photo: nadim kamel
We were knocked out by the insanely colorful streetscape made by a Lebanese team of artists/designers, known as dihzahyners, in Beirut.
We imagined how the the worst and bleakest urban neighborhoods we’ve traveled through would be TRANSFORMED by color. All it takes is paint, vision, collective effort: read more…
We’ve been amassing quite a collection of pictures of stacked boxes and crates being used as shelving. And lately, they’ve included crates and boxes that are painted on the inside, outsides left their natural shelves. This simple embellishment presents the colors as a sort of surprise, that lends a lot of charm to the plain box look…
1. Edit ruthlessly: clear the arteries of our lives, cut the extraneous out of our lives, think before we buy, ask ourselves, ‘Is that really gonna make me happier? Truly?’
2. New mantra: small is sexy. We want space efficiency, we want things that are designed for how they’re used the vast majority of the time–not that rare event. Why have a six burner stove when you rarely use three? So, we want things that nest, things that stack… we wanna digitize. You can take paperwork, books, movies, and you can make it disappear. It’s magic.
3. Think multifunctional spaces and housewares: a sink’s combined with a toilet, a dining table becomes a bed in the same space, a little side table stretches out to seat ten.
“Consider the benefits of an edited life.”
We hear you!
via TED.com
Related posts: digital memory archive (photograph stuff then give it away)
unusual guest ‘books’ on walls and furniture (and books)
keeping a dream book
quilts as memory-keepers
keeping an instagram journal
These balloons bearing the message “Sorry I am such an asshole” are meant as a slightly humorous and generous apology. They made us think of how great it would be to be able to buy balloons with all sorts of messages beyond, “Happy Birthday” or “Congratulations!” or “Get well,” like: read more…
photo: richard powers
About a year ago, our friend Ellen Silverman came back from France with a beautiful linen flat sheet that she’d seen displayed in a Paris shop. The salesperson encouraged her to buy a king size sheet and use it as a coverlet that would drape on the floor and become it’s own “dust-ruffle”, hiding whatever lay hidden under the bed. It looked so pretty, and seemed like such a practical idea, that we hatched a plot to photograph it; both being so crazy-busy we still haven’t gotten around to it.
So I was pleased to stumble on a similar image buried in a recent Remodelista house tour. This huge flat-sheet coverlet is made of gauze but linen is lovely, washable, comes in a variety of colors, and doesn’t need to be ironed. Wrinkled is fine, as are ripped edges. We’re wondering what would happen if read more…
Since our every early post Concrete Block Love, about a table base Marcel Breuer had designed of concrete blocks, we’ve posted quite a few posts about concrete blocks and what you can do with them. We LOVE them because they are so mundane with so much potential to be stylish.
The other day we discovered a fantasy concrete block made out of a big Lego mold. By fantasy we mean they aren’t readily available for sale, though the should be (apparently, they are one or two sources online that will custom make them).
They’re stackable (up to a point) and wonderful looking, the perfect combo-platter: concrete block and Lego. Having a good amount of inteior channeling, we imagine they’d be better than common concrete blocks. read more…
photo: mikko ryhänen
We love the glossy white wall tiles used as white board at Bar & Co. a bistro-style bar in Helsinki, a great idea for a kitchen wall. We’re suddenly viewing our oversized rectangular bathroom tiles in a new way: message boards (with the possibility for leaving little wash-off-able notes in a normally scriptless room). read more…
Chilewich is a brand of chic, minimalist woven polypropalene floor mat that is a staple in design magazines. You’d think the material from which they’re made – woven polypropyline – would be available in off-brands, but we haven’t found any in our searches. (We did, however, find a number of seller’s on Ebay who sell seconds or discontinued styles; Chilewich mats aren’t cheap.) We’ve been thinking of possibly using a Chilewich floor mat for the kitchen whose painted plywood floors take a lot of wear and tear. So we ordered some samples from Chilewich’s site.
