Category Archives: house

Attack of the 16-foot planter!

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Posted by Anna at D16 on August 16, 2010 – 11:20 am
Filed under garden, house

I’m feeling pretty pleased with the progress Evan and I were able to make in the garden this weekend. In a total of about 8 hours over the course of two days, we managed to construct two 8-foot mega-planters. That includes the time spent buying the wood and transporting it home! Total cost? About $100 total . . . for both planters. Fifty bucks a pop!

I took a few progress shots along the way just in case someone else wants to make a mega-planter or two. The whole project was super-easy. Seriously. Anyone with a drill and a jigsaw can do this.

After cutting all of our wood to size (we used 1×6 planks that were already 8 feet long, so we really just had to cut the side pieces down to 18″, and cut up a few 2×2s to create the support posts), we got to painting. I like to use Cabot Solid-Color Acrylic Stain for outdoor projects. It has the look of a flat, solid paint, but won’t chip or peel like paint does. The stain is very forgiving and easy to apply, usually only requires one coat, and dries completely in less than an hour. It really does hide the grain (but not the texture!) completely, though, so you might want to use something translucent if you prefer a more “woody” look. Since we already have so much wood going on outside between the deck, the porch, and the fence, I really wanted something subdued. Black has a nice way of receding in gardens, too.

(By the way, one gallon of this stain goes REALLY far. We bought one can two years ago, and even after using it for a gazillion projects, the level has only dropped about two inches. I fully expect this can of stain to outlive us all.)

The assembly process was easy. Screw the posts to the end panels (we screwed through the back so the screws won’t be visible on the finished planter), screw the end panels to the front and back planks, screw on the center posts for extra support (this may not be necessary with smaller planters). We used exterior decking screws that won’t rust. For a finishing touch, we stapled mesh screening onto the bottom of the planter. With all the groundhog* action that’s been going on in our garden lately, I consider any small defense a good one.

*At last count, there are four groundhogs: Haggis, Patches, Scarface, and my arch-nemesis, Fatback.

The planters are in place! We spent a good amount of time leveling them and making sure they were sitting nicely together. We’re planning to throw in a couple of bolts to keep them in line with each other over time, too.

THE DIRT PILE IS GONE! It felt so good to shovel all of that excess dirt that’s been migrating all over the yard for the past couple of years into the planter, let me tell you. We’re going to fill the planters the rest of the way with nice, rich planting soil, of course, but it’s okay to put crummy dirt in the bottom. Ahhhh. Bye-bye, dirt pile! I won’t miss you.

I took a second-floor shot of the whole garden so you can see how much area the mega-planters take up. I’m not sure yet what we’re going to plant in there (possibly something tall and evergreen and bushy, mixed in with some brightly-colored flowering perennials), but it’s so exciting to have another piece of the garden plan DONE.

Is this progress?

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Posted by Anna at D16 on August 1, 2010 – 2:13 am
Filed under garden, house

First of all, THANK YOU for all of the feedback regarding my hesitancy to post progress photos. A couple of the comments nearly made me cry (yeah, I’m a total crybaby), but in a good way. I really take to heart the fact that sometimes we all need to see that there are other people who don’t get things done immediately, and who also struggle with making decisions and getting motivated.

Speaking of not getting things done immediately . . .

This is the current state of our garden. If you take a look through the past couple of years of garden progress posts, you’ll see that this has been taking us FOR.EV.ER. and ever. The fact that this is our 5th summer in the house and we have yet to actually enjoy the backyard is just depressing. We had really hoped to get it DONE this year, but the temperatures in New York have just been stiflingly hot and humid—it’s very difficult to get much done before exhaustion kicks in.

I think we’re kind of getting somewhere, though? Yeah, half of the garden is still just dirt (and it’s bad dirt, too), but the pavers are in, and we planted a border of dwarf mondo grass around the deck. The Japanese maple has gotten HUGE (look how tiny it was two years ago!) and the pachysandra has really filled in. I’m especially excited that we’ve started to bring gravel in (one bag at a time, carried through the basement) to cover the ugly asphalt.

