Over the years, we’ve written about many forms of improvised “guest books”, i.e. ways to memorialize the visits of friends. Cecil Beaton tattooed a bathroom’s walls with the handprints of friends, displaying humanity’s most essential signature…
Read MoreBathroom ‘Tile Painting’ Is an Unexpected Liberation
Found at Lucinda Chambers instagram: Permission to NOT tile an entire bathroom wall, but just selected parts. Beautiful! As is her inspiration…
Read MorePractical Ways to Alleviate Toilet Paper Anxiety and Hoarding
We’ve read a lot theories for the toilet paper hoarding that has marked the Coronavirus pandemic. We have a few of our own + viable alternatives.
Read MoreThe Bathroom As Incubator of Ideas
The bathroom is the one place where I find mindfulness overrated. It is a lovely place to read, write, draw. Look at all the way it can be an incubator of ideas.
Read MoreHenry Miller’s Bathroom “A Voyage of Ideas”
This clip from a 1975 documentary of Henry Miller takes place mostly in the writer’s remarkable bathroom and transports you WAY beyond the little room…
Read MoreAnnals of Found Art: Anonymous Side-by-Side Toilets Rival Duchamp and Cattelan
In a coffee shop restroom, we stumbled on a mind-blowing installation that rivaled Marcel Duchamp’s ground-breaking Fountain.
Read MoreBathrooms Designed for Our Intellectual and Creative Selves
In their visionary bathroom, friends purposefully accommodate what most bathrooms do in an ad hoc way: reading material, a laptop, and art for their ever-creative selves.
Read MoreMetallic Checkerboard Floors + a Trick for Visualizing Pattern Painted Floors
When we couldn’t find examples of the metallic checkerboard floors we’re smitten with, we devised a way to envision what they —and other jazzy patterns— would look like as a floor.
Read MoreAnnals of Bad Design: Glass Walled Bathroom in a Bedroom
Were we not in the real world, this glass enclosed bathroom might seem lovely and airy. But its ‘reality sandwiches’ are daunting.
Read MoreHow a Toilet Paper Holder Turns into Sculpture
In the bathroom of the Van de Weghe gallery, where we saw Devir, Enrique Oliveira’s massive tree sculpture, we were struck by the strange, very sculptural toilet paper holder with its bold statement of HERE I AM. Then we looked more closely…
Read MoreGood Idea: How to Have an Indoor Tub in a Garden
Via poet Ocean Vuong’s tumblr: a vintage tub in a small bathroom festooned with flowered wallpaper (just the right wallpaper). Sweet and magical.
Read MoreDIY Live Edge Bath Table / Board
For a bath person, it is heaven to luxuriate with whatever you need close at hand: cocktail, herb tea, iPad, novel… A bath board that rests across the tub makes for a perfect surface to rest things on. Recently, we saw an easy-to-make iteration that David Sanford made for a friend…
Read MoreCharm and Practicality of Odd and Broken Mirrors
Roaming through photographer Christopher Baker‘s online portfolios, we came across this lovely quirky bathroom. We love the long rough surface for double sinks, and the little set of matching vessels to hold toothbrushes, turning them into little sculptures. But what we love most are the mirrors: a couple of vintage rectangular ones and two shards propped…
Read MoreHow 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…
Read MoreAnnals of REALLY Bad Design: Faceted Crystal Sink
The other day, we got an email from a reader named Ann: Here’s something for your Annals of Bad Design! It almost deserves its own new category . . . Annal of Really Really Bad Design! We found we agreed on WHY the amethyst bathroom sink is really really bad:
Read MoreSigns 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…
Read MoreA Family Home Full of Heart and Good Ideas
“Something boldly improvisational and cheery going on in this house in Australia” wrote Susan Dworski in an email as she described the home Ruth Bruten, writer of Gourmet Girlfriend blog, shares with her husband and five boys. It is delightfully REAL and colorful, and packed with ideas. Here are Susan’s favorites, and ours:
Read MoreHow to Get Stains + Mildew Out of Fabric + Tyvek a L’Ancienne
Whenever I can’t get a stubborn stain out of a linen napkin, tablecloth or a blouse, I do what my Greek great-grandmother did: I squeeze lemon juice onto the stain and put it directly in the sun. When I lived in a south-facing apartment with no outdoor space, I’d open the window and rig ways to…
Read MoreHidden Art + Reminders on a Medicine Cabinet Door
When we installed a tall, narrow 13-inch-wide sliver medicine cabinet in our newly renovated and very minimalist bathroom, little did we know that it would do more than provide storage for essential toiletries. The mirror door is backed by white-glazed steel, a perfect “clean slate” to which we could affix signs, reminders and images that…
Read MoreDisguises for Computer Cables + Other Ugly Stuff
As we scroll through design sites, we periodically spot some new gadget for keeping ugly computer wires in check: reels that wind them up, dongles that collect them behind your desk… Perhaps the BEST improvisation we’ve seen is in Christoph Niemann’s workspace. The inspired illustrator/artist/author disguised an ugly black cable by placing a black and white image…
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