From having cooked seriously and sometimes wildly-with-a-number-of-cooks-at-once, we know about all the bits of food that can end up ground into the kitchen floor, from scraps of fat from trimmed meat to fruit peels. We worried that all this stuff would mash into the weave and make for more work than we want. So we decided to do a test to see if the Chilewich would really clean easily despite our abuse. read more…
In the process of planning our Laboratory’s renovation, we called on a number of friends for advice: designers, artists, and people who just had plain good sense of one kind or another. When I told artist friend Lisa Morphew of the prices some of the contractors we’d spoken to were quoting us she said: “Honey, what you want to do isn’t rocket science. It shouldn’t cost so much.” Lisa, who had worked construction and transformed a wreck of a house in North Carolina into a wondrous space, proceeded to give us a lesson in how our place was made.
Pointing to the sheetrock wall that bisected the living rooms and second bedroom which we were dying to take down, she said “I could take that down with a shovel if you have one. I’ll show you how easy it is, and you’ll understand how it’s made”. A shovel?!! We didn’t have a shovel on hand so we went around to the hardware store and bought one then and there. We weren’t going to miss the chance to see that wall come down.
Lisa, and a friend, proceeded to demolish the wall in less than half an hour. read more…
One of the big surprises in our renovation of ‘the improvised life’s laboratory was the floor. When we took up the funky carpeting, we didn’t find the concrete we expected but a soft gypsum compound that couldn’t be hardened. We had no budget for a floor so we started to look around at possibilities. We entertained the idea of linoleum, which we love, but found even it was too pricey and labor intensive (it needs sealing periodically). Still, we found ourselves fantasizing about an orange linoleum floor. We weren’t quite able to imagine it.
photo: jesper ray
We’ve been getting an increasing number of emails from readers their shipping pallet improvisations, as they push they realm of pallet invention. A recent favorite: this swell, stylish staircase by Natasha Figueroa and her husband Dan Husted who live in an up-and-coping gallery district in Copenhagen, Denmark.
We have a private gallery/studio located in Kødbyen, which is the old meatpacking district. Lot45 is the name, and it is an old ‘skin-house’, where they used to hang the hides for curing. Since we did all the work ourselves, we kept the budget quite tight and try to re-use as much as we could. Seeing as the meatpacking district still functions, there are a lot of old pallets laying about. Dan designed and built this so that it can also function as a hang-out during openings & parties.
Their pallet staircase functions as an old fashioned stoop where their friends do indeed hang out… read more…
(Video link here.) After we posted the anxiety-producing riff on Banksys “No stopping”, we found this great post called Slowing Down by Leo Widrich. It’s worth reading Widrich’s process of slowing down. Here’s an excerpt the essential, powerful technique he learned from Paulo Coelho in his book The Pilgrimage
It is very simple. You pick a route to walk and you walk at half the speed that you normally do. You do this for 20 minutes. read more…
We’ve browsed endless catalogues that feature chic, expensive house numbers. We’ve always preferred the ones Isabel Rower devised out of washi tape. Then we saw THIS wonderful graphic house number done in ordinary paint. It could be any size and color(s) you want. The trick would be in finding or making a template that makes for beautiful lines, though freehand could be really beautiful.
via Japanese Trash
Related posts: impromptu tape house numbers
color inspiration: pink, acid yellow + a blue geometry
painted miracle: pink-washed plywood
for stylish d-i-y shipping pallet furniture: paint it black!
rough, hand-painted stripes on walls
transforming cheapo materials with paint
color-painted panels as decorative element
what a painted slab of plywood can do (d-i-y)
We always have our eyes for ideas we could use at home, office, spaces we need to support us and lift our spirits. The right color can do that. Since we’re not being entirely comfortable picking colors on our own, we look to ways other people have done it for inspiration and guidance.
First we came across this deep pink wall…then we got this blast of acid yellow in Morocco. read more…
When we saw this image from Natural Style Outdoor Spaces on Style Files, we immediately thought: shipping pallets would make a perfect base. You’d hardly have to desconstruct them. Just clean them up (stack if desired) and place slip-covered foam cushions on them (here’s a how-to), for chic lounging pallets that would work inside or out.
It’s curious how inspiring shipping pallets have become…We find ourselves building with them in our heads like some sort of mental Tinkertoy…
What are your ideas?
Related posts: the scoop on safe shipping pallets (shipping pallets 101)
ps: some possible dangers of wood shipping pallets
led-illuminated shipping pallet bed
brilliant D-I-Y pallet desks, tables, stairs
D-I-Y: pallet chair (and stool and lamp)
