This chair looks gooooood!

April 29, 2009

So, it's taken up most of my free time for the past week, but I finally finished reupholstering this chair for the Housing Works benefit next week (except for the back panel, which is awaiting delivery of some tack strips). Quite an improvement, don't you think? I wanted to keep the triple bump back cushion, but in reality it would have been easier to have started over again with a new profile -- maybe some buttons instead.

Still, my upholstering skills are sharpening.

Really? Now I'm a designer?

April 28, 2009

The problem with being a girl who likes projects is that I take on too many projects. But my latest all-encompassing obsession at least has a good cause attached to it.

Because I did a small photo shoot for an soon to be released book about designing with thrift-store furniture, I was asked to participate in Housing Works's Design on a Dime benefit May 7 through 9. Housing Works is a non-profit group in New York that provides services for low-income and homeless people living with HIV and AIDS. They operate a chain of thrift stores to make the money, and anyone who lives in New York knows the shops are excellent place to score great furniture and designer clothes for cheap.

Anyway, Stan Williams, who wrote the book, asked me to create one of the designer vignettes - small rooms outfitted with donated furniture that then gets sold to benefit Housing Works.

Where the cold winds blow

February 5, 2009

I am sooooo over winter, I have to tell you. You may already have figured out that I'm really more of a sundress-wearing, hot-day-on-the-beach kind of girl. Which is why it makes it so difficult for me to enjoy my somewhat cozy apartment when the temperature drops send icy drafts through my big casement window.

Last week I got fed up and just started stuffing every breezy crevice with insulation. I don't really care that it looks so ghetto, it's definitely made a difference. And since I sit in front of this window to work, it had become imperative that I stop turning myself into a popsicle every night.

Plant markers are so much more reliable than my memory

January 22, 2009

I don't know if you would call this a toleration that I've dealt with, but last week I finally put up these beautiful copper plant markers so I'd know what the heck was coming out of the ground come spring.

Every year, I start to see little growths popping up in my plant beds, but I can never remember if they're something I put there deliberately or if they're weeds I should dispense with immediately. These markers are meant to remind me of what's coming up, and what I need to do to encourage growth in the coming months. I've had them for almost two years now, but could never find a moment to just sit down and write them out.

You etch the words on the flat, soft copper with a pointy object, and it embosses your writing directly into the metal. I'm hoping that with weathering and patination, the writing will begin to emerge more clearly. But in any case, I think they're beautiful to look at, a great bit of shiny decoration in an otherwise dreary winter garden.

Chapter Two, in which I rip the plumbing gods a new drain

January 21, 2009

My plumbing stars have not been aligned lately. Aside from the sink drain disaster I had to contend with over the weekend, I also had a toilet that kept running because the flap was getting stuck in the up position. (Not sure how to fix that; anyone have any ideas?) But worse was the bathroom sink that was completely clogged.

I knew the clog was in the wall, not in the trap. I had already taken off the trap and cleaned it, plus every time I ran the faucet I could hear the pipes filling up like a glass of water. Once it got to the point of filling the sink, it would take up to 10 minutes to drain again. This was a bad one.

Chapter One, in which I fight the angry plumbing gods

January 21, 2009

This weekend I discovered my newest superpower: I can melt metal with my mere touch!

I discovered this wonderful talent on Sunday afternoon, as I was cooking for a dinner party. I reached under the sink, where I keep the plastic wrap, gently brushing the drain pipes as I did. Suddenly, a torrent of water started pouring out of the drain elbow. Wait, what is that? Is that a HUGE HOLE in the pipe? But I barely touched it!

Yes, I managed to provide the proverbial last straw: My gentle hand-graze collapsed what was likely a long-rusting portion of the drain. And of course it all happened when I had guests coming and the sink would be in constant use!

So I quickly taped up the pipe as best I could and the next day headed off to the hardware store.

The completed DIY project that pleases me daily

January 15, 2009

Many many months ago (okay, okay, it was almost a year ago), I lamented that I had so many projects and no time to do them. The biggest one was putting some salvaged shutters on my custom cabinets as bi-fold doors.

Well, I'm here to tell you that there's nothing more wonderful than the feeling that something left undone for too long is finally finished. I must confess, however, that I did not kick my own ass into action.

Home repair tolerations, day 2: kitchen drawer

January 14, 2009

I'm in a deal-with-it-now kind of mood. Don't know where this energy came from, except all I can say is two weeks surfing in Costa Rica does amazing things for your psyche! But I'm trying to handle tolerations as they come up―cross them off the list before they become roadblocks to progress in my life.

Last week I noticed my pots and pans in one particular cabinet had a lot of saw dust in them. Hmmm, I thought. Do I have little munchy insects eating my kitchen away? Oh dear, I don't want to know.

