Archive for September, 2011

THRIFTY!

Thursday, September 22nd, 2011

Yup.

This happened.

Is that an early production Saarinen oval marble coffee table? All up in Knoll town?

Oh yes.

I know I’m a dirty, no-good furniture dealer, but because I’m never ever selling it. Because this is my dream coffee table. Because it would have to pried from my cold dead hands. Because I am bursting that this happened. BECAUSE I CAN’T SHUT UP.

One.

Hundred.

Dollars.

Yeah. $100.

I hate me too.

Although, you gotta trust that this was a crazy unexpected fluke of chance and lucky timing.

Of course, I was browsing the Craigslist (come on, no way I found this in thrift store) and saw a posting for a vintage hutch that was super cheap but of course no freaking picture. Why people post furniture for sale on CL without a picture, I’ll never grasp, but the ad said to email for a picture and I randomly decided to just contact them and see what was the whats. When the pictures popped in (again, why not just upload them?) the hutch was pretty, pretty, pretty terrible, but something else looked mighty interesting in the far corner of the frame. Which leads to me asking if they had anything else for sale and apparently they were getting rid of everything in the whole house and they sent lots and lots and lots of pictures.

In the far distance, out of focus and sitting casually in front of a shredded up sofa was this tulip beauty. Just sitting there. Like no big deal. Whatevers. I’m just your favorite thing. Big whoop.

I got my ass down there and pulled out my big bag of negotiating tricks and walked away with some STUFF.

On a side note, apologies if I have to negotiate with you in the future or have negotiated with you in the past. I KNOW how I am. I’m an awful stubborn terrible monster.

It’s not in perfect condition.

There is some staining on the marble and I’ve been researching around about how to lighten it up. WHATEVER. Stains? On my 60 year old marble Knoll? I don’t care. I’ll never care!

Good news is that there are no chips and no cracks, just vintage goodness.

This table does weight about a thousand pounds. The tulip base is cast iron and the marble is chunk-y – like 36″ wide by 54″ long.

I really loved my old coffee table.

REALLY loved.

But there can be only one!

(It’s the Highlander. Lightning. Swords. Coffee table and such.)

 

FILED UNDER: craigslist, den, furniture, thrifting, thrifty

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CHALLENGE

Wednesday, September 21st, 2011

Uh oh.

So, I’m building a dollhouse and this is probably going to be me in a few weeks. Or maybe this. I’m stocking up on turtlenecks.

The dealio is that Emily recently put together the ‘I’m a Giant’ dollhouse decorating challenge. Yes, that’s dollhouse, not a real house challenge.

I never happened to be one of those girlie girls while growing up, you know with dolls and such – so, in all honesty this whole dollhouse idea completely terrifies me. I mean, when I think of dollhouses (which is pretty much never) I guess I thought of them like this?

(You can actually buy this – marked down from $579 to $579? Awesome. BTW, the instant semiotic break down I got from this advertising image is giving me the super willies)

Apparently though, I’m an idiot. There appears to be a thriving community of folks who love modern “miniatures” (is that the right term?) and get hardcore about scaling down designer furniture and architecture to petite sizes. I’m pretty much going through all of Mini Modern to figure out how this works.

The first thing I figured out is that this stuff gets expensive. I mean, like crazy expensive.

This thing is $855
OMG. Jacobsen House!
Ooooh, container houses?
What!?Well, these are amazing but wow…dollars.
OK, these people are amazing. I’m amazed. Look at this.

Whoa, so this modern dollhouse stuff is really incredible and really pricey, but now unfortunately I’m obsessed. Just on a practical level, this stuff is so much lighter and easier to store than the furniture I lug around my house.

Looks like even CB2 has a little modern house. Images via Mini Modern.

Too bad it’s not in a 1:12 inch scale (look at me learning about scale and stuff).

Hey now. Even Charles and Ray Eames designed a never produced dollhouse for Revell in 1959 that I pretty much just want to copy. Modular dollhouse. Mmmmhmmmm. Tasty.

…and slowly getting to the challenge part…

Blogging bloggers who are blogging throughout their challenges include:

Emily Henderson from Style by Emily Henderson
Morgan from this blog your reading
Erin from Design for Mankind
Orlando from Homme Maker
Corbett from Girl Domestic
Jenny from Little Green Notebook
Nicole from Making it Lovely
Kirstin from Simply Grove

Over the next few weeks we are going to be building or decorating or throwing together some little mini abodes that aren’t limited by “reality”. Like the houses can be created from anything – kit dollhouses, vintage ones, cardboard boxes, made of kitten farts – whatever. The interior treatments are equally open to interpretation.