This is the end goal, at least for now (Photoshopped, of course—thanks to Carin Goldberg’s garden!). Eventually we’d like to plant ground cover between the pavers, but for the time being, I’ll be fine just staving off weeds with a layer of mulch. Vegetables and herbs will be grown on raised planters on the porch—a concession to “our” omnipresent groundhog (we’ve named him Haggis).

I just really want to be able to sit out there and look at something other than a giant pile of dirt.

Excuses and progress shots.

64
Posted by Anna at D16 on July 28, 2010 – 9:44 pm
Filed under house

It’s been a while (three weeks, to be exact) since I posted an update on the status of the vestibule re-tiling project, and I don’t really have any excuses. Or rather, I have a lot of excuses, but I don’t have any good ones.

See that 6-inch gap between where the tile ends and the floor begins? That gap has turned me into a serious procrastinator. Sure, the tile is down. It’s even grouted! But the gap is there. So I can’t take pictures.

The tile is actually the same height as the subfloor (the water-stained boards running vertically), so I couldn’t go any further. Instead, I had to make the world’s largest threshold (42″x6″) out of an oak board. I stained it black, coated it with polyurethane, and slid it into place . . . but it looked funny. Or at least I thought it did. But a week later, it looked alright? And then a week after that, it started looking pretty good.

And then I started focusing on the wood floor. Is it really that scuffed and scratched?! I guess it is, but I never really noticed until the new tile and threshold went in. We can’t get the floor refinished, though, not right now. It’s too expensive and too messy and too disruptive. (Yes, we should have done it four years ago before we moved in. I know.) Can I really take photos of the tile with the neighboring floor look like that?

Should I retouch the wood in Photoshop? Speaking of Photoshop, should I just clone in a few more rows of tile and a less-gargantuan threshold? Hey, why even finish the tiling in the first place if I can just do it digitally?!

This, my friends, is my thought process when it comes to posting photos, and is the reason why I show so few progress shots. That said, are progress photos something you want to see? Is it helpful in some way to see pictures like this? Or is it just more fun to see the before and after (really after)?

Skinny hallways.

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Posted by Anna at D16 on July 26, 2010 – 10:30 pm
Filed under house, inspiration


Looking one way…


…and looking the other way.

Our hallways are long and skinny. Our whole house is kind of skinny, actually—20 feet wide—typical for late-1800s row houses. We’ve managed to make this work in the downstairs entry hallway (that’s it in the first photo here) by balancing the staircase with an extra-long credenza that doesn’t interfere with passage to the dining room, but upstairs is a different story.

Here’s a floor plan to give you an idea of the space I’m working with (upstairs is on the right, and the new closet what’s behind the “attic door”—that’s the open door in the above photo). It’s really not wide enough for a shelf of any real dimension, much less furniture. There are doors all over the place. Someday we’d like to have a few light tubes installed, but for now it’s kinda dark, since there are no windows.


Clipper Street Residence, envelopeA+D

This is kind of the aspirational gold standard for me. Our house doesn’t have as many fancy details, but it is from the same time period and roughly the same Victorian style. I could see adding a chair rail (and maybe a picture rail, too) in our hallway, and hanging Julia Rothman’s beautiful “Pieces” wallpaper from Hygge & West (I am ashamed to say that I have been hoarding two rolls of it for about a year now—I’ve gotta use it at some point!).


From Livingetc

I keep coming back to this hallway, too. It’s pretty much the same size as ours, but it’s looks SO much more open. Part of that is because of the white floor (sigh) and the super-strength lighting (which I don’t think is natural, so it’s probably as dark as ours in reality), but also because we have the aforementioned closet down at the end where they have that little railing. Sometimes I think walls full of frames can look a little contrived, but this is really nicely done. I feel a little bit of vertigo coming on at the thought of having to rig up the necessary scaffolding in order to hang stuff that high up over the stairs. Yeesh.

Tile demolition in the vestibule.

17
Posted by Anna at D16 on July 7, 2010 – 3:31 pm
Filed under house

When we’re not busy capturing stray animals, we’ve been staying occupied with our vestibule tiling project.

