before + after

Irritation is the Message: Turn Ugly Shopping Bags Inside Out to Make Them Beautiful

I pondered the maxim “Irritation is the message” a long time before understood that the things that irritated me were the things I sought solutions for. I started transforming ugly shopping bags.

Re-envision Broken Things As Newly Useful Ones with Memories (Su Tung Po)

Some of my favorite tools are broken ones that I’ve re-envisioned, turning their flaw into an often-cool looking virtue, with memories.

The Dirty Little Secret of Spare Minimalist Interiors

When Houzz featured our friend Laura Handler’s Harlem renovation on their site, we spotted the great secret to maintaining a spare, orderly space.

Laura Handler’s Computer Printed Headboard

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”.

HomeMade Modern: Smart Stylish DIY with a Mission

We’re smitten with HomeMade Modern’s stylish, DIY-able home goods — from beds to planters — and really smart, detailed designs that empower you to improvise.

Strategy: Turn Stuff Inside Out

A really useful but painfully ugly shopping bag pushed us to feel our way to an instant makeover. In the process, we were reminded of an essential principle for finding solutions to vexing problems.

Trees Painted Colors + Transformed

After we stumbled on Amy Cropper’s Inverse —ash and hawthorn branches painted bright red —we wondered why more people didn’t simply paint dead trees and branches to tranform them, and turn them into…something else… form/artwork with a mysterious story. It sent us hunting for examples. And we found lots of inspiration…

A Solution for Paint-Crusted Moldings and Doors

Recently I skyped with a colleague who just moved into a prewar rental in Brooklyn; she asked me to see if I could come up with solutions to the various challenges imposed by the wonderful but imperfect and not-hers-to-renovate space. So we did a video tour of her space. (I hope show some before and after’s…

Tricks + Tools for Instant Clothing Nips + Tucks

The stylish French saleswoman at a NYC Megshop wore a men’s jacket with the back nipped in with a few stitches and the sleeves rolled up. It looked great! It got me thinking about even easier, less permanent ways to give instant form-fitting shape to a shirt, jacket or dress.

How to Make a 5-foot Alcove Tub FEEL Like a Vintage One

Since I first wrote about the renovation of my 5-x-7-foot Harlem bathroom, a number of readers have written to ask just which five-foot alcove bathtub I bought that had the effect of the divinely comfortable vintage tub in my former space…and WHAT exactly was the trick I used to ensure that it would be a…

That Plain Ikea Bed is a Canvas You Can Paint

We love this hack on the most vin ordinaire of Ikea beds by stylist Meta Coleman in her home in Provo, Utah: paint it PLAID. It made us realize that the plain white Ikea Malm Bedframe is really a nice blank palette with many possibilities…

Our Wild Carvel Cake Time-Lapse Adventure

A video posted by @signlaboratory on Jan 22, 2016 at 10:59am PST A lot of wild things go on in the Laboratory as we play with materials and hatch plots, then follow the trails of ideas that are defined by unexpected constraints and glitches. Witness our groovy, strange 15-second instagram time-lapse video that started with…

Guest and Memory Books in Many Forms

The holidays have us thinking about ways to remember all those folks — some who traveled FAR — with whom we visited or shared a meal, celebrating and counting blessings. So compiled our collection of traditional and not-so-traditional forms of “guest books”.

LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #797: Conceptual + Practical = Wonderful

(Video link here.) While we’re taking a week off to rest and regroup, we thought we’d leave you with this time-lapse of a Sol LeWitt wall drawing being created, per the late artist’s instruction, at Blanton Museum of Art. It embodies the combo platter that is Improvised Life: an artist’s idea that is possible to apply at…

Workspace: A Cheap Stylish File Cabinet Strategy

While planning the office portion of the Laboratory’s renovation, I had to be lean and efficient, having spent some serious money on a sliding wall to make it all disappear. I happily used a strategy that had served me (and about a million designers) for years: a desk made of pedestal file cabinets and a…

Powerful Teeny Gifts Wrapped in Found Scraps of… Magic

Our friend Virginia del Giudice recently sent us another of her wonderful teeny gifts: a little colorfully wrapped bonbon of some sort. Only an inch across, it is an example of the power that even small gift can have in making the recipient feel appreciated, considered, cared for. We wondered what was in the mysterious cloth wrapping…

Signs and Blessings Hidden In Floors or Walls

When you look at the image of the bathroom in Improvised Life’s budget renovation, you’d never guess what lies hidden under the tumbled marble floor tiles the contractor generously donated. While I was choosing just the right mix of tiles —marble itself is so varied, each tile was different — I thought of a slight addition I’d…

Martha Antidote: Visit Alexander Calder in His Studio

(Video link here.) After we wrote about artist Tom Sachs’ practice of knolling, simple, incredibly effective steps he takes to neaten is very busy work space, we got an interesting comment from Kevin Neff, the engineer who helped us reason-out some of our vibrating bed experiments ages ago. He wrote: So interesting. I had been wrongly…

What happens If You Try and Fail?

I spend a lot of time trying things and…failing. Hmmm. Is failing even the right word? I spend a lot of times trying things and having them not go as expected.

Better-Than-Your-Shoemaker Shoe + Boot Refurb

How many times have you had your shoemaker polish your shoes, only to find the rough blims and tears on the scuffed toes pop up after the first wearing, making your shoes look as old as they really are? Having never found a shoemaker who solved the problem, we decided to experiment on a few…

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