In Houzz’s extensive article about our friend Laura Handler’s Harlem renovation, our favorite idea among MANY is Laura’s solution to the problem of “headboard”.
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il reader julie houston’s brooklyn renovation
We are always thrilled to hear (and see) how ‘improvised life’ resonates in our readers lives. Sometimes it’s a “shift” of mindset, sometimes it’s a daring diy. In Julie Houston’s case, it was a major renonovation of the back parlor of her Brooklyn brownstone, transformed into kitchen/dining area. When children and pets leave — as…
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clever kitchen renovation using new and original cabinets
Desire to Inspire recently posted a reader’s mid century-style renovation. The kitchen’s ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures were not side-by-side and we found ourselves moving the cursor up and down to really understand the clever transformation. Ahh, we get it: Beth, who’d masterminded the kitchen’s update, thought carefully about what REALLY needed to be taken out…
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renovation lesson: going cheap can cost time + money
Once we had a rough plan and sketches for the Laboratory renovation, we needed to take them to the next level: real, accurately measured, to-scale architect’s plans. How do you afford an architect on a very tight budget, we wondered. This is where we made the first of MANY mistakes during the renovation. We hired…
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how would your decorate this blank slate space?
In this Sunday’s NY Times T magazine, we were happy to see the cover story on John Derian’s East Village apartment photographed by our old friend Bill Abranowicz (whose beauty of a book on Greece we featured some time ago.)It starts with a photo of the naked, as-is space, rife with possibilities. We realized we were…
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tracy metro’s houseboat redesign
(Video link here.) Tracy Metro is a designer and the host of I Live with My Mom on SpacesTV, where she makes over bedrooms of twenty- somethings who are still living at home with Mom. “I rid them of their soccer trophies, Legos and stuffed animals in favor of an adult launching pad for life.” She’s applied her own…
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faye toogood’s intentional unfinished hole in the wall
After our friend Lisa Morphew took a shovel and demolished the wall separating our living room and bedroom of our soon-to-be-renovated space, we sent a photo of the newly-opened room to our friend Tom Fallon, an interior designer whose given us lots of great ideas over the years. He emailed back: It’s great. Why not…
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how to demolish a sheetrock wall with a shovel (++++++ other life lessons)
In the process of planning our Laboratory’s renovation, we called on a number of friends for advice: designers, artists, and people who just had plain good sense of one kind or another. When I told artist friend Lisa Morphew of the prices some of the contractors we’d spoken to were quoting us she said: “Honey, what…
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reader improv: fab shipping pallet staircase / stoop
We’ve been getting an increasing number of emails from readers their shipping pallet improvisations, as they push they realm of pallet invention. A recent favorite: this swell, stylish staircase by Natasha Figueroa and her husband Dan Husted who live in an up-and-coping gallery district in Copenhagen, Denmark. We have a private gallery/studio located in Kødbyen,…
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