Evan did all of the demolition work, thankfully. I am terrible at demo—I’m not very strong, and I get overheated easily. (Okay, and I hate wearing goggles and face masks.) Once he had a system down (namely chiseling out the grout first, rather than just banging away on the tiles with a sledgehammer like they do on TV), the actual tile removal went more quickly than we thought it would.

The thinset underneath the tile was a different story, though. Evan spent hours upon hours over the course of two days scraping and chiseling and sweating in order to get it all off. Putting cement board over the thinset and tiling on top wasn’t an option, because we can’t put any additional height on the floor. The step/threshold at the front door is a huge hunk of slate, and it would be very sad to have it not line up right with the edge of the tile.

95% complete. You can see the grid lines pressed into the concrete from the original 1880s floor tile (long gone, sadly). This photo doesn’t show it well, but the concrete actually shows the relief of the logo embossed on the backs of the original tiles—American Encaustic Tiling Company. Neat, huh?

Next up . . . THE TILE!

The closet-to-be is now a closet!

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Posted by Anna at D16 on July 2, 2010 – 2:37 pm
Filed under house, scavenged

Aside from installing a ceiling light fixture and cramming it full of stuff, the closet-to-be is now officially a CLOSET. What was once a filthy, unused, and unfinished space behind a door used solely for attic access is now a much-needed 18-square-foot storage space, and it’s pretty cute, too!

Once the plaster walls had been repaired, the electric work was done, and the ceiling was in place (THANK YOU, CLOSET FAIRY!!), I got to work on cleaning up the considerable mess that was the floor. As I mentioned, the existing floor was old linoleum, which I’d planned to leave in place and cover with FLOR tiles. However, I was pleased and surprised to discover that not only was the linoleum laid in a single sheet, but it was not attached to the floor in any way! No creepy glue, no scary asbestos paper. I was able to simply lift it and remove it in one piece. Excellent!

Underneath the lino was a plank subfloor (just like in my office). This subfloor runs through the entire house, of course, but with the exception of this closet and the office, it’s covered with finished, face-nailed strip flooring everywhere else. (If you’re curious about the finished floors, here’s a post about them!) The subfloor in the closet, of course, was never finished in any way, and was splintery, stained, and soft.

In other words, the floor was ripe for painting! Out came the sandpaper, the primer, and the floor paint, and I got to work.

Because we’re going to be storing some heavy stuff in here, we need to have a covering on the floor. I had ordered the aforementioned FLOR tiles before discovering that the lino could be easily removed, but when it arrived, I realized I’m not really a huge fan of the stuff. It’s a little too perfect for my taste. Happily, I remembered this rug, purchased last year on eBay for $3. I’d never found the right spot for it before, but it fits perfectly into the closet!

I apologize for the quality of the photos. It’s very tricky to get a decent shot in there . . .

Tile for the vestibule.

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Posted by Anna at D16 on June 24, 2010 – 5:39 pm
Filed under house

I love the vestibule at our front door, but I do not love the tile on the floor. It’s cheap, it’s dirty, the color is awful, and it’s just way too big for the space. I have a strong dislike for large tiles in small spaces. We’ve been putting off this little job for years now, but I think we’re finally ready to do the demo work and start prepping the floor for new tile!

This is what we picked out. I’m not sure if there’s a name for this pattern—it’s almost a basket-weave, but not quite. It looks like marble, but it’s actually some sort of cultured material. I like that it looks old-ish, but not fakey old-ish. And it’s graphic. I like graphic. It’s also pretty inexpensive (Home Depot! In stock!), so we should be able to come in at around $200 for this entire project.

We’re planning to use a very dark gray or black grout. The display at HD used a cream-colored grout, which made the tile look sort of faux-Tuscan (which is decidedly not my thing). I’m excited. This is going to look great. The vestibule is the first thing you see walking into the house, so it should look great, right?

ETA: Here’s a close-up!

Sometimes “good enough” is good enough.

