The marble hexagon tiles for our bathroom are sitting in our hallway, waiting patiently for a floor to be installed in the bathroom so they can become a permanent part of the house. Before that can happen, though, we need our plumbing work to be done! Plumber #3’s estimate arrived yesterday, and while it’s higher than we were hoping or expecting, we have full confidence that this guy will (a) SHOW UP AND DO THE WORK, and (b) do a great job. Right? Right! The extra money is worth having to go through all of this for a 4th time, believe me.

By the way, the last time I mentioned the marble hexagons, someone asked for my source—we bought ours at Fuda Tile.

I’ve been trying to choose just the right color for the outside of the clawfoot tub, and I think the center color here (Benjamin Moore “Blushing Red”) might be the winner. It’s just the right amount of pink without being a full-on magenta.

Finding the right light fixture for the ceiling is proving to be tricky. The scale is difficult since our ceilings are high, but the room is very small. It’s going to be the sole light source in the room (except for an alley-facing window), too. Decisions! I know I don’t want anything fake-antiquey (no Restoration Hardware, etc.). I’ve been thinking about the Kartell Gé pendant, possibly in clear or blue, but I’m not sure I’m love with it.

Yesterday we brought home a pair of Bertoia side chairs to use in the back garden. They weren’t a true scavenged find as they are new, but I’m counting them as such since they were reduced in price by more than 75%. Yes!! They both have a wee bit of rust staining around some of the welds—barely noticeable, really—but since we’ll be using them outside anyway, it doesn’t matter.

Honestly, when a single wire chair retails for $421, the only way it’s coming home with me is if it’s DRASTICALLY discounted or if I find it in the garbage. I am forever grateful for the existence of the DWR Annex!

You wouldn’t know it from reading my posts, but there’s 500 SF garden at the back of this house. Sadly, we haven’t done anything with it other than clean up the trash, remove a chain link dog pen (thanks, Adam!), and level the ground a bit. Before anything is planted, it desperately needs a tall fence to hide the neighbors’ yards. There’s also a rather annoying mulberry tree that we want to have removed, as the copious amounts of squishy berries it drops all over the place during summer render the yard virtually unusable.

It’s an ugly little patch of land right now, but you’ll see—these chairs are just the beginning! It’ll be looking like Carin Goldberg’s garden in no time.

I drew a photo-realistic portrait of Evan on my thumb.

It was cold and windy outside today, but I wore my new coat anyway. I was freezing, but it was worth it. C’mon, springtime, you can do it!!!

Have a wonderful weekend!

I need a professional haircut, because I look like this:

I used to go to Jane at Grace Heaven, and then I went to Simone at Laicale for a few years. I love them both (and would recommend either of them in a heartbeat), but I feel like I need to try someone new. That said, the fear of trying someone new has lead me to spend the past two years cutting my own hair—with thinning shears. Chop, chop, chop, chop. No rhyme or reason, just hacking away. I like looking disheveled, but there’s a limit (see above photo).

NYC people: Who do you recommend? I like stylists who don’t mind taking sculptural liberties when cutting. I’m pretty fearless when it comes to hair (though I do require having bangs; I can’t exist without them, but they can be short-short-short or long), but the stylist must understand my hair icons (Lydia Lunch, Debbie Harry, Exene Cervenka) and not try to give me a soccer-mom cut.

I’m feeling really excited about Ellsworth Kelly lately (who, by the way, comes from Newburgh). I can’t wait to see these two pieces in the Color Chart exhibit at MoMA. Has anyone been yet?

Spectrum Colors Arranged by Chance II. 1951.
Cut-and-pasted color-coated paper and pencil on four sheets of paper, 38 1/4 x 38 1/4" (97.2 x 97.2 cm).

Colors for a Large Wall. 1951.
Oil on canvas, sixty-four panels, 7′ 10 1/2" x 7′ 10 1/2" (240 x 240 cm).

One of the big things I used to write about on the old blog was my obsession with cosmetic and skin care products. I swore to myself that I wasn’t going to go down that road with this site (because it’s about my house, right?!), but I just can’t help myself. Anyone who knows me will not hesitate for a single second to tell you that the desire to talk about this stuff is just an essential part of who I am. Why deny that any longer? I give in!

