a busy office disappears behind hafele’s sliding wall

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…

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graphic stacked log fence = gorgous firewood storage

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). Related posts: storing firewood indoors = firewood as storage unit d-i-y stacked wood fireplace mantle woodpile…

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visionary hack: cargo bike with shopping cart + chainlink fence

Spotted on Claton Cubitt’s tumblr and worth checking out full size: “cargo bike incorporating a shopping cart and chain link fence, with a blood-red wrought-iron cowcatcher (and cup holder), New Orleans.” The awesomness of the human imagination! This practical AND aestheric considerations here are stunning… Related posts: clever shelving configured for bicycle storage bikes for hauling…

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3 improvs: pilgrimage, kickstarter win, poetry practice

We are constantly knocked out by the wonderful endeavors our readers are involved in, committed to, CREATED out of nothing, improvised. Here are a few from the past week: David Downie and Alison Harris set out from their home in Paris to walk across France to the Pyrenees, the French portion of El Camino de…

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diy chain link fence artistry: weave a sign or design

Recently, we noticed a spike in traffic to our 2009 post d-i-y lace chain link fence. Ho, are people trying to figure out how to make chain link fences look better at last?  What we loved in that early post was that someone had brilliantly seen that the metal grid of a chainlink fence is really a loom for weaving…

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cool design: quad trivet…game…necklace (indiegogo)

We’re smitten with the Quad Trivet a cool Indegogo project. It consists of 16 wooden cubes — oiled walnut or maple — connected by a flexible, durable, heat-resistant silicone strip inserted in the underside of the cubes. This structure allows various configurations and different applications ranging from a compact squares and rectangles to a widespread circular…

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simple style: side-by-side ikea cabinets

White steel Ikea PS cabinets ($99 each) lined up side-by-side, and stacked high with books, become curiously chic.   via Desire to Inspire; photo by Sabrina Rothe Related posts:  xhackism: the infinite diy possibilities of ikea’s LÖBBO shadex 16 REALLY clever uses for binder clips found: frosta/alvar aalto stool knock-off!!! an artist hacks ikea’s ‘billy’ bookcase cool…

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obsessive wingsuit flight through a hole in a mountain

(Video link here.) Wingsuit pilot Alexander Polli saw a hole in a mountain’s rocky outcropping and just had to try flying through it.  He practiced aiming and controlling his flight over and over until he just went ahead and…flew…right…..THROUGH… …at 155 miles per hour. Polli “hopes his success will inspire others not only to ‘climb…

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remembering richie havens + ‘follow’

We were very sorry to hear that singer Richie Havens passed away. He was born in Bedford Stuyvasant, Brooklyn  and we used to see  him in Greenwich Village in the old days, around the time his intense improvised opening of the Woodstock festival which made him famous (see video below). Here’s one of our favorite songs: Follow (Words…

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freehand half-painted wall and…ipad sleeve and…

When we first saw the yellow freehand painted two-tone wall at Style-Files (below), we were of two minds: good idea but something held us back. Then we came started to come across an iteration Remodelista found at the Norwegian company Lady Premium Paint & Colors blog that made us think it held lots of possibilities.  Out-of-the-blue we spotted the freehand-by-brush…

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Sister Corita Kent’s Enduring Rules for Making + Her Art

When we were first planning ‘the improvised life’, we were inspired by this now-famous set of rules by Sister Corita Kent, artist and renown educator. They speak directly to the process of creating…ANYTHING. Here are our favorite essential rules: Find a place you trust and then try trusting it for a while. Consider everything as…

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