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Posted by Anna at D16 on June 21, 2010 – 1:54 pm
Filed under house

When we bought our fixer-upper of a house just over four years ago, we entered the renovation process with a mind for perfection. I’m the type of person who either does something perfectly or doesn’t do it at all (resulting, unfortunately, in a great number of things that I never try for fear of “not doing it right”), and Evan, while not quite as obsessive, does like to see things done right and done well, without corners cut.

I can remember thinking that we should strip the old paint (all 3-10 layers of it, depending on the room) off of the moldings before repainting them. I remember looking up historic masons who would do chemical analysis of our mortar before re-pointing our bricks. I remember wondering exactly where we would find horsehair to use when doing proper plaster restoration on our heavily water-damaged kitchen walls.

And then I realized that I did actually want to live in our house (and even enjoy it!) at some point and not just admire it from afar like a museum piece. Ultimately, houses are for living in. Of course I appreciate quality craftsmanship and try to use good materials that won’t need to be replaced or repaired for a good, long time, but sometimes you just have to call “good enough” . . . good enough.

Case in point, the photo above, taken yesterday in my home office. It took us three years (much of it in a state of abandonment/junk storage status) to complete this room, and you’d think in that amount of time that we’d have gotten everything “perfect”. Nope. As if it’s not bad enough that there’s a giant chunk missing from the bottom of the window casing (it had rotted away from water exposure—I cut away the rot and did a quick patching job with Bondo before painting), there’s an entire length of baseboard molding missing behind the chair. Did you notice? Probably. Oh well. It’s good enough!

In order to replace this section of molding, we’d have to bring a sample of the intact pieces to an historic millworker to match. Then, I suppose, we’d have to glob on about 8 coats of paint (peeling it in areas between coats) so that it wouldn’t look “too new” when fitted into place. Ugh, and THEN we’d have to get out the miter saw and match the interior angle of the existing molding . . . math would be involved . . . ugh.

Forget it. I’m calling this “good enough” and pretending it gives the room character. You barely notice it when you’re standing up, anyway.

Master bedroom.

35
Posted by Anna at D16 on June 18, 2010 – 3:19 pm
Filed under house, inspiration

Isn’t the term “master bedroom” kind of funny? It’s not a name I ever heard growing up (along with “patio”, “family room”, and “window treatment”—we had a porch, a living room, and curtains), but I’ve adopted it recently to distinguish between the guest bedroom and the bedroom that Evan and I sleep in. What else can it be called? The big bedroom? I guess I’ll just stick with master bedroom, even if that does conjure images of elaborate, four-poster canopy beds, gilded chaises, and off-room bidets.

What was I talking about? Oh yes, the master bedroom. Where Evan and I (okay, and Bruno and Fritz—and yes, they’re allowed under the covers) sleep. It’s a mess. It’s not quite as bad as it was last year, but beyond the above photo, there’s not really anything in there worth showing right now. We keep putting off really doing something with it, probably because it’s part of the house that visitors don’t usually see or spend time in. Isn’t that sad?

I need inspiration…

Yes, I’m aware that this is not a bedroom. It’s Victoria’s new dining room, and I love it. We actually considered painting our bedroom very dark gray or black when we first bought the house, but since we weren’t sure exactly what we were doing with all of the various rooms in the house, we opted to paint everything white until we knew what was what.

Photo by Frédéric Vasseur. I love this bedding and the low-hanging pendant lamps. Also, yellow!

Photo by Per Magnus Persson. I know I’ve posted this photo before, but I don’t care. It’s perfect.

Photo from LivingEtc. Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s Jenna Lyons AGAIN. But come on, it’s SO fabulous. This also makes me wonder if maybe I should paint the moldings the same color as the walls. Hmmm.

Photos from The Brick House. I really need to find a great blanket like that. Also, this reminds me that I STILL haven’t painted that old dresser I bought at a flea market three (gulp!) years ago.

Time to get cracking.

Hanging out in the guest bedroom.

