Archive for the ‘furniture’ Category

Flea!

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

I headed out of the desert into the wilds of Los Angeles on Saturday night and ended up crashing a party at Gregory and Emily’s sweet pad with all the Apartment Therapy LA folks. Thanks guys for letting me drink your booze and go through your stuff. I also got to check out the progress at Laure’s new pad – which is looking posh, even without a sofa.

Afterward, I headed to Bianca’s crib to crash for the night and get up fresh and early for shopping madness at the Long Beach Flea Market.

It was a sweetly perfect morning in LA, so of course we immediately left town for the heat and long ticket lines of Long Beach.

I picked up my buddies Danny and Mel since they love hunting for deals. Ah! What? Maybe that’s Erica and Bianca back there. Aren’t we wacky girls? I want to punch us too, don’t worry.

Flea markets start super early in the morning, but since we are not bright or chipper early risers, I think we rolled in solidly around 10am. Shockingly, it was PACKED. Much more attended than I’ve seen in a few years. Sweaty and poorly prepared, we made our way into the hordes.

OK, so the following things are for the swank bachelor pad I imagined with my mad flea marketing skills (and crappy iphone pictures).

This fantastic painting inspires it all.

The bachelor guy I imagine would own this painting (that he picked up at a garage sale) because it reminded him of his old dog “Hulkster”. He’s a sort of sloppy “dude”. Friendly, a bit distracted, likes to pretend he surfs but really doesn’t, you know, aimless but cute. Maybe he ran into a little money through some accident caused by LADWP or something. I don’t know, he’s mellow, doesn’t like to talk about it.

Firstly, he needs a ginormous slab coffee table for $400 to stack beers on and old magazines.

Maybe a comfy chesterfield for playing video games and macking with ladies. Only $275 if I recall…

Perhaps, an upholstered ottoman for $30 to kick his feet up on and a giant moose rack mounted above the fireplace to show off his manliness to visitors. I think this 59″ spread was $600 and the seller told me that all antlers are shed yearly, which was a fun moose fact I didn’t know. The things you learn at the flea. Now I kind of want some moose antlers.

A graphically awesome Mexican rug from Oaxaca for $80. (I almost bought this, like seriously considered ponying up the cash. I balked since I secretly only wanted to spend $60)

Then a nice slate blue wing back and ottoman that my dude would pretend to read books on to impress ladies. He think it makes him look like an intellectual. What a dummy.

Of course, some sort of boob-like pendant lights, a steep $75 for the pair. Then this fun just sort of fizzles from there…

I could dig that room. Looks comfy.

Anyhow. What did I actually take home?

This really beat up chair that needs major reupholstering and a giant geometric ceramic planter. Not too exciting. I’m guessing this revelation is a bit of a downer. I was hoping for more deals, but like all deal hunting, it just wasn’t meant to be.

The person who really scored was Bianca. I’m going to take all the credit for spotting awesome things she has been looking for and somehow making them magically cheap. Well, I guess I didn’t really make them cheap, but I swear my thrifty senses were tingling.

FILED UNDER: flea market, furniture

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Pouf

Monday, January 17th, 2011

Craigslist is a fickle beast of a monster.

Seemingly, I search CL nonstop for deals on furniture…even though space is becoming slightly tight around these parts. It’s been awhile since I picked something up off CL, wait, hold the phone, what was the last thing I grabbed? This coffee table? OK, maybe it hasn’t been that long.

Well, I stumbled on a post about an African leather ottoman and hearing that siren call of vintage goodies, headed out to the boonies of Sage in search of the miraculous. Sage is kind of like Hemet, but very much not. It’s this weird/beautiful valley full of ranches and horses and windy mountain roads. I met up with an older couple that built a nutty newfangled adobe (horribly pictured above) overlooking this crazy beautiful view of a horse type farm.

Boom. Vintage leather pouf. With just that perfect amount of beat-up wear and tear on the hardiest leather in the land.

The Eames lounger has been needing an ottoman, but the search has been difficult since: A: hard to find an Eames ottoman by itself & B: the den is really really narrow. If you put a real Eames ottoman with the chair it blocks the traffic through the den and into the kitchen and to the sofa.

This leather baby is kind of the perfect in-between size. Put your feet up and relax without losing a lot of space. Plus I like mixing up the Eames with something less traditional.

Bowie approves. This has been his new perch for monitoring and harassing Iggy (obviously since Iggy is MIA – its working).

Ah man. I should have gotten a shot of the bottom – its woven together with a big leather thread. Like a corset or something. Just take a moment and try to imagine it. It’s cool, right?

FILED UNDER: craigslist, den, furniture

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Womb Chair

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

Way back when, I mentioned that The Brick would be getting a new womb chair thanks to the generous Alex at Modern Furniture Rental. We bought our den sofa in a pinch from him even further back and have been really happy with it. I was pretty ecstatic when he offered to order a chair of our choice as a thanks for the sofa shout out and just this past week the big cust0m order arrived that included a bunch of womb chairs, as well as some new sofas and pieces that Alex is testing out. If you’re tootling around Orange County it’s worth checking out the showroom and giving the new stuff a test sit.

I’ve really wanted a womb chair and its definitely not something you bump into that often while thrifting. Ours has an ottoman, but I wanted to keep it simple in the tiny bedroom and just use the chair. Although, I have to admit, after sitting in it for awhile in the den and watching TV, I kind of feel like I want this chair to one day be our version of a La-Z-Boy. Unfortunately, its too big for the den so the next house is getting this as a TV chair for sure.

Also, recently I grabbed this great vintage Danish wool blanket from JP Denmark in Cathedral City. Only $20, because it has some stains on one side (I know, they are set in, oh well). The bedroom is slowly coming together but I still need some new lamps for the nightstands, some great and affordable bedding, a fiddle leaf fig tree, a quick fix-up of the closet and then it’ll kind of be done. Till I switch it up again.

If you’re following along on my twitter, you might have heard that poor Bowie broke a nail. While the neighbors were dog-sitting he somehow (while playing with his brothers) cracked open his nail all the way at the top and has been gingerly limping around since.

Now he has a club for a foot after visiting the vet and getting the nail removed. I seriously cannot stop laughing as he hobbles around on that ridiculously out of proportion cast. Poor dude will have to learn how to play nice to keep all his nails intact, which might be difficult since he is 3.5 pounds of wild puppy fury.

He still loves the new chair though, and I concur.

FILED UNDER: after, bedroom, furniture, puppy

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