that seemed so right at the time looked dated, and its pattern was too busy to use as a surface for the food photography we did in my space. My friend Holton, who is an amazing artist, designer, and gifted improvisor said “Why don’t you make a top to fit over the one you have?…Make a form out of plywood that will fit over the granite, and cover it with a soft-ish metal that can wrap around the form…”
I remembered the old burnished zinc bars and cafe tables I’d seen in France, and thought that zinc’s soft luster would be make a beautiful surface to photograph food on. So I looked up ZINC FABRICATORS in the Yellow Pages, and found a guy in Brooklyn who would make me what I wanted. All I had to do was send him a plan… read more…
Once the door to an idea opens, information often miraculously seems to appear. There’s some sort of attunement that seems to happen when you hold a question in mind and start trying to figure it out; perhaps it’s simply a shift in awareness that makes us see the answers around us.
Right after I wrote about d-i-y pizza-ovens, I started to stumble upon books and websites with in-depth instructions and resources for building and using wood-fired ovens, a change in name that expands the content considerably (beyond pizza – just about any food benefits from being cooked in a wood-fired oven). Even if you don’t actually have a space to build a wood-fired oven right now, these resources can help you formulate ideas for when you do, or for when you’re out camping and want to apply some of its principles to a make-shift oven. Some books, like the definitive The Bread Builders: Hearth Loaves and Masonry Ovens, will even guide you to achieving some of the effects of a masonry oven, using an ordinary gas or electric oven. read more…
I’ve come across a number of posts about furniture made of pallets, those flat rectangles of rough hammered-together wood platforms commonly used to move bundled goods around by a fork lift. This lounge chair by Studiomama is a particularly good one; it has clean lines and looks like it would be comfortable – perfect at a beach house or on a patio. It is made out of two pallets and 50 screws, from an inexpensive, down-loadable plan. It would be great painted, or naturally weathered.
The ever-innovative Studiomama has other well-designed examples of pallet furniture read more…
I was just imagining how my friend Matthew, who is a gifted paper artist, might design a light out of a paper shade and hanging bulb were he given the challenge, when I came across some free, origami-like down-loadable plans on the internet. They are the “gift” of Arash and Kelly, an industrial design studio with a mission “to help to re-connect our global culture”. A video of their Octopus light being made gives a sense that this is really something an anyone might improvise upon.
But even more inspiring and full-of-info is a video of a light for which they don’t give exact plans, but do show the assembly of: plastic leaves with perforations along the edges that “zip” together to make a number of configurations. It made me think: “There’s a great approach to d-i-y lights and shades”: read more…
Although I am not a designer, I decided to try designing a table base myself. Using a ruler and pencil, I made a drawing with the totally cockeyed perspective of an outsider artist (since I don’t really know how to draw) with the exact dimensions. Then I faxed it to a guy I’d heard about at Tringali Ironworks in Boonton, New Jersey. He said he could make my base.
The reason I designed my own table is that I couldn’t find a base I liked or could afford to support a beautiful slab of slate I’d inherited. So I figured: “Maybe I can design one; what have I got to lose?” read more…
so I could hang out and just mull. I’d wander the rooms, feeling the space, able to envision its possibilities better now that the furniture was gone. The place was pretty bleak, the wear-and-tear showing on old carpeting and dingy walls. 
though we had searched and searched before…)
, will even guide you to achieving some of the effects of a masonry oven, using an ordinary gas or electric oven. 