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Posted by Anna at D16 on June 14, 2010 – 10:04 pm
Filed under house, scavenged

We finished the guest bedroom more than six months ago, but we still haven’t had any guests. Boo-hoo! Until someone deems us worthy of visiting, I’ve decided to make a point of hanging out in the guest bedroom from time to time. It’s nice in here!

The salmon-pink plastic Philco radio on top of the credenza still works. I bought it years and years ago at a stoop sale in Brooklyn for $5. I love the sound of old transistor radios, especially to listen to baseball games (even though I have no real interest in baseball). Insta-nostalgia.

I wish I could remember where I got the little clock on top of the mantel. Probably at another Brooklyn stoop sale! I’ve had it forever. (The poster, of course, is from Elisabeth Dunker of Fine Little Day.)

Now doesn’t that look like a nice place to take a nap?

Closet-to-be.

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Posted by Anna at D16 on June 7, 2010 – 1:04 pm
Filed under house

Like the majority of older homes, our house is closet-deficient. With the exception of the kitchen pantry, there are no closets on the first floor, and just a tiny closet in each of the four bedrooms upstairs. We’re lucky enough to have enough space to spare that we were able to turn the smallest of those bedrooms into a dressing room, but it’s difficult to find hidden storage large enough for things like records, winter coats, and Evan’s guitars and amplifiers.

Next to the dressing room, though, is a roughly 3′x6′ space behind a door that has gone to waste for a very long time. The walls were never finished beyond a thin coat of unpainted plaster, there was no ceiling, and as far as we can tell, it has never served as anything other than an access point to the attic (via ladder). After having our contractor install pull-down stairs in the hallway (a job that we knew was well beyond our level of ability/stamina), we’ve gone ahead with the task of converting the wasted space behind the door into—you guessed it—a closet! A huge closet!

Evan and the Closet Fairy (hmmm…a questionable nickname, perhaps, but let’s go with it) built a framework for the ceiling out in the back yard, then carried it upstairs to fasten it to the walls. So much smarter than building it in place! We can thank the Closet Fairy for that bit of genius. (THANK YOU, CLOSET FAIRY!)

It’s really tricky to take photos of this space (especially since opening the door completely blocks off all natural light from the area), but this is a view of the ceiling with the drywall in place. The electrical box is for a light, obviously!

The never-painted plaster walls are in good enough shape that they only needs some screws for stability and a skim-coat of joint compound. We try to preserve the original plaster in the house wherever possible. We’re not fans of using drywall unless absolutely necessary.

Looking down. The floor is covered with very old, nailed-down sheet linoleum that has seen better days. With old linoleum, there is always a strong likelihood that asbestos is nearby (either in the lino itself, the adhesive, or in the backing paper used between the lino and the wood floor underneath), so we’re going to just leave everything in place and put down FLOR tiles on top. (Asbestos doesn’t pose a risk if you leave it undisturbed and undamaged. Better to contain and cover than to risk improper removal!)

We haven’t decided yet if we’re going to keep this charming bit of graffiti that’s scrawled on one of the closet-to-be’s walls. I’m hoping this was written by an adult with bad handwriting rather than a 6-year-old, but you never know. It’s kind of like “an apple a day” for bad neighborhoods.

Here’s hoping we can finish up this little project by the end of June! In the mean time, shut the door and it all disappears.

Garden progress!

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Posted by Anna at D16 on May 11, 2010 – 10:41 pm
Filed under garden, house

Remember when we built a deck? Yeah, way back when—just over a year ago. I had all of these big ideas and even drew up a plan, but since last April, we pretty much haven’t done anything in the garden. At all. Shameful!

Well, we finally got down to business over the weekend, and we laid eighteen 16″ square concrete pavers (about $3.50 each) on top of a hand-tamped, crushed stone base. We left a 4″ gap between the pavers and “grouted” the space with dirt. When the frost warnings pass in a couple of weeks, we’ll plant some sort of ground cover in the gap.

As I’ve mentioned before, we don’t have side or rear access to our garden, so everything must be carried through the basement—by hand—piece by piece. This becomes rather grueling after a while, especially when you’re talking about such heavy materials. Wielding the hand-tamper is quite an effort as well! Needless to say, I’m still feeling the effects in my limbs two days later. (Yesterday morning, I wondered what was “wrong” with the nail clippers as I was having trouble squeezing them!)

