Yes, that’s right, it’s more Eames shell chairs! I’m losing count, honestly. But look! It’s a (nearly) matching set! They can go around the dining table! And there are no tears in the vinyl, even on the seams! And the fibers are nice and juicy! Oh, and the price was so good! I’m considering switching out the stacking bases for rod (Eiffel) style, but we’ll see.

Also, my wallpaper samples from Ferm Living arrived. How am I supposed to make a decision? They’re all beautiful…

I’m off work until the end of the week, and I used my first day of vacation to clean, organize, and listen to T.Rex and Joe Jackson, mostly. Tonight I’ll cook two big pots of soup to put in the freezer. This is the window next to my kitchen sink. The sash needs to be repaired and painted, the radiator needs painting, and the plants really should have been properly potted by now…but it’s lovely anyway. I can’t believe the impatiens in the windowbox are still alive in this freezing weather!

See our cute new tray table? I love it! But it hasn’t always been so nice…

First I found this nasty little stool:

Then I saw this worn out Swedish tray:

And I thought, hmmm…the stool has nice legs, and that carpet probably comes right off…so…we bought both, despite Evan’s resistance. I got to work right away pulling out the staples holding the carpet (latch hook, actually!):

Happily, what was under the stinky carpet turned out to be ugly-but-smooth melamine on top of seriously water-damaged plywood:

A quick coat of flat black paint to hide the edges of the plywood, some gentle care with Murphy’s Oil Soap and SC Johnson Paste Wax (the two things you absolutely need if you have a lot of wood floors and wood furniture!) for the tray, et voilà! Stool + tray = a perfect little table, for next to no cost.

Bruno agrees (Evan does, too)!

Moomintroll, Snufkin, and Misan had an excellent weekend. We’re all exhausted, though, so the scavenger reports will have to wait until tomorrow. We may still have another pickup to do in Connecticut tonight for some special goodies. Coffee, please!

(The Moomin dolls are my mother’s, not mine—I can’t get her to give them up! Aren’t they wonderful? I’m posting their picture because today is my beautiful mother’s birthday. Happy birthday, Mommy…I miss you!)

In A Quiet Place
The Work of Nicole McConville, Lindsay Pichaske, Alena Hennessy
Satellite Gallery
55 Broadway
Asheville, NC
(828) 505-2225
Exhibit Runs October 26th ­ November 30th, 2007
Opening Reception with the Artists Friday, October 26th 7 pm ­ 10 pm
Satellite Gallery Hours: Tuesday through Saturday 11 am to 6 pm

Nicole McConville http://www.sigilation.com/
Lindsay Pichaske http://www.lindsaypichaske.com/
Alena Hennessy http://www.alenahennessy.com/

I’ve known Nicole for over 20 years, and during that span of that time my respect and admiration for her art has just grown and grown and grown. She’ll have 40 pieces in this show ranging in age and size and materials, and I wish very much that I could be there tomorrow night see them (and her!) in person. Good luck, darling!

I know it’s a little bit early in the season, but I couldn’t resist ordering a bunch of these cast iron elf candleholders from CB2. There will be an elf army on the dining room mantle!

I picked up a couple of yards of the Patricia fabric from IKEA I mentioned the other day. It’s very nice in person; the size of the print is much larger than I expected it to be. It’s a medium-weight canvas, and definitely suitable for lightweight upholstery.

++ Today I came across Et lille Hus, a blog chronicling the creation of a “perfect summerhouse” in Denmark. There are some great inspirational photos and moodboards posted right now, as well as photos of what looks like a very cute house with what will soon be a lovely view of the sea. Ahhh…

I addition to bringing home the storage unit (which I still can’t believe is ours) and the perfect sofa, it was a great weekend for scavenger hunting.

We found an upholstered Eames shell chair for $20. The black hopsak fabric needed cleaning (and possibly replacement, as the foam underlay has seen better days), but the shell and base (not pictured here, I had removed them for cleaning) are in GREAT shape. Because it was practically free, we’re considering sending it out Retro Redo for reupholstery.

Our other great find was this bright green anglepoise floor lamp. I’d been eyeing it at the store for months, and finally decided it was time for it to come home with us. Again, the cost was next to nothing, but the joy I’ll feel coming home to this happy green lamp every day is enormous.

It finally happened—we bought a new sofa!

Here’s the DWR Parcel sofa at home in our living room. Photos really don’t do this sofa justice. The fabric is a soft, light brown tweed, the cushions are all down-filled, and the base is a solid, low platform (no legs!). It’s the most comfortable sofa I’ve sat in, and it’s built like a tank. Really, I couldn’t be happier.

