this is happening.

by heather on 05.19.11
this entry is filed under diy, living room and tagged , , , , .

i am as excited about our recent twist of furniture fate as i get when the break comes in middle of this song.  james murphy, i bet you love midcentury modern as much as we do.

[dance yrself clean -- lcd soundsystem]

the stars have magically aligned: tom and i will soon be in possession of an honest-to-goodness, long-coveted case study fiberglass rocking chair.  white seat, zinc base, walnut rockers.  yes.

so, so lovely

ain't she just a classic beauty?

the rocker is going to live in the living room for now.  we’re going to move the loveseat out and put it just under the middle window.  we’re also thinking about splitting the card catalog back into two pieces, adding hairpin legs and a tabletop to each, and putting them under the other windows to create a rocking/reading nook, but that’s a story for another day!

the tv might get wall-mounted, and the card catalogs might become two separate side tables with hairpin legs, flanking the rocker.

we went with white because the trim and curtain base in every room is white, so it will look great no matter where we move it.  although rachel’s pink chair does look fabulous, the other major colors in her living room are understated…whereas ours is electric blue.

rachel's living room, as seen on an apartment therapy home tour.

and yet…i do so love the idea of a circle rug under the chair.  it really makes it a focal point, and we’d like to do the same in our room.  plus, we’ve been fussing over the fact that our 4′ x 7′ rug, though nice, is a bit too small for the living room.  a round rug under the rocker would be a great solution here.

love our rug, but it's a bit too small. a round rug under the rocker (where the curtain-covered loveseat is now) will balance out the room and highlight the chair.

we found a gorgeous one:

filz felt circle floor mat, $160-$2550, filzfelt.com

but regrettably, the size we want (between 45″ and 55″) is well out of our price range.  maybe someday.  in the meantime, though…this is what we decided to do instead.  hooray for d.i.y.!  tom and i are going to work on it together.  it will take some major effort, but it should be fun, too…don’t know how long it’ll take us, but we’ll be sure to document the process!

it’s official.  project: living room is a go.

there is a light that never goes out [of style]

by heather on 05.08.11
this entry is filed under dining room, lighting and tagged , , , , , , , .

we’re coming up on our first anniversary, woot!  and after many months of asking us what we’d like for a wedding gift and not getting an answer, tom’s parents have graciously offered to buy us a new lighting fixture for the dining room, to replace the much-reviled black chandelier that came with the house.  [don't get me wrong -- it ain't a bad piece, but it's all wrong for what we've got going on in the dining room.  and frankly, we're tired of hitting our heads on it every time we get up from the table.]

[you are the light -- jens lekman]

oh, the possibilities…there are a million and two amazing light fixtures out there.  we came up with a few criteria that our new fixture needs to meet:

  1. it should be white,  so that it will go with any color scheme we decide to go with in the future of the dining room.
  2. it should be both modern and timeless — not something that will look cool for a year or two and then become dated.
  3. because it will essentially hang in the geographic middle of our house, it should be a “statement piece” (i.e., amazing).
  4. it needs to be a pendant lamp…but not hang so low that even us shorties hit our heads on it!

our preliminary internet searches brought up a few gems in particular:

logico suspension

artemide's logico mini suspension, starting at $800, neenaslighting.com

our jaws dropped when we saw this glowing, amorphous beauty.  but alas, our joy was short-lived: it turned out that the lamp pictured is actually three of the $800 mini suspension lamps put together.  how misleading!

LK173 pendant

LK173 pendant by illuminating experiences, starting at $330, lumens.com

this one is really cool.  i love it’s cube-ness, and yet it is more interesting than a plain old cube.

odyssey rectangular chandelier

eurofase's odyssey rectangular chandelier, $576, lumens.com

this light brought with it a dark cloud of disagreement.  we both like the shape, and the contrast of the structured glass plates and the strands between the plates.  and what form is more appropriate for a dining room light than that of the sandwich?  tom vetoed this one, however, claiming it was “too busy.”

saucer cc lamp

george nelson saucer crisscross hanging bubble lamp, starting at $299, modernica.com

and here we have our choice.  simple and elegant, understated and bold all at once.  you can’t go wrong with a classic.   my only fear is that tom will interrupt dinner parties with renditions of kris kross songs.  which would, in the words of those backward-pants-wearing teens, be “wiggedy wiggedy wack.”

stay tuned for pictures of the george nelson lamp in action in our dining room.

fresh prints

by heather on 04.05.11
this entry is filed under dining room, living room, scores and tagged , , , .

we’re just back from a 5-day trip to philadelphia, which turned out to be a fantastic city!  in addition to my academic librarians’ conference, we were able to take in quite a few museums and libraries (including the delightfully creepy/”disturbingly informative” mutter museum, yay!).

[philadelphia freedom -- elton john]

at the lovely rosenbach museum and library, we met a charmingly sassy, chain-smoking, fast-talking, 68 year-old tour guide, and also picked up for the living room what appears to be aubrey beardsley’s study for this print:

picture from artsycraftsy.com

 

our version is colorless, just a pen-and-ink on cream paper.  we think it will look really cool in the book-themed living room.  i wonder why the woman has such a nasty look on her face?  i think that just makes it more interesting.

 

on sunday, we also swung by the free library of philadelphia for a bit.  at the information desk, we picked up this little gem for free:

(c) 2011 Mikey Burton

 

how fabulous!  i think it will look perfect in the dining room, on either side of the doorway into the living room, since it picks up colors in both rooms.  i’m sure the posters were available so that people can hang them up and advertise the forthcoming festival…but we’re doing that here instead:  if you’re in philadelphia next week, make sure you check it out!  the print was created by local artist mikey burton, whose other work is super cool too, so you should show him some brotherly love.

colors i want to hold in my hand

by heather on 03.23.11
this entry is filed under dreams and wishes and tagged .

sxsw, you are so old news.  it’s holi time.

[colours -- hot chip]

i’ll admit it — this has nothing whatsoever to do with our home — but it’s pretty much the coolest thing i’ve ever seen.  hmm…let’s relate the two things by saying that we would be in india celebrating at the holi festival right now if we didn’t have a mortgage to pay off.

Mahesh Kumar A/Associated Press

i’ve seen this happen in other people’s lives…

by heather on 03.19.11
this entry is filed under owning a condo and tagged .

….now it’s happening in mine.

[that joke isn't funny anymore  -- the smiths]

neither of us can actually believe we’re allowed to own a home.  but we’re very excited that we are!  join us as we document the fun times we have making our corner of the universe (i.e., the first floor of a boston two-family) into a modern, colorful home with extreeeemely limited $$!

xx,

tom and heather

p.s. we also really love music, so you can expect copious references to awesome songs, too ;)

 

this is us.