I love projects like this, though. Less than $100! Can’t beat it.

And yes, we’ve deviated from the plan, but we’re still moving ahead in the same vein. Eventually, I hope to look out of my second-story window and feel as excited as I am about what I see in my garden as I do about this garden:

Garden of Jenna Lyons (of course), as seen in LivingEtc.

Lily flower rain chain.

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Posted by Anna at D16 on May 9, 2010 – 11:41 pm
Filed under four legs, garden, house

Our little porch roof doesn’t generate a lot of runoff when it rains, but it’s enough to warrant the use of a gutter and downspout. I’ve always wanted a rain chain, so this was a perfect opportunity to put one to use. We bought this heavy, copper Lily Flower rain chain and had our contractor hang it from the gutter for us (our porch roof is very high off the ground, and we don’t have a ladder that reaches!).

The rain chain has a bracket at the top that fits into the outlet hole of any standard gutter.

I was sort of hoping that it would rain today (okay, not really) so I could get a photo of the rain chain in action, but you’ll just have to imagine the water cascading down the chain and spilling over the sides of the lily-shaped cups. I tested it out with the garden hose, and it looked beautiful! I’ll try to make a little video the next time it rains.

To provide drainage, we built a miniature underground brick-sided well at the bottom of the chain and filled it with river rocks. We buried the last few links and cups of the chain to help with stability and to prevent the chain from swaying in the wind.

If you’re interested to read more about rain chains (kusari doi), Lindsay from Ouno Design did a nice post on them a couple of weeks ago.

Curious to see what the front of Door Sixteen looks like nowadays?

Four years of hard work has brought us to this point. Not bad! We still have lots more to work on with the exterior of the house (restoring/repainting the outside of the original windows and rebuilding the frames is next on the agenda), but considering how bad things were less than 10 years ago, I’m feeling pretty proud about what we’ve done for this place.

I know some of you have expressed interest in knowing how “our” stray cat, Sylvester, has been doing (I wrote about him back in November over at Victoria’s blog), so I took a photo of him lounging on the porch earlier today. Of course, he sneaked into almost every other photo I took of the house, too, but he’s a cat—that’s what they do. Sneak.

Locks + socks.

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Posted by Anna at D16 on April 25, 2010 – 9:55 am
Filed under house, wearable

I said I would finish repairing/painting the three living room windows during my vacation, and…I did! Late last night I finished stripping the last of the many coats of paint off of the locks. In a few minutes, I’ll screw them onto the sashes and cross an item off of my list that has been hanging over my head for far too long. How satisfying!

It’s a rainy, dreary day, one that definitely calls for stripey socks, bagels, and plenty of coffee. All three of those requirements are currently being tended to, rest assured. (Goodbye, vacation!)

Vacation looks like this.

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Posted by Anna at D16 on April 19, 2010 – 8:56 am
Filed under four legs, house

Well, it looks like this for at least another 30 minutes. Then I really have to get up and get busy.

As I’ve mentioned, I usually spend my vacation time working on the house, and this week is no exception. I have a rough outline of what I’m trying to accomplish before next Sunday, but my basic plan is just to move through the house gradually, completing as many projects as possible in one room before moving on to the next.

But: I will paint the living room windows. I will. (The insides, at least.) Because it has been four years (!) since we bought this house, and there is just no excuse for them still being covered with peeling yellow paint.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to keep the dogs from going totally bonkers while workers climb around on the roof. I think they’re installing the roof hatch today, and maybe finishing a chimney. Tomorrow…basement windows? I hope so. As fun as it’s been having rotting plywood instead of glass for the past four years, I’m looking forward to this little improvement to the underbelly of our domicile.

My downstairs bathroom.

