Apparently Ernest Hemingway had the best taste ever in bathrooms. Here’s another one from his home in Key West, and one from his Cuban estate (in which he recorded his daily weight on the wall beside the scale). Look at that shower curtain!
Photos by Patrick and Kerry (top) and DBarefoot (bottom).
My poor kitchen pantry! Just a few days ago it was looking cute, happily storing shelves of goods. Now it looks like this:
The old lead waste pipe (and all of the pipes, for that matter) coming from the upstairs bathroom (which still looks a lot like this) needs to be replaced, and because it runs through a chase in the back of the pantry (around which all of its shelving was built), it was necessary to demolish the entire pantry. Of course we will rebuild everything and make it more functional and space efficient than it was before, but right now it all feels a little bit sad.
Our plumber came by last night to assess the overall situation, go over our choices for bathroom fixtures, and formulate a game plan. He pointed out to us something we hadn’t noticed—the lead drain pipe coming from the bathroom sink had been resting against the steam pipe leading to the bathroom radiator for many years, and over time the drain pipe had literally melted itself into a crescent shape wrapped around the steam pipe. Scary stuff! It’s kind of amazing that there weren’t leaks all over the place, but since we’ve never really used that bathroom, it’s possible that we just never got a chance to have something horrible happen.
Some cool discoveries that came from our demolition are the decorative tin (?) brackets that were welded to the old lead supply lines to hold them in place. It’s pretty wild to see the kind of details that were used in old houses for even the most mundane of behind-the-walls details!
This is the goofiest photo ever! We both look like we just spent a weekend eating buttered croissants and rubbing our heads with balloons.
The original plaster medallions that surround the ceiling light fixtures are still intact in most of the rooms in our house, but the one in the bedroom was removed at some point (or else covered by drywall; it’s one of the few rooms without a plaster ceiling). You can buy polyurethane replacement medallions, but thanks to someone infinitely smarter, more skilled, and more patient than us, we now have a new plaster medallion in place!
He used the underside of a polyurethane medallion as a mold, then carefully and tediously carved out the small details in the hardened plaster. We attached it to the ceiling using Liquid Nails and three long wood screws going into the ceiling joists. A little caulk around the top edge, and it’s done.
I still need to paint the medallion and the lamp canopy so they’re the same color (and to hide the bolts), but here it is in action with the Double Dip pendant lamp from CB2. The imperfections in the plaster really add to the appeal—you’d never know it’s not original to the house!
(Thanks again, B. It really looks great!)
A small but sweet little find! Silver-plated “Bead” candleholders, designed by Jens Quistgaard for Dansk. $5.00 at Goodwill, never used and in the original box. They have just the right amount of tarnish, too.
Happy Thanksgiving! We’re all feeling very stuffed, sleepy, and thankful around here right now.
The dining room finally feels like a real room, like it belongs in this house and has a specific purpose and function. I like that our kitchen is a separate, distinct room (contrary to the current trend of opening kitchens up to the dining room or “great room”), and that our dining room lies between it and the living room. One of the nicest thing about living in a railroad-style row house is that none of rooms get “lost”—you have to walk through one room to get to the next, so it’s impossible to wind up with one of those formal, unused dining rooms. Nothing in our house could be considered formal!
I love having enough space to have an enormous dining table. It’s such a luxury to be able to spread out on a big surface like this, whether it’s to eat or using the computer or wrap presents or read magazines or whatever. This great table is the Norden from IKEA. It seats 10 people with the leaf in place, 6 people without. It’s made from thick, solid birch and is incredibly sturdy. We’ll have it forever.
More IKEA! These simple dressers are great. They’re innocuous enough to not compete with the big Eames storage unit (which is so specific in its style that it can be difficult to put anything too strong in the room with it), and they make for great storage. We have all of our CDs and DVDs in these drawers! They’re not heirloom pieces, but they are holding up quite well and definitely get the job done.
I made this recipe up as I went along last night, and it came out GREAT! So delicious, and so easy. It’s a little bit spicy, but in the most pleasant way. If you’re vegetarian, you can omit the chicken sausages and use vegetable broth.
Pumpkin Mushroom Soup
makes 6 large bowls or 9 cups
12 oz mushrooms (I used portobellos, but you can go fancier), diced
1 medium onion, diced
1 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp flour
1 tsp curry powder
3 cups chicken broth
15 oz canned pure pumpkin (NOT pie filling!)
2 chicken sausages (any kind; I used Trader Joe’s asiago & mushroom chicken sausages)
1 cup milk
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tsp sugar
shredded asiago cheese
In a large saucepan or pot, sauté mushrooms and onion in olive oil until very tender, about 10 minutes. You may want to partially cover the pan to keep everything moist. (If using precooked chicken sausages, slice into half moons, set aside. If sausages are uncooked, cook them now, slice, set aside.) Stir in the flour and curry powder until blended. Gradually add the broth, stirring. Add the sausage. Bring to a boil, lower heat, and cook while stirring for 2 minutes or until somewhat thickened. Add the pumpkin, milk, sugar and spices. Heat through on medium-low heat while stirring. Serve with a sprinkle of asiago cheese.