I haven’t started my house yet since I still need to find or build or “kit bash” something for my little modern space. I want to figure out how to keep this very frugal, because seriously, I’m not even sure how to do this mini stuff yet – but in my head I’m already getting overly ambitious and considering building out Donald Judd’s five story Spring Street space…

So, that’s where my heads at.

The other thing is that anyone and everyone is encouraged to participate along with the big challenge and we are going to have widgets that you can upload your progress photos to as well. Maybe you like mini stuff or always wanted to build your fantasy space. Maybe you have some kiddo’s in your life that need a Christmas gift. Maybe you can show me how to build little wee furniture, because I don’t think I’m going to find a 1:12 scale version of a Judd dining set anywhere.

Whatever reasoning works for you, come and join in on the mini fun.

We are going to post our weekly progress and the goal is to have all our houses finished and revealed on December 15.

…and now I’m having a panic attack. I need a house. I need like a little saw? How do you cut this stuff? Where do you get little wood? Oh, I am not prepared at all to be crafty. Oh no. OK. This is going to be great and fun and weird and I need a hobby. Yes? YES. Any tips are appreciated and I’d love to see what you crafty savvy guys build…because I obviously need help…

Also, if you’d like to participate but maybe want to grab a more traditional kit dollhouse, the folks at Melissa and Doug have a discount deal for 15% off all hardwood dollhouses from The House That Jack Built.

Melissa And Doug : Code: DH15

Hmmmm.

What I might really want to design out is a like a kooky vintage a-frame cabin. Does that exist somewhere? In my dreams?

 

FILED UNDER: challenge

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HERE & THERE

Monday, September 19th, 2011

Not that I’m one to get all frothy over Target collabos, but perhaps the Missoni for Target stuff turned out to be kind of a meh? It seemed to be a lot of plastic and polyester and poor construction, but the black and white stuff was the best? Fo’ sho.

Giant shocker, Hemet isn’t a bustling hub of fashionistas and design fans. I know?! How is that possible with such a large retirement population and two super WalMarts? So, when I stopped by Target at a leisurely 2pm on launch day to pick up food for the dogs and garbage bags, ’cause shizz be glamorous around here, I took a gander at the Missoni pieces.

Pretty much ended up with a case of the underwhelmed mehs.

I did like this blanket thing – even though it was only sold online and sold out immediately – and did end up grabbing a few of the small black and white travel bags, since my luggage arsenal desperately needs actual bags to hold all the many fancy lady creams and powders I require.

The end.

Otherwise, on launch day the UPS guy wandered into the backyard to drop off a vintage Minolta Maxxum 35-70mm macro lens I recently won on the ebay for $30. Such a crazy day! TWO things happening? How do I keep it all together? Really. It’s a miracle.

So, these are some meh pics wrought from quickly testing the new lens out. I think I’m feeling a bit of an underwhelmed meh over this lens as well.

My middle name is meh.

I don’t feel so meh about a couple recent Craigslist acquisitions. In fact, I’m feeling pretty YEAH.

Headed out to Palm Springs in the late afternoon to pick up a few vintage bits off the ‘ol CL and took advantage of the twilight lighting to push this new/old lens through a few more hoops.

And yup. Still meh.

But did I hear someone say Russel Wright for Conant Ball dining set? Mmmm-hmmmm. Grrrrrrl.

From the few pics shot around our dusty as all neglect house, I found that the macro function wasn’t thrilling me. Also, the low light capabilities at F4 weren’t fulfilling all those wild fantasies and unreasonable expectations I had built up inside my heart. Over this $30 lens? That would change my life? Madness.

It’s a fine lens – not mind blowing – but maybe I need to put this thing through it’s paces. Or maybe I’ll keep buying more and more and more vintage lenses until that deep black hole inside of me is filled up with glittering glass.

I bet the CL guy – who I got the Wright dining set from – didn’t think I was a creepy insane person when I pulled out the giant SLR and wandered around the street to shoot pictures of the darkening sky…you know…instead of pulling out of his driveway and going home.

Because it’s never terrifying when a stranger from CL wanders around in front of your house with a big camera snapping a bunch of pictures after that always awkward transaction had supposedly ended.

No one would be freaked out by that. Come on.

Oh. I’m a creep.

Great.

FILED UNDER: craigslist, photography, travel

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