department of the interior: home decor

!!

for real?

i'd think it'd be weird to have your bed in the living room, but maybe if you never have guests?

It's an IKEA futon and pulls up into a couch, fyi. But now I'm loath to get rid of my bed because I might need it again sometime. Rearranging is on hold indefinitely, I guess.

Can you do something in the current bedroom to help it be more cosy? Fabric canopy/tent that hides the looming shelves?

We ended up ditching the coffee table in our new space and have gone back to the storage ottomans instead. The coffee table legs come off, so it stores nicely - it hid behind the loveseat, against the wall, when we were in the 700 sq ft loft. The ottomans are narrower (14" vs. 24") and more flexible to arrange, so we get walk-around space.

I was envisioning ottomans in my re-des space too! I remember yours, and I thought they were very smart. But my coffee table is solid teak, Danish-modern, and the size of a small DOOR, so it's impossible to store anywhere and should never go in an apt this size -- but it's what I have, and I'm not getting rid of it for a temporary housing sitch.

i had a dream about laurel's bedroom/living room conundrum lol

I advocate keeping furniture if at all possible - I've almost always regretted it, any time I've gotten rid of a piece due to space. Even when I say "we are never moving again"... well, it's always in the back of my head that we might.

Ha! What did you dream? Did it all work out?

i dreamed that i was trying to solve the problem in person

did any of the furniture fly around or was self-propelled in any way?

no, but the BF was not agreeable to anything i came up with

Laurel was wearing a black pencil skirt and ballet top

Even when I say "we are never moving again"... well, it's always in the back of my head that we might.

You are delusional -- I was JUST THINKING late last week about your obsession with moving!!! You! You have had more dream kitchens that anyone! And you keep leaving them! I had JUST accepted it was a charming eccentricity, as long as you and R were on the same wavelength etc but MAN if I had your library (and that loft!!) I would never move again. Possibly I would never even LEAVE the unit, much less move out of it.

lolololol roxy! He's not agreeable to anything I come up with either, so it's nothing personal.

I know, it's crazy. I think we might have stayed in the loft if things hadn't gotten very weird with the landlord/owner in May. Also if the new people who moved in above us hadn't been so loud in the wee hours. etc. The new place and the new neighborhood are both completely charming, and having a landlord who is also a friend (and cares about this house) and neighbors whom we know has been a revelation and may have grounded out my transient drive. I can envision staying here a long time - and the kitchen is great :)

i have two ikea half-height bookshelves that are extremely useful and also extremely ugly: so i am thinking about covering them in wallpaper. anyone done this before?

Sounds like a disaster, tbh. All those corners are NEVER going to fold or lie flat.

What about painting it, instead? You could put the wallpaper on something nice and flat, like the backing board, so you just see the print at the backs of the shelves?

:/

i saw a blog post about it and got all excited - but you're probably right. it's that chipboard/veneer kind of bookshelf, so do i just give it a bit of a rough sanding and then paint directly onto it?

I thought about wallpaper+varnishing my Billys a while back but never got round to it. It does look ace when it's done properly (I don't know how often it fails miserably though, as I guess those people don't blog about it).

Chipboard, eh? You could slap some spackle on them, maybe? Or some other kind of filler, just to smooth things out some before the paint goes on?

you can cover them tightly with thin fabric so that they look wallpapered like so

http://www.housetohome.co.uk/imageBank/o/opener1.jpg

what about contact paper?

ooh yeah that thin fabric look is nice, too!

Could be difficult to clean though?

Yeah, you'd have to unpin and launder and iron/starch it. Or you could vacuum it occasionally if you have a little vac, I guess. But I worry about that black city schmutz that gets on everything in NY, perhaps you don't have this problem where you are!

J, I finally understand what you mean by "chipboard and veneer"! I don't know why that seemed so impenetrable to me yesterday.... Something like this? Which is particle board, btw:

http://gospelfodder.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/particle-board.jpg

I still don't think wallpapering it is the answer, but I'm not sure what IS. That stuff is hard to disguise.

yeah particle board is the right word, couldn't think of it! i have two these ugly beasts, maybe i'll try painting one first.

