department of the interior: home decor

cleaned up the deck, lawn is almost dead enough to start on the cactus garden

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8298/7760186580_9e328ae75c.jpg

my buddies look pretty damn happy right now

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7140/7760186006_152221f0bb.jpg

BTW

holy shit laurel, those blue things are amazing!!!!

what kind are they? any idea?

i mostly just have books on my bookshelf - thinking i should try and buy more books in french because the french publishers had the excellent idea of making all the spines pretty uniform styles and shades of ivory and white, while the english ones come in all these distracting colors

yeah my ex-wife was into that, don't forget about new directions paperbacks w/ the black spines

those french paperbacks look really really excellent on a sapien bookshelf

tlg those are fiestaware candlestick holders iirc

i used to work at a shop that sold bauer, red wing, russell wright, haeger, etc but i haven't had much fiestaware pass through my hands

those are a tremendous find

ok one more, just to show off the other LUXO lamp i picked up .... hey ladeeez

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8439/7760321296_1ccd7d7c16_b.jpg

one would think i do almost nothing but decorate my house

one might be almost right!

They were certainly a tremendous find at a Crown Heights goodwill outlet for $3 a piece.

Just bought so many McCoy planters this week holy crap.

can anyone recommend where to quickly procure some nice curtains and rods for smaller windows, say 35x28, 22x17, etc?

ikea

re: fuckyournoguchicoffeetable tumblr -- is there anything objectively wrong with clustering pieces on the wall because if there is i am not ashamed

i love paint by numbers and crafty amateur decorative art, let the haters hate

I have brass pineapple bookends and am thus unable to truly hate most of the things in that tumblr tbh

i find that tumblr kinda depressing tbh. so cynical. beautify your space! enjoy it!

the only thing correct about fuckyrnoguchicoffeetable is that people should spend less time looking at apartment therapy etc because it's v v repetitive and basic

aside from that i don't think anything on that site is truly verboten

i mean "fyi tomorrow you will probably regret liking some of the stuff you like today" whoa NEWS FLASH

"FYI mcm is quite trendy" oh shit thanks tumblr the scales just fell from my eyes!!!

I like unhappy hipsters

I need lighting help. My apartment is dark. It has high ceilings (around 10') and enough windows, but the rooms are medium-to-small and the exposures are mostly north-facing and get almost zero direct sunlight.

I have a vague grip on lighting areas for their intended uses: conversational spots, work areas. But one room is still just uninviting and have this hunch it's bc of how dark it feels. I used pendants in that room to lower the light sources to a conversational level because 10' up was too far away...but it's not quite right still. Are there any good basic guidelines?

Also what types/colors/wattages of bulb do people recommend? I like sunlight best, but for night-time I prefer a yellowy glow, esp going into cooler weather.

Hellllp me, I never want to move again but I cannot live in darkness.

bulbs should be marked 6500k and be in the 25-60 watt range

Even in 100-year-old fixtures? I would make all my rooms as bright as possib but I have been warned about fire hazards/blowing circuits/etc.

I guess not all the fixtures are that old but the wiring sure is.

If my building were east-west facing I swear I would never move again until I left NY for good, I like (or can deal with) everything else. But I am not a cave-dwelling person, my ideal rooms would be flooded with sunlight 14 hours a day.

if the wiring is old, it's going to be the load that causes the fire (the voltage that's on the line) not the bulb, so it doesn't have anything to do w/ the wattage of the light.

i mean in theory you could cause a fire from an overly hot fixture (temperature hot) but that's not the kind of scary short-circuit house fire i think you're worried about

you do want to keep the load low but that's done by only having one light per outlet and not using an extension cord w/ eight lamps plugged in

if you use energy saving bulbs you can cut my numbers in half

i like these lights

http://www.drillspot.com/products/1344560/ge_lighting_76135_com_catalog_detail_10w_compact_fluorescent_bulb?s=1&gclid=CNqLhPW6obICFaaDQgodPHYACA

you can use 10s for things like bedside tables, 20s for soft area light, 30 and 40 for lighting big areas

http://www.lampsplus.com/products/26-watt-daylight-6500k-cfl-twist-energy-star-light-bulb__35256.html

^^ here's the 6500k version i was talking about

lots of lamps, less reliance on fixtures?

The room in question has zero working outlets. :/ It has an old-fashioned two-bulb medallion fixture which I dropped pendant lamps from in order to move the light over and lower.

Maybe I just need to repaint the room white, not that I have the time or space to do that, to at least make the best of what light there is.

painting the walls white is a good idea imo

yeah I'd avoid pure white as it can look clinical or cold. But I'd want to see the space really before advising :)

The prev tenant painted it a sort of light corn yellow but the room is v shadowy so it greys out the yellow imo, instead of being cheery.

the designer we used actually suggests keeping the dark bits dark and the lighter bits lighter: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/dec/20/interiors-light-dark-corner-design

That is...very intersting. Actually. It's my library/breakfast room, with a sewing area tucked into a little niche with a separate lamp. So the main room could go dark, in formal library style. Maybe a dark blue or that "Oval Room Blue" color from the article.

you can get a v good flat greyish blue that is classy (I'm biased, we used it), used to be called 'hague blue' I think, but we had to get it made up from a secret code formula because I don't think it's a proper colour any more. Those guys were awesome and their house is something else: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jun/13/faux-georgian-interior-design
Wish it had more pics as they have a toilet that's entirely glitterball inside and all this other mad stuff.

formal library style but modern is kind of their thing

i mean in theory you could cause a fire from an overly hot fixture (temperature hot) but that's not the kind of scary short-circuit house fire i think you're worried about

My kitchen ceiling fixt is a boob light, so it's fully enclosed and I was warned not to exceed the recommended wattage between the two bulbs. Alas.

there are like 5000 shades of white!

some of those shades are soft and non-clinical

or maybe i like clinical minimalism

My new bathroom vent fan takes the smaller variety of lightbulb and I purchased some CFs to fit but they're a little on the blue end of the color temperature spectrum. I either need to accelerate my bathroom remodel plans or get those 6500 ones.

yellow lite 4 life 2700k all the way

6500k or death

literally in my case since i have seasonal affective disorders

These don't look yellow at all in practice but put off pretty nice light: http://www.usa.philips.com/c/standard-led-light-bulbs/20011/cat/en/#filterState0=LED_BULB_SU_US_CONSUMER%3Dtrue

So I looked up Fallow & Ball paint colors. Just started breathing again after seeing $100 PER GALLON cost.

lol don't look at premium snooty paint, just find a nice comparable color at real paint prices