department of the interior: home decor

oh God I know I have boxes of papers from high school... my boyfriend and I got really critical one night, spent three hours and threw away about... 1/3 of what we should have tossed. The rest is now sitting in a couple of boxes in our closet :P

I hear ya about decluttering... I don't think I will ever have a clutter free existance. Hence the tons of bookshelves in my apartment :)

apparently bookshelves are ticking timebombs! at least in this town

LOL oh no armageddon is on the horizon for sure!

i never bought shelves! now is the time!

in the next few months i would like to paint and put up shelving. help!

shot in the dark here but does anyone know how to screw into / mount things onto horsehair plaster walls? shit is the bane of my life right now.

i had no idea what horsehair plaster meant, but now i know!
http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/oldhouse/msg0408544325999.html

home decor from the actual department of the interior - http://www.indiancraftshop.com/

elmo are you having trouble with the walls being too dense or too soft? I've run into a number of old horsehair plaster walls that have been so dense they've snapped screw heads, in which case I suggest pre-drilling and then they should hold pretty much anything. If they're too soft they should still have wood studs mounted behind the wall you can use for support.

btw I am working on an exciting home decor project involving nearly 300 linear feet of 2x2 poplar!

i died, i am having trouble mounting a vintage phone console to the wall -- it would weigh maybe 20 lbs at most and the mounting plate has 4 holes for screws or bolts, so i don't know if i need to mount off a stud? i tried to drive 1 screw in through the mounting plate but the plaster was v. dense and hard and turned to dust rather than taking the thread of the screw. i have read suggestions for toggle bolts and anchors but i don't know, as a renter i don't want to do a lot of damage to the walls since our landlords are super-nice architects who restored the place and live on site.

ask them, I'm sure they'll have a preference!

20 lbs is the weight it would be if it held a phone book, btw, but i do not think i want to do that. this is what it looks like:

http://www.ericofon.com/catalog/classic3/noteworthy.htm

except it is orange and has a shoulder cradle thing on the handset

uh

http://www.ericofon.com/catalog/classic3/images/noteworthy.jpg

tres chic, i know

whatever you do I'd definitely suggest pre-drilling a diameter hole a bit smaller than the screws you're using - this will reduce the amount of compression the surrounding material goes through so it should stand up a little better. If it has four mounting holes you should line one or two of them up w/ a stud if you can so that it's taking the majority of the weight and the others are pretty much keeping it level.

That cantilevers pretty far so the top mounting hole/s will be carrying almost all the weight. Those are the important ones.

I visited my friend's house on Sunday and it's tip-top full of Girard textiles and Pantone chairs and every design nerd thing you can think of. If I didn't like her so much, I'd Single White Female her for the apt alone.

ah I had missed this thread... As a new home owner, I spend most of my weekends thinking about all these things without actually doing anything about it.
At the moment priority is to put together floor-to-ceiling wall bookshelves. I was initially thinking of getting someone to custom make it for me but then I realized how much that would cost... So my current idea is to play around with IKEA Billy shelves and try to fit as many units so as to cover most of the wall.

I saw a picture of someone's house the other day and they'd attached molding to the front of the Billy bookcases lining a specific wall, so that it looked like they really were built into the room! Brilliant.

also, I have since rearranged the room to fit the couch better (and bought an army of throw pillows) but I want to show off my fabulous new couch.. yes, it's from IKEA, but I'm also 26 and financially independant so that's how life is gonna be for the next ten years or so. ;)

er
http://photos-b.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v2128/224/57/516053577/n516053577_1259393_4197.jpg

Sunny wants a sectional so bad, but I can't give up the rocking recliner so easily.

i'd get one of those couches if i knew where i'd be living 9 months from now

gabbneb where u gonna go?

hey i made curtains!

they have poppies on them and are in my kitchen. this is also my first successful sewing project really ever. i am so pleased. /blog

!!!!
pictures!

I want so many area rugs. ALL THIS AREA RUGS. And I'm not even moving for another month. This decorating bug is TOTALLY OUT OF HAND.

did you get it did you get it????