I finally found a spot for this fabric! Also, a tiny peek at our huge, newly-scavenged Heywood Wakefield dresser. I’ve just come around to HW furniture over the past couple of years, having previously written it off as too cartoonish. It’s soft and pretty looking, and SO solid and well-built. I think one piece is enough, though! This was just what we needed in the dressing room to soften the glass and metal of the wardrobe doors.
p.s. Have a look at the photos Sandra has posted over the past week from her recent journeys to Berlin and Copenhagen! Beautiful stuff…
Three loaves of Lena’s pumpkin cranberry bread are cooling in the kitchen (I already snuck a little piece; it’s amazing). The house smells like winter.
What a busy, short weekend it has been.
Snow is coming tonight!! I’m going to bed early and resting myself for a short short workweek…
The office/studio has been such a disaster for so long that it’s a huge relief to just have my fabrics folded and put away on a shelf instead of being stuffed into plastic bags. This room is going to be a big project for the weekend! I need a good, functional table to work on, and a way to make the white leather sofa (yes, we’re picking it up tomorrow morning!) fit nicely in there so it can be a comfortable room to lounge around in. Up until now, the room really has become a dumping ground for boxes, books, extra furniture, etc., but the waste of space is killing me. Over the last two weekends we cleared everything out, and now it’s time to make it functional!
Oh, a little detail from my kitchen that I meant to make note of…! I really love Jenni Tuominen’s “Unessa” print for Marimekko and wanted to frame it for my kitchen, but because the repeat is so humongous (81″!!), I decided to buy the tea towel instead. Marimekko’s tea towels are large (18.5 x 27.5″), beautifully silkscreened, and 100% linen. Perfect for framing!
I machine-stiched black grosgrain ribbon around the edges to make a nice border (I miter-folded a single length of ribbon as I sewed to ensure good corners), and popped the whole thing into a 19.75 x 27.5″ RIBBA frame from IKEA. Done!
So really, it was this huge Black Forest fireplace that sold us on the house. When we walked in with our realtor, I immediately gasped and smacked Evan in the arm to make sure he saw it (it’s kind of hard to miss). It’s fantastic. I love the proportions of the tiles on the inside—so much more elegant than standard subway tile, and with grout lines so tiny I could cry. The marble is cool and creamy and smooth, with winding oak leaves and acorns.
It’s things like the fireplace that make me feel honored to own this house. It’s nothing I could ever buy or that I would ever even think of putting in the house myself, but here it is, and it’s mine. The fireplace has been here along with the rest of the house for over 100 years, and nobody has ever painted it or sold it or hit it with a hammer or drilled holes in it or tagged it with graffiti or replaced it with fiberboard (things I can’t say about much of the rest of the house). I like to think it had the respect of everyone who has lived here, but especially me.
Would you believe our house has been numberless all this time?! Once the Chinese food delivery guy learned where we live, the need for numbers diminished substantially. Eventually we’ll get around to putting these on the actual door.
(Industrial House Numbers designed by Erik Spiekermann)
We’re starting to bring more color into the house a little at a time.
The yellow chair is so sweet by the dining room window that I can look past the tear the upholstery. I love how sunny it looks even in the darkest room in the house. The blue chair appears to be new old stock. The color is so vibrant! I’m not sure where in the house that one will wind up, but we’ll be changing the base to something less office-y.
I am the worst photo-taker, really, and my camera is having problems, but I did my best to take some photos of the kitchen. It looks much warmer and cozier in person!
Everything is freestanding, which is wonderful in an old house with seriously “wavy” walls. We originally chose these Udden units from IKEA thinking that they would be a temporary measure (we had to make a working kitchen before we could move into the house!), but we wound up loving them. The black VCT floor was another costsaving measure that came out looking pefect for this space. Everything was planned around the old hearth (where the Marimekko print is hanging), and under the range you can see the original green slate we unearthed. We tried to keep the kitchen simple, functional (it’s wonderful to cook in there!), unpretentious, and bright.
Oh, and here are some photos of what it looked like BEFORE. It was totally and completely revolting. The photos don’t do it justice, it was like a kitchen in an abandoned bus depot.
This sofa is totally worth $25, right? Even though the leather has a tear in it and the wood probably needs to be stripped and refinished? And I don’t actually need another sofa?
But I should probably still buy it, because it has potential. White leather! $25!
Sigh. This is how people wind up with basements full of furniture (and houses full of stray cats), isn’t it?
Yay! My poster from Elisabeth Dunker of Fine Little Day arrived yesterday. It’s beautiful! I can’t wait to have it framed and find just the right spot for it in my house. The colors (which remind me very much of those on the Eames Hang-it-All) are so beautiful and cheery, and I love (what seems to be) her combination of computer and hand-drawn illustration.
Elisabeth’s posters sold out at her new Etsy shop almost immediately, but hopefully she’ll have more items for sale there in the future. In the mean time, have a look at her blog and this great interview at Design*Sponge. Her style is such an inspiration to me.
