bedroom

Does Your Apartment Vibrate? Fixes that Help Tame Vibration

Here’s a summary of all the fixes I’ve found to dampen irritating, sleep-depriving vibrations coming from machinery and other mechanicals.

Painted Canvas Headboard…(+ pillow + chairs)…

Though it’s not exactly a headBOARD, we love this painted canvas hung on the wall at the head of a low bed. And we are inspired by the canvas Cy Twombly tacked right onto the walls of his Rome villa, ready for painting. 63-inch by 6-yards rolls of primed artist’s canvas can be found on Amazon…

Bohemium Homes: An Alt Kind of Eye Candy

We browse A LOT of websites in our search for illuminating content for Improvised Life that will inspire new ways of viewing every aspect of the everyday. We have a special fondness for interiors as we hunt for ideas we can apply to our own space, if only in our imagination. But we have grown…

Wooden Board Bed Table

We have used wooden boards as a giant wooden trivet…cool oddly-shaped cutting boards…a bathtub desk… low tables and shelves… We hadn’t thought to use one as a bed table… GREAT. via Aasaber’s Instagram via SF Girl By Bay

Clever Art n’ Objet Ledge Headboard is DIY-able

Spotted at vtvonen: a clever, long, ledge that doubles as a head board and picture/object rail. Look closely and you’ll see that it is painted wood. We’re thinking “plywood box…easy enough to put together. It covers a lot of ground, keeping the room spaceious, with lots of room to place objets. via Vosge Paris

Painted Oriented Strand Board Floors

Remodelista recently featured the clever redesign of a 430-square foot-apartment in a century-old row house in Antwerp, the work of Belgian architecture firm Komaan! —translation, “Come on!” It’s full of good ideas, including clever layout that creates a fluid space with lots of storage, and interesting use of plywood, but our favorite is the floors: sheets of…

Vibrating Bed Mystery Contest Update

Several weeks ago, in desperation, we posted a challenge to our readers to come up with solution for our vibrating bed, which, shaken by some mysterious force, wakes us in the wee hours of the morning. Until we find the source, we are hoping to find a way to keep the bed from shaking, so we…

Update on Vibrating Bed Solutions: Hanging Beds

In response to our contest asking for solutions to keep our bed from vibrating, a number of readers suggested suspending the bed, which we WISH we could do. But as with any creative problem, we have some serious constraints to deal with.

Contest: Solve the Vibrating Bed Mystery

After a mysterious vibration in the floor started shaking our bed, and us, awake at night, we started improvising solutions. We’ve lost count of our attempts at damping the vibration. So we’re issuing a challenge to IL’s readers: help us devise a solution to keep the bed from vibrating.The winner will receive a lifetime subscription to Improvised Life. Here’s what we’ve tried already…

DIY or Buy: Attention Grabbing Geometric Headboards + Panels

These distressed, pastel painted wood panels from Urban Outfitters are enchanting, but why not use the idea as a springboard for a summer DIY project to install anywhere in the house or garden?

House Tour with Life Lessons: Tom Fallon’s Shelter Island Cottage

When our friend Tom Fallon’s Shelter Island cottage was featured in Hamptons Cottages & Gardens, we realized just how many lessons about home design and LIFE we learned from him over the years. Here they are, with pictures by Jason Penney.

Industrial Materials for DIY (Incl Vibration Fixes)

We have a thing for industrial materials: the mysterious raw materials used by various industries that were traditionally off-limits to the public. Years ago, we learned that if we could find a source, we could buy them like anyone else. Recently, we had an adventure and lesson in the vast possibilities of rubber products (and made some big discoveries we didn’t expect).

Rough-stitched Ripped Linen Pillow Covers

Just as we were wrapping our head around learning to use our new sewing machine, we noticed these big pillow covers on IKEA’S blog Livet Hemma… …which sent us hunting around Ikea USA to discover that it is selling 100% linen by the yard for 7.99 a 59″ yard in white and gray. We’ve long been fans…

Slung Cloths: Simple Ways to Create Private Space

The quest for a restful night’s sleep can feel like an impossible dream, particularly for urban apartment dwellers or those who share tight living quarters and a noisy town. How to shut off the world – and the kitchen – to grab some privacy and nourishing shut-eye to help maintain emotional and mental balance, can be an…

Cool, Practical Flat File Beds

Tobias Wong’s inspired mattress on a grouping of pushed-together 2-drawer lateral files has long been an inspiration for our imaginings and phanta-designs for beds built on file cabinets. But, until recently, we hadn’t considered possibilities in the realm flat-files.

Serene Sheer Linen Bed Spread

We clipped another lovely, doable idea from the idiotic New York Times T Magazine article a few weeks ago about the Axel Vervoordt-designed “wabi wabi” penthouse at NYC’s Greenwich Hotel. A sheet linen bed spread. We thought right away of Rough Linen’s lovely Summer Cover, made of lightweight linen. We used one as a bed skirt and it…

Stacked Mattresses: A Bed Platform Made of Foam

In our ongoing theme “The Annals of Bad Design” we’ve critiqued ultra-wide bigger-than-the-mattress beds that look cool — and allow for an instant spot for your drifting-off-to-sleep-reading—but make for scraped and banged calves when getting in and out of bed. New York based designers Cristoff : Finio devised a clever solution to this dilemma in their design for…

Bed on Boxes, Files, Shipping Pallets and Other Platforms

This image of a charming plywood platform bed reminded us of the late Tobias Wong’s bed made of a mattress on top of a grouping of file cabinets. No need for an OFFICIAL bed, of the grand style seen on every home blog and magazine. A good mattress on a flat sturdy slab is a simple formula. And…

DIY-ish Slab Wood Head Board

We’ve been mulling headboards for a while, thinking how wonderful it would be to have a huge slab of beautiful wood as a headboard, perhaps slightly angled leaning against the wall. We found an image that matched what was in our head and followed the trail to A Cup of Jo and read part of the tale.

Kottke on Busting the Mattress Racket + Affordable Mattress Reviews

Must Read for anyone looking for a new mattress: Jason Kottke’s Busting the Mattress Racket before. He tested out the inexpensive mattresses of two companies who are turning the mattress industry on its head, and found them to be as good as the expensive “deluxe” brands.

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