DON'T KNOW YET but that won't stop me from looking at every sofa on the internet.

look on, and good luck, lady! you deserve the bestest sofa ever!

what is the deal with ikea - i went there for the first time on sunday and found it to be WONDERFUL (apart from uh the other people there), yet i sense some stigma attached to this brand name.

we went to eye up some glass doored bookshelves, and then came home inspired to rearrange our whole house and omg what a difference moving furniture makes! our home is so much more... homey!

also moved the cluttered work desk out of the cramped bedroom and into the living room and what a huge difference it has made to the 'vibe' of bedroom - pretty sure im sleeping better now.

^^^ xpost <3 sectional couches.

xpost2, my Ikea order arrived today. I feel a bit stigma-y about it sometimes too but y'know, I don't make a lot of ££ and I managed to get a lot of stuff with what I had. And it looks pretty decent. I would've bought more stuff money permitting. I can see why people don't like Ikea, but I think it's alright.

re: why ikea is disliked -- i think there are a few different types of stigma. i'm not crazy about a lot of their furniture because even if it's at a pretty reasonable price, a lot of it simply isn't very durable or well-made, and also for the fact that if you are looking for something other than sleek modular modern design you're pretty much out of luck. the furniture isn't horrible (except some of the chairs, which i hate), and i do have some ikea stuff, but i tend to think of it as temporary furniture, only there until i find something better on consignment or craigslist or whatever.

for other people, who are big fans if fight club and/or adbusters, it represents a sell-out yuppie corporate-sanitized lifestyle for brainwashed sheeple. one-stop lifestyle shopping, or something.

i like ikea for offering a lot of decent, simple smaller merchandise for cheap -- i went a few weeks ago and got some dishes, flour sifter, butcher block, bathroom organizers, glass storage jars, etc.

Yes, there's all of that, plus I've also heard an argument that it's a 'big box' store promoting urban sprawl and car dependency because their stores are usually in suburbs or city fringes inaccessible to those without a vehicle or a lot of public transpotation willpower.

transportation

Eh there are lots of big box stores, if it weren't for IKEA it's not like people would buy locally hand-made wooden furniture. And IKEA's flat-packing is probably way more energy efficient to ship than normal manufacturer's products are.

also they are basically socialists, which is great!

I live halfway between the two nearest IKEA stores to me -- One's in Houston and the other's in Chicago.

I've got friends in St. Louis who roadtrip to the Chicago one (or Schaumberg, whatever the fuck) to shop at IKEA.

maybe Greater Toronto Area could stand to lose one of its FOUR surrounding Ikeas in favour of the Canadian/US middle areas

geez, Toronto

I am obssed w trolling through Apartment Therapy looking for rooms I like. In particular, I want to buy a wall of Billy bookshelves from IKEA and paint the backs of the units some bright color and make them look built-in.

ooh that is smart. i need to get on this. i think shelving purchase/room painting will be my reward for turning in 1st draft of thesis!

i'm thinking i might abandon my wall shelving idea because i know i will never actually get them hung properly and i am worried about overweighting them. i may just have to find some inventive new arrangement for furniture to squeeze in another bookshelf?

http://img33.picoodle.com/img/img33/3/2/13/f_201m_b2565e6.jpg

I've gotten sooo much stuff out since my roommate moved out and I'm much happier with my place recently, now I just have to get moving on building some shelving to replace my current liquor cabinet and glassware storage, which is made of cardboard boxes.

wow!

would you like to come design my apartment?

The cardboard boxes are, admittedly, kind of rad.

Jpgs here pls

I'm sure it's some kind of mid-century cliche by now, but I can't shake the desire to paint my future living room robin's-egg blue and accent it with white woodwork and dark wood furniture and cream-and-gold carpets. It's total real estate erotica: I fantasize about washing the picture rails and putting out my (modest) Frankoma collection.

Specifically, this 8-foot-square rug:

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e66/LimitedLiabilityGirl/P11887881.jpg

I DIED, you have far too much furniture. i think you need to strip it back a tad.

does anybody here use LED strip lighting at all? It seems like it could be wonderful if you put it in the right places but absolutely awful dorm room vibes if you do it wrong.