And so, I present to you my current product obsession, DERMAdoctor Wrinkle Revenge Rescue & Protect Eye Balm.

I’m on my third jar of this stuff (and I’m one of those people who hardly ever uses anything up, and instead moves on to something else in hopes that it will be the product that changes my life), so I feel pretty confident in recommending it. I actually stopped using it for about 6 months because I didn’t feel like shelling out $70 for a new jar, but over the course of that time, the skin around my eyes got really craggy and crepe-y. I’m 32 (no, not OLD, but not YOUNG, either—I’m fighting wrinkles and pimples at the same time, which is just completely awesome, let me tell you) I finally broke down last weekend and shelled out the cash, and after using it morning and night since then, there’s already a noticeable improvement. I swear it’s not my imagination, either! Totally worth the cash, and to be honest, it’s a pretty big jar as far as eye creams go.

I have yet to find a fabulous undereye concealer, sadly. I’m presently using Clinique All About Eyes Concealer, and while it’s not awful, I definitely don’t love it. I think I’m running out of brands to try, though! Maybe I just need to wear more eyeliner, and the dark circles will just blend in and look intentional.

I’m not sure how I missed this monumental event, but Loobylu is back up and running! Claire took a year off from blogging (a choice I completely understand), and I missed her writing deeply during her absence. She has been an inspiration to me in many ways for a number of years, and I’m so pleased to see her words, illustrations, and beautiful family again. Yay, Loobylu! Yay, Claire!

When we bought our house, we took off all of the doors inside to make it easier to refinish them and strip the paint off of the hardware. Two years later, we are still without 90% of our doors.

Yesterday I started in on the refurbishing process of the door pictured above, which belongs on the closet in the bedroom. Yes, the bottom two panels are missing, and were replaced with window screening. A couple of our other doors (one other closet, as well as the bedroom door leading to the hallway) have this same “feature”. I will, of course, be getting rid of the screening and repairing the doors with new panels of wood.

Can anyone explain this to me? WHY would someone put screening on an interior door? For ventilation? What on Earth would they be keeping in a closet that would need to breathe?!

As a side note, today is St. Patrick’s Day, which translates to a morning train full of drunken college students with shamrocks painted on their faces, and, because I work in midtown, the constant sound of the stupid parade going past my office building. I hate parades. I also loathe public drunkenness. And, you know, green bagels.

“Emyloo” and “Marilou” coats from Soïa & Kyo’s Spring 2008 collection. Perfect!

I have a full-blown, unrequited furniture crush!

A couple of weeks ago I saw this sweet 1956 Heritage Henredon table for auction on eBay. It wound up selling for $360, and that’s too much money for me to spend on something I really have absolutely no use for. It is absolutely gorgeous, though, and I cant stop thinking about it! I actually dreamt about it last night (and fell out of bed twice?)—that it was sitting in the back room of our house, the room that’s still unrenovated. In my dream, the room was painted white from top to bottom (including the floor), and nothing was in it other than this table.

PHEW. Is it really March 9th already?! I don’t know what happened to the last two months, but I am totally exhausted. The past couple of weeks have been pretty ridiculously cruddy (family members in the hospital, jury duty, Evan away on a business trip, train outages, computer nightmares, work nightmares, conspicuously absent plumbers, etc.), and this weekend was just barely an improvement…and now it’s time to go back to work tomorrow. I need time off! I’m so tired and so behind on everything, which is the worst feeling.

In happy, non-whiny news, I have a new computer!!! YAYYYYY!!! We bought a 20″ iMac on Saturday, and then spent the next 24 hours struggling with wireless configurations. Ultimately, we’ve opted to return the problem-ridden Time Capsule we bought, and go back to our trusty AirPort Extreme. (Never, ever buy the first generation of anything Apple makes the first week it’s on the market. Never!)

It was well beyond time to replace the old Graphite iMac, which had been with me since 1999 (!!), and it’s extra super nice to have a second computer to accompany our MacBook, which is primarily sofa-bound. I do most of my heavy duty design stuff at work on a fancy Mac Pro machine, but an iMac suits my needs very well at home. I’m excited. The monitor feels so big!

I’m really, really tired, and it’s going to be another long week. Sleep-sleep-sleep-sleep-time.

p.s. Here’s Bruno on his birthday!