50
Posted by Anna at D16 on December 15, 2009 – 5:31 pm
Filed under house

When we finished renovating our downstairs bathroom back in April, I did a “reveal” over at Decor8 detailing all of the real-life costs associated with this kind of project. Unfortunately, there was subsequently a data loss at Decor8, and Holly lost all of the comments (including the answers to a lot of questions people had about the renovation). There are also some errors in the price breakdown, so I figured I might as well post the photos, interview, and correct information here for the sake of keeping it entire project archived in one place.

What inspired the design of this room?/How did you decide upon the colors & overall style?
The architecture of my house is the base inspiration for everything I do within it. As a Modernist living in a Victorian-era house, I try to be very respectful of its original structure and character while still moving forward and not trying to create a faux-Victorian look. This attitude toward renovation (particularly when it comes to kitchens and bathrooms) is quite prevalent in Scandinavia, but in this country there is a still a tendency to try to make newly renovated spaces look “old”, and unfortunately the result is usually more of a pastiche than anything.

That said, I have tried very hard with both of my bathroom renovations to not make them look too “new”, either! The last thing I want anywhere in my house is for someone to open a door and immediately know that a particular room was recently renovated. My house is full of quirks and imperfections, and I have deliberately carried them into this space. This bathroom was added to the house sometime in the 1930s or ’40s (the space it’s in was originally a pass-through pantry connecting the entry hall to the kitchen at the back of the house), and I elected to keep the cast iron corner tub that was installed at that time. The old toilet was very cute, but it was terribly inefficient—rather than replace it with a “faux-old” toilet, though, I prefer the honesty of a very contemporary-looking one-piece.

But back to the question, you could say that every design decision I make in my house is inspired by Modernism, Industrialism, honesty of materials, and contrasts between old and new.

Read More »

Thinking about a new kitchen.

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Posted by Anna at D16 on November 6, 2009 – 4:33 pm
Filed under house, inspiration

Don’t get me wrong, I love my kitchen. It’s very cute, and it has served us well for the past 3 1/2 years. There are times (okay, pretty much every day), though, when I find myself wishing for a larger sink (not that I don’t enjoy washing baking sheets in the bathtub). There are also times (like after our New Years party or Thanksgiving, for example) when I think it would be nice to have a dishwasher, too. (I see it is possible to install a dishwasher in the kitchen units we have. Hmmm.)

ANYWAY! The lack of a real need for a new kitchen certainly doesn’t keep me from fantasizing about one…

Photo by Alexander Crispin (from Scandinavian Style). This is probably my all-time favorite fantasy kitchen. The combination of materials and colors is just so perfect. I love marble countertops and the patina they gain over time. I am happy with my wood and steel counters for the same reason.

Kitchen by DAPStockholm. I’m not sure how it’s possible that I’m still not tired of seeing that wallpaper everywhere, but I’m not. Also, how cute is that Arne Jacobsen faucet?!

Photo by Jon Jensen. Oh Heath Tile, how you taunt me! I can definitely get behind soft grays in the kitchen.

No one can argue with a white kitchen, right? This just looks so fresh and clean. I spy another AJ faucet, too. (I can’t remember where this photo is from, sorry! I think it may be from a Swedish real estate site that Emma linked to a while back.)

Of course, black kitchens are good, too! I have black cabinets and a black floor in my kitchen, but it never reads as dark or dreary. I wish I had a brick wall that I could paint black, too. Photo by Hotze Eisma.

From ShootFactory. The combination of open and closed cabinets is so practical, and I love all of that wood. In 40 years, this kitchen will still look great.

This is my favorite IKEA kitchen right now. They’ve used a NEXUS lowers and RUBRIK uppers. I particularly like the white kickplate. It makes the cabinets look like they’re floating.

From Factory 20. More marble! Yay! And a glove mold! And a rustic shelf! With black brackets! And black cabinets! Yay! There’s a whole lot going on here that tickles my fancy.

Another photo by Hotze Eisma. I may have lied about that first kitchen being my favorite, because this one is giving me palpitations right now. Everything here is perfect, right down to the imperfect tiles. Also, the combination of white, black, wood, a green lamp, and Bertoia chairs makes this kitchen the perfect companion to the room right above my kitchen: My office!

Yay! Black trim!