Amazing Post on Home Interior Blog
http://styleonartfactory.com/blog/

thanks

are vintage wall murals acceptable? or are they nothing but kitschy nostalgia? don't feel like i've seen these around since they were originally in fashion, but i'd guess that maybe they're hard to come by. perhaps i'm wrong. i'd kinda like one in my kitchen anyway, but my gf is completely not buying the idea.

this dude has a bunch:
http://ewmoore.co.uk/wallposters_pg1.htm

particularly want to eat cereal in front of this one:
http://ewmoore.co.uk/images/C211.jpg

those are hideous!

i dunno they're kind of amazing in a way

amazingly hideous?

the alpine one rules! you'll come around, son

it's only the mountain one that i'd consider.

the rest are pretty hideous, it's true. would have to that seventies national geographic photography style. alpine or forest. nothing tropical or cityscapes.

haha, why?

http://ewmoore.co.uk/images/C860.jpg

http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/1868/c860.jpg

We've had this debate before...she wants to hang an oversaturated tropical sunset, I want to hang some tasteful B+W landscape photography. Still unresolved, to nobody's satisfaction.

Hmm HHHMMMM. Now that I'm settled, sort of, I'm getting THE BUG again. Luckily for my DIY fix, my bedroom is a paint atrocity of butter yellow applied in a patchy sponge pattern, with an even oranger-yellow picture rail above.

The place needs spackling, sanding, priming, and paint. Thinking, thinking....

my place needs SO much work but we are trying to stick it out there as long as possible because it's pretty much the cheapest i'm going to find for what it is. what i need to figure out is: how does one cosmetically make a place that is in serious need of renovation look like it's not?

should i take photos of my kitchen for this thread? fwiw my kitchen is kinda awesomely kitschy in a 70s grandma sort of way despite a sad lack of avocado-colored appliances

Tza: Paint! ??
elmo: YES!!

i think there is too much shit/furniture in my apartment to paint. plus the paint is actually in reasonably good shape? i think i need a pro.

My scheme: walls in silver gray. Wood trim refreshed in gloss white despite its imperfections -- the impression of cleanliness is what matters. Bedding: Navy and white geometric/basketweave/ring pattern. Accents: a clear cool yellow for pillows, yellow to repaint the bedroom door(s), cafe curtains instead of full drapes to let in more light.

my bedroom walls are a mossy green, and the living room is a dove gray. kitchen is lighter blue. all trim is gloss white. maybe i should just put up curtains or change bedding or get new rugs.

How to paint in a room full of stuff: move all the stuff to the middle. Buy 10 cheap shower curtains from the dollar store and/or the cheap folded drop-cloths from the hardware store. Cover everything in middle of room, and tape into place. Work around it.

xp those colors sound REALLY NICE!

what i would love is a renovated kitchen/bathroom and refinished floors (my parquet is SO sad). sigh.

they are not bad! i think what would really help would be to have less furniture but that is a whole other battle :|

You know, I think sometimes that "less furniture" is the answer and then I see a room like this:

http://g-cdn.apartmenttherapy.com/2612905/060611KristinCollinsHouseTour_05_rect640.jpg

and even though the busy-ness of that kind of room would drive some folks crazy, it works surprisingly well. I guess it really is all about color, scale.

To elaborate:

http://g-cdn.apartmenttherapy.com/2612945/060611KristinCollinsHouseTour_09_rect640.jpg

http://g-cdn.apartmenttherapy.com/2612915/060611KristinCollinsHouseTour_06_rect640.jpg

yeah, i think the tall ceilings relaly make the difference. i have not-tall ceilings and a LOT of black furniture. i thought it was so great that all our furniture matched when we combined possessions, but now i kinda wish there was a bit of variation.

Ohhhhhh black. Yeah. Can you spray-paint some of the furniture?