I see these outdoor junkyard tubs featured here and there, but I liked the rustic simplicity of this one, from a diy featured at Houzz: salvage transformed into elemental luxury.
We had one years ago on our back deck in Malibu. I found an old tub for $5 in a junk yard with a flaking ocean scene painted on the rusty sides. I bought a rubber stopper for a dollar,propped it up up on a couple of bricks to level it, and filled it with a garden hose. Helluva a lot cheaper than a hot tub. Or a real pool. No humming filters burning electricity day and night, no chemicals. In fact, no plumbing at all! When we pulled the plug, we watered the surrounding trees.
Recently, we went looking for a 24-inch round metal bistro table for our Harlem terrace and hit a dilemma: whether to buy the pricey classic Fermob table (top photo), made in France, (THE table used in many public spaces), whose durable finish we’ve tested in the guise of a rectangular table we’ve stored outdoors for 2 years OR
…a good-looking knockof (bottom photo), made in China and $100 cheaper. It’s 2 pounds lighter, a concern due to the high winds up here, and we have no idea how the finish would hold-up, or how it looks in person as opposed to a photograph. If it looked cheesey or flimsy, sending it back would be expensive. On the other hand, Terrain, the store that sells it guarantees it for a year. Reviews we read for other Fermob knock-offs complain of easily-scratchable powder coating and flimsy construction. Terrain claims their matte, powder-coated finish is really durable.
Part of our improvised life is making the most of our money, and we LOVE finding less expensive routes to well-designed stuff. It’s a personal challenge we find immensely gratifying WHEN we succeed. But we’ve learned the hard way that going cheap can often be expensive read more…
Of the many imaginary inventions in my head, a pop-up guest room has had many iterations. Living in a moderate-sized New York City apartment with only one bedroom, I’d love a separate, somewhat private space to offer guests who come to sleep in my big open livingroom/kitchen/workspace. My latest inspiration comes Fabrica, Benetton’s communication research center in Treviso, Ialy.’Next Cabane’ was a design exploration spurred by a foldable wooden structure found in a dark corner of an antique market in the south of Scotland. Fabrica’s designers viewed envisioned it as movable rooms that can be carried from place to place.
‘small, temporary spaces where we can set our boundaries, seek shelter or simply live a different life rediscovering the quality and simplicity of things. personal, intimate havens in harmony with their surroundings; they reflect on subjects like work, pop-up culture, loneliness, games. alternative settings were one can live in a better way with more awareness, where design is at the service of research into materials, forms and structures.’
All it would take to make the frame is a some drilled slats of hardwood, jointed with hex bolts and wing nuts* nut whose “wings” provide a grip for the thumb and finger. You tighten the wing nut to secure the form; untighten it to fold it up for storage. read more…
When we saw this cunning walnut doorknob from ModKnobs, we imagined it to be the perfect knob for our bathroom door. But when it finally arrived, the knob we thought so fab turned out to be huge and clunky, way out of scale for the space (see photo, below). We had neglected to take note of the knob’s actual dimensions and hold a template up in the space to see if it would work. Not only did we have to pay return shipping but a restocking fee as well, all because we had neglected a simple step.
It reminded us of other common mistakes we made when ordering hardware online during the Laboratory’s renovation. We learn our lessons the hard way! Like all lessons, some good came out of it; it lead us to create our 7-Step Guide to Buying Hardware Online so you can avoid our mistakes when you buy hardware:
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.
Always on the lookout for clever way to divide and define a space, or give the illusion of different areas in an open space, we really like these clever “screens” from Swedish firm Karin Matz Arkitekt. They’re made of made from blue polypropylene string strung tight from floor to ceiling with hardware store fittings: simple, inexpensive materials, carefully thought out. read more…
Marc Berenson sent us some snaps of magazine wallpaper he spotted at Steiner Studios at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The subject line read: I thought you might have an opinion on this homemade wallpaper from old magazine pages, it’s improvised
For sure we have an opinion: Although it kinda works in a public stairwell with that cobalt blue, we aren’t crazy about it since it’s so busy and we get addled by a lot of words and the pages don’t seem terribly well edited, and why look at commercial stuff? BUT…
This weekend when we go to the farmer’s market, we will have Tubetti Pasta with Asparagus, Morels and Fava Beans from Sally’s award-winning cookbook A New Way to Cookin mind. It the perfect spring-into-summer pasta recipe because it lends itself to endless improvisation, depending on what look’s best in the market, or how much energy we have.
It plays on an essential principle of improvisational cooking: most foods harvested in the same season — in this case asparagus, morel mushrooms, and various members of the pea family— have an affinity for one another.
The recipe is built on a basic technique: braising the vegetables in a flavorful fat and a little water, then tossing them together with small tubetti pasta and fresh herbs. If you’re pressed for time, use the essential method as a foundation and use only one or two of the vegetables or whatever else looks good in the market. Or swap out like vegetables: use other firm mushrooms like maitake instead of morels.
Shucking fava beans or peas can be a delight when done with friends, but if you’re pressed for time, frozen peas are a fine stand-in.
For those who want to improvise, here’s the basic approach: read more…
A couple of years ago, Keith embarked on summing-up the essentials he’d learned over decades of farming, having started from-scratch as an escapee from the city. It was a massive undertaking on top of the ever-changing, improvisational, exhausting, gratifying realities of farming. Storey’s Guide to Growing Organic Vegetables & Herbs for Market is the 500+ page result, a curiously compelling read for anyone with farm fantasies (realistic or not).
Reading Keith’s book, I find myself an avid armchair farmer, as much from happily learning about Seed Germination and Potable Water Tests as by the more general life principles scattered throughout the book (the hallmark of all of Keith’s writing), like Surprise, Excesses of Youth, Competing Forces and Looking After Number One. The honest, methodical thinking behind Twenty Points to Ponder before becoming a farmer, which include Deal Makers and Deal Breakers, could be applied to just about any business. I especially like Question Marks, which make for illuminating self-analysis. Here are a few: read more…
Over the years, just about every place we’ve lived has had hardwood floors. They’ve ranged from prewar bleached and polyeurathaned oak to white “pickled” new oak and lately, off-white, high-gloss painted slightly rough plywood. For all those years, we’ve searched for the best way to clean our floors without damaging the protective surface. Since New York City is a fairly dirty place, a simple dry-mopping won’t do; the dust that settles on the floor needs to be washed away or it will get ground into the surface (and our bare feet). The classic string mop is hard to wring out and doesn’t seem able to handle shoe marks very well.
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.”
Author Susan Cain shines a spotlight on introverts and reveals how over time our society has come to look to extroverts as leaders. Not suggesting that one is better than the other, Susan argues that the world needs an equal space between introverts and extroverts; that an innovative, creative world wouldn’t be the same without the two coming together.
We were really heartened to see it, and this charming little movie about it, being serious introverts ourselves — OURSELF? — happy to hide out for days at a time writing and making things, being in the world in less usual ways.
Introverts work differently than extroverts, read more…
We’ve written about the unexpected stylishiness of stacked logs before but love this particularly charming and effective storage for firewood and fallen timber: a fence of stacked logs (snapped by Susan Jacobson as she drove by in her car).
. 
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.
and a good amount of muscle and gumption.
in mind. It the perfect spring-into-summer pasta recipe because it lends itself to endless improvisation, depending on what look’s best in the market, or how much energy we have.
.
is the 500+ page result, a curiously compelling read for anyone with farm fantasies (realistic or not).
.