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Posted by Anna at D16 on October 23, 2009 – 12:42 am
Filed under house

First of all, thank you so much for all of the birthday wishes yesterday. They are much appreciated. I had a very nice, low-key birthday (just how I like it). Evan gave me the supercute J.A. snail box I’ve had my eye on, and we had mini-red velvet Bundt cakes from Junior’s. Yerrrmy!

I’m on a mini-vacation until Monday, but here are some photos of the exterior of my house, now with black trim (Benjamin Moore Black Beauty)! Keep in mind that the windows still need to be repaired and painted, and the stair treads still need to be stained to match the porch ceiling.

(Sorry for the weird sizes, but I’m not on my own computer right now, and have no access to Photoshop!)

And a before picture, for comparison. It’s hard to tell from the photos, but we’ve also had the bricks cleaned and repointed. Oh! And that ironwork on top of the porch? We had it sandblasted (it was really rusty) and powdercoated (by the same guys that did our bathtub, sink, and radiators!) in black. It looks great.

Bye-bye peeling, discolored, forest green paint! ICK:

New porch ceiling!

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Posted by Anna at D16 on October 7, 2009 – 1:48 pm
Filed under house

Look! We have a new porch ceiling! And a new porch light! Yes, I know the light is very traditional, and it’s really a bit too “faux-old” for my taste—but it does suit the house quite well, and the scale of it is right. Our porch is high off the ground, and small overhead lights look out of place. (By the way, we bought it at Pottery Barn on clearance and then squirreled it away in the basement for a year. They don’t have it anymore, sorry!)

Here’s a gross before shot. As you can see, the current situation is definitely an upgrade from rotted plywood and a bare bulb.

Sorry I don’t have many “during” shots! The demo took forever (not that I had anything to do with it—I left the dirty work for Evan). It was disgusting and marked by the discovery of a wasp infestation.

The new ceiling is tongue-and-groove pine beadboard. We put it up using a nail gun and an air compressor, which was SO FAST AND EASY. I applied two coats of oil-based ZAR Wood Stain in Dark Mahogony, then a coat of ZAR Ultra Max polyurethane in a satin finish.

(And yes, that’s BLACK trim you see! More exterior renovation photos to come…)

Hella Jongerius for IKEA PS.

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Posted by Anna at D16 on September 21, 2009 – 10:14 pm
Filed under art & design, house

Hella Jongerius has created a line of beautiful wall-hangings for the 2009 IKEA PS collection. Here’s Pelle, the rabbit, hanging in my upstairs hallway. Also available are Gullspira (the goat) and Mikkel (the fox).

From Hella’s website:

Hella Jongerius created wallhangings for the IKEA-Unicef programme, which helps women in India to start up small sewing businesses and enables their children to go to school. Sources of inspiration are the animals that feature in Swedish fairy tales. In the production process small scale craft production in India is combined with large scale industrial production by IKEA, while the images refer to the local roots of this global company.

The result consists of textiles of which not only IKEA and Jongerius will benefit, but also the craftswomen who left their traces in the making.

The textiles are made with a variety of materials and techniques, which gives the end result a rich look. The used materials are a mix of woolen felt, a woven woolen dobby and printed cotton. A bright colored polyester band with button holes at the top of the work gives a sturdy accent and serves to attach it to the wall. The parts are stitched together and embroidered by hand. The combination of colors, print and embroidered accents give each of the three designs an individual character.

Each wallhanging is made from beginning to end by one woman. On the back of the work is a label with the names of IKEA, Hella Jongerius and the embroidered name of the woman who made it.

Why a goat, a fox and a rabbit?
“They refer in an abstract way to animals featured in Swedish fairy tales. Animals have already been featured in much of my earlier work; they trigger first and foremost the imagination. An animal has the power to be familiar; expressing moods comparable to the moods of human beings, and at the same time an animal remains puzzling.”


An early sketch for the 2009 IKEA PS collection

The wallhangings join Hella’s previous work for the IKEA PS line, four Jonsberg vases introduced in 2005. They are still available for sale—and I own all four!