The Parcel has been discontinued less than a year after it was introduced (legless sofas with multiple cushions are not what’s in style right now, and that’s fine with me). The result of the discontinuation is that we got a $3,000 sofa (in perfect condition) for less (!) than the cost of the IKEA Stockholm we had been considering from the DWR Annex in Secaucus. Plus, for a reasonable price, they were able to have the sofa delivered to us the same day! Instant gratification for a sofa that really is far beyond what we thought we could afford in terms of quality (don’t get me wrong, I love IKEA, but there really is no comparison here when it comes to construction and materials).

Now it’s time to start looking for a coffee table! And curtains. And the right fabric for the Danish chairs. And a rug. And COLOR.

(After the cut I’ll post all of the boring details on the sofa for my own future reference, since I’m sure it will be gone from the website soon.) Read more

Today is my birthday! I am 32 years old.

In the past year I have:

… lost 60 pounds.
… gotten to know my house really well.
… spent time with people I hadn’t seen for years.
… entered my 10th year of being a book cover designer.
… nearly ended my longtime struggle with insomnia.
… gone back to wearing eyeliner.

Five of those things are major, and one is less so—you can probably figure out which one—but this really sums up a good, long year for me. I’m glad to have gotten back to doing all of this, too. I’m having a hard time remembering exactly why I ever stopped doing it.

I can’t believe this is actually in our dining room. I can’t stop looking at it.

(p.s. We finally got a sofa, too! Post to come…)

I love how beaky Bruno looks with his snout all nestled into the pillow.

On the agenda for this weekend:
→ nice long Fall walk with Bruno
→ visit the DWR Annex in Secaucus just in case they have
something good/discounted
→ swing by IKEA Paramus to (re-)examine the Stockholm sofas
for the hundredth time (& buy fabric)
→ sew new linen curtains for living room windows
→ Middletown flea market & Iron Fish in Beacon (?)
→ finish bathroom/pantry demo in preparation for the plumber’s return
→ rearrange bedroom
→ acknowledge my birthday in some way

I love looking at that fabric so much that I decided to update the site using its colors. Some wee trees seem right for this time of year, too.

Following up on yesterday’s post about IKEA textiles, this is one of my favorites, PS Grea. It’s a heavy, nubby, unbleached linen, silkscreened with a giant gemstone print. I have a nice stash of it on hand for whatever perfect application for it eventually comes along.

A former Absolutely Vile reader emailed me to ask if I still have some photos I had posted a few years ago of Peacock Hill, the black house of the Catskills. I’ve uploaded the entire article (from Budget Living, October 2003) and created a Flickr set for them. Enjoy!

IKEA always manages to hit the mark with their textile designs. I’ve bought many yards of fabric at IKEA in various weights to use for everything from curtains to checkbook covers to lightweight upholstery, and the quality is impressive (especially given the superlow price). I love this new print from the PATRICIA line! I can see turning it horizontally and framing a large section.

Monique and Richard over at Day at a Glance are doing amazing things with the walls in their new apartment (see here and here), and the results are making me seriously consider un-whiting some of the walls in our house.

So-called “feature walls” painted in trendy colors always make me a bit uneasy (as do overly-curated, overly-thought out frame arrangements), and my experiments with using bold colors in select locations (see: purple hallway disaster recovery) have not gone well. For whatever reason, it has just never occurred to me to approach wall covering in another way—un-faux finishing methods like those pictured above. These walls look like they belong to the house, they look right.

I need to think some more about my white walls.

Two more finds from this weekend! These records came from a church flea market in Rhinebeck, 25 cents each, bought solely for their sleeves.

The illustration on the left is by Alex Steinweiss, awesome as always. I don’t know who’s responsible for the sleeve on the right, but I really dig that drumming cat. Look at those little arms!

We found this Arthur Umanoff bar cart at a junk shop in Kingston for $30 yesterday. The doors were missing, but I was able to make new ones very easily—handles to come. We’ve admired Umanoff’s carts since seeing one at an antique shop last year (way out of our price range), so this was a real score. It was hiding behind a row of discarded shutters and windows, stashed under a plastic roof in the lot behind the junk shop. I still can’t believe I actually saw it. I feel so smug looking at my $30 find and knowing I didn’t spend $500 for it!

The best part about this particular score (well, aside from bringing home a really nice piece of furniture) is that it came after spending a depressing couple of hours wandering around the Rhinebeck Antiques Fair, watching rich, old white people shop for overpriced furniture sold by rich, old white people. Yawn.