Then the other night I realized that there was an awful lot of room in the kitchen drawer. Upon investigation I discovered that the entire back of the drawer was swinging freely and the bottom was about to plummet onto my lovely set of Wilton cake baking pans.

This can no longer be ignored, I thought. Time for a fix!

The littlest fixes bring the biggest satisfaction

January 13, 2009

A friend of mine, who is a life coach, once explained to me about something she calls tolerations—those things in your world, little or big, that annoy you or get in your way, but you never do anything about them. The big ones are obvious, like the friend who keeps borrowing money and never paying you back, or the boss that always asks you to do something at the last minute. But the small ones can become almost invisible, little gnats buzzing around your face that you keep swatting away.

My apartment is filled with tolerations. I bet most homes are―the loose door handle, the squeaking floor board, the dripping faucet. I haven't done much major work on my place for quite a while―my day job has kept me quite busy. But that doesn't mean the things that need work don't still come up.

One of my longest standing tolerations is the bi-fold door on my front-hall coat closet.

White walls: Get thee behind me Satan!

May 20, 2008

A very good friend of mine moved into the apartment above mine a couple of weeks ago. More on that later, but in the meantime she's having fun decorating. Right now she has paint chips taped to her walls. I'm so jealous.

When I moved in three years ago, I painted the bedroom and bathroom, then eventually the kitchen. I've never painted the living room or the front hall, because I just didn't have the time or the money. Plus the landlord had left it freshly painted in Linen White.

I am so over it.

Bathtub faucets: Not so complicated!

March 5, 2008

Trolling my favorite blogs today and came upon a Curbed reader with a home-related question. My inclination is to dive in after all the snarky commenters and set the record straight. But I think I would look a big old geek, so I'll quietly post my nerdy answer here (after consulting with my guru of home repair, colleague Mark Powers).

Start by taking a trip to the hardware store. For about $10, you can get everything you probably need for this fix. And it doesn't involve making any holes in the wall. Here's what to do:

My eyes are bigger than my apartment

February 23, 2008

Here is yet another project I won't get around to this weekend. Or next weekend. Or possibly the weekend after that, either. Why bother, when I haven't done anything with it for almost two months now?

I want to take these gorgeous interior shutters that I picked up at Demolition Depot in Harlem and turn them into bifold doors for my cabinets. That's actually a cool salvage project that has been on my mind for more than two years now, but it took me this long to even move on it.

It seems I am an ideas person more than a woman of action. And I have the closets to prove it. 

Lunar eclipse above a city garden

February 21, 2008

I have barely opened my back door since it got (brrrrrrrrrrrr) so freaking freezing cold this winter, but tonight I swung it wide so I could appreciate the fact that my garden faces east. All the better to see the rising full moon as it went into a full eclipse for the last time until 2010.

There's something magical to me about the private rear faces of urban houses, with pinpoints of light in their dark gardens and the warm glow of reading lamps and TV screens seeping out the windows. I have one of the most amazing views in the Village, as my garden sits smack in the middle of the short end of a long block. I stare straight down the line between back-to-back rowhouse yards, and in the winter, when the trees are bare, I can see clear to the other end of the block.

Tonight I turned out all the lights inside my apartment so I could take in the buildings as I watched the shadow of the earth slowly crossed the moon. I may not be able to stargaze in this bright-lights-big-city, but there was still much atwinkle for me to see.

The shrink-wrap defense

January 30, 2008

Back on the MLK holiday, it was so cold in my apartment that I donned two pairs of yoga pants, a long-sleeved t-shirt, two cashmere sweaters, wool socks, shearling slippers, and a hat. And I still needed to sit on the couch under a blanket. Granted, it was hovering around 20 degrees outside, but I could clearly hear that tea-kettle hiss of steam coming from all three of my radiators. You couldn't possibly pump any more heat into the room.

The problem is that I live in an old building. With a giant wall of divided-light casement windows. Single pane, metal frame, and one of the windows is a little warped so it doesn't close tightly. I also can't remove my air conditioner, because someone cut away the window to make room for it.

So it's drafty. By last weekend, I'd had enough, and finally took some action.

Rearrange my furniture, please

November 29, 2007

I have too much furniture. After I fixed up those two side chairs, I ended up with more seating than my living room can hold.

I think I want to get rid of the big red chair. It does make for a good reading corner, but I don't really sit there and read very much. Besides, my mom said she'd take it. The little semi-circular chair under the window and the gold chair in the corner are both good, but they need recovering. Those I want to keep. And I like the compact comfort of the two side chairs I just recovered.

So how can I make all this furniture work in my apartment? (I can't move the couch, by the way, because that's the only place it fits.) I would invite my friend Amy over, after she was such a big help with the garden furniture. But maybe somebody reading this has some suggestions? Should I keep the red chair? Should I ditch the side chairs? Any way to rearrange all this without getting rid of anything?