Manolo for the Home

It is truly an unfortunate thing that there is no room in my home that could currently accommodate a proper window seat. Where the windows are large enough, they are far too high up. Sure, I could find a tall bench and place it under a window, complete with plenty of soft, punched pillows, but it’s not really the same thing. A real window seat has storage underneath, and is a quiet, sturdy place to relax and read or watch the world.

Someday The Beard and I are going to do all sorts of interesting things to our little Cape, but for now I have to be content posting pics here of all the things that float my boat. Perhaps you like window seats as much as I do? If so, you’re going to love the following pics.

Love the lamp, love the view. I have no clue where this is, but I want to believe it’s in one of those cities that feels more like a town. Maybe somewhere by the water? I’m ready to move in.

(more…)

Among the many books I received as a gift this Christmas, Wary Meyers’ Tossed & Found by Linda and John Meyers was a definite favorite. The husband and wife team visits places where furniture goes to die and brings that furniture back to life in awesome ways. It’s very. very cool.

So imagine my delight when I discovered that the Meyers have on their web site not only pictures of the spaces they have designed and decorated for others, but also photographs of their own home, which they call “a work in progress.”

Color, color, and more color defines this space — but it’s not overwhelming, balanced as it is by the muted couch and unusual but unobtrusive coffee table. This is just one corner of a living room that is elegant and beautiful, but also obviously made for living. It doesn’t look like a cut-out from a magazine; it looks like someone’s home.

Love the table. Love the chairs. Love the sideboard, exclamation point. Love the wallpaper. And love the way this dining room exists seamlessly between the living room and the kitchen.

And don’t even get me started! This guest room reminds me so much of a childhood spent in the house of a determined art book collector that it’s not even funny. I used to go to sleep surrounded by books upon books in a cozy room with mod furniture and eclectic artwork on the walls. Does this room’s familiarity make me love it more than I might? Just a little, but I like it plenty fine anyway.

Almost all home owners and apartment dwellers could use a little more space, not necessarily for stuff, but rather for the breathing room. Many houses simply don’t have enough windows to let the outside in, and apartment windows frequently open on views encompassing the sides of other buildings, trashy courtyards, and metropolitan sprawl of the least aesthetically pleasing sort. Knocking down entire walls costs big money. Putting in new windows costs less money, but isn’t by most people’s measure inexpensive. So short of giving away one’s earthly possessions, how can one open up a space on the cheap?

Wall mirrors. You read that right, simple wall mirrors. They bring light into a room, especially when placed opposite an existing window, and can even mimic windows when hung like panes and decorated with window treatments. A large wall mirror becomes a focal point, reflecting back the entire room resulting in a depth of space that makes a living room or bedroom feel expansive.

This doubling serves a second purpose in feng shui, where a wall mirror that reflects something good or lucky — think a treasured family portrait or beautiful objet d’art picked up on your travels — that positive energy will be doubled, too.

When you’re hanging wall mirrors, play around with the shapes and sizes and styles you choose. A classic wall mirror can beautify and open up a small space like a foyer or stairway landing, while a modern wall mirror will look great hanging above a couch or mantel. Try mixing traditional wall mirrors with mirrors like Jason Nipp’s Umbra Movamira mirror, which is evocative of a large small-paned window.

Whatever you do, make sure your wall mirror or wall mirrors aren’t reflecting clutter, lest that negative energy come back to haunt you in the form of even more mess!

Living small. Small space living. Whatever you want to call it, there are people doing it all over the world. Some get into small space living out of necessity — usually because either the money or the space simply isn’t there. Others do it because they want to see how low they can go when it comes to their ecological footprint. And I suppose there are those who think that 175 sq. ft. is plenty, thankyouverymuch.

Zaarath and Christopher Prokop appear to be just that, according to the NY Post. They work a lot, they don’t eat in, and they don’t host guests, which is why they had no qualms about buying a microstudio — possibly Manhattan’s smallest — for $150,000.

The kitchen is used to store the few articles of clothing they keep in the microstudio, with most of their clothes living at various dry cleaners. Oh, and the couple’s two cats eat on the counter. There’s naught in the fridge other than espresso and champagne. A queen bed takes up a third of the microstudio, and the bathroom is the size of a small closet. At a mere 14.9 feet long and 10 feet wide, you can bet it feels a little claustrophobic.

“I’m amazed we can fit two people and two cats in there,” Zaarath said. “But it’s harmonious at this point. I have friends who say they could never live with their husbands in a place this small. It’s a good thing we like each other enough to live there.”

The only other resident of the microstudio is the couple’s Roomba, which must scare the bejeezus out of those poor cats every time it’s turned on. On one hand, I applaud Zaarath and Christopher Prokop for making the most of the space they can afford — they’ll apparently be able to pay off the $150,000 in a mere two years. On the other hand, they seem a little self-congratulatory about their knack for small space living.

Love her or hate her, Julia Child exerted a great deal of influence over the evolution of American cooking — a book I love, Something From the Oven, touches briefly on just how much. But that sort of history is best left to authors of food tomes and cookery bloggers. What I’m interested in is her kitchen. Want to see it? There’s an amazing reproduction of Julia Child’s kitchen in an exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American History. I’d post a picture here, but I’m unsure about the legality of doing so, which means you’ll have to be satisfied with the link above.

Isn’t that a beautiful kitchen? Julia Child’s kitchen was not particularly pretty in the sense that a staged kitchen in House Beautiful is pretty. Rather, it’s a lived in kitchen… a worked in kitchen… a kitchen that is beautiful in its perfect usefulness. The knives, the colanders, the parts for the KitchenAid are all accessible. I somehow imagine that I could walk right into Julia Child’s kitchen and start whipping something up without much trouble. I doubt anyone could say the same for my kitchen, since not much beyond my cast iron pan and my teapot is accessible without digging around in cabinets and drawers. Could someone say the same for your kitchen?

I’m loving the 1840s farmhouse the painter Sean Scherer shares with his partner, Marc Mayer. It’s rather deceptive — outside it has all sorts of rustic charm, while the inside is home to botanical, zoological, and anatomical artifacts. Mercury glass shares space with transferware and precise renderings of human guts. Where else can you find an old slaughterhouse table share space with midcentury Scandinavian ceramics and newsprint wallpaper all in one space?

Your home can be a little bit country without animal heads on the walls, lots of dark exposed wood, or being a little bit rock and roll. Just like you can be mod without plastic chairs or inflatable furniture. Not that there’s anything wrong with going a really rustic route.

Check these country interiors out for down home inspiration without the gun rack:

A recipe for rustic: take one piece distressed furniture and combine with old world landscapes, vintage art pieces, and crisp white furniture. (via)

(more…)

Babies probably don’t actually need about 85% of the things we’ve all been conditioned by baby magazines and shops to think they need. Somewhere to sleep, yes. Some toys to play with, yes. All those things that keep baby healthy, yes. Does the living room need to be taken over by infant and toddler gear? No, no, NO. You simply do not have to sacrifice chic when a bundle of joy invades your world.

When baby has its own good sized room, then by all means give in to the temptation to spread exersaucers and jumperoos hither and yon. But if you’re fitting baby into an already small space by necessity or because you’re a fan of small space living, then think carefully about what you buy for baby and where you put it. I’m sure you don’t leave your toys — whether they be golf clubs or musician’s gear or paint brushes — laying about, so why not be as neat with your son or daughter’s stuff? If nothing else, those early months will be less traumatic when you maintain some semblance of belonging to the world of grown-ups.

(Photo by Zophos)

The obstacles one encounters when furnishing smaller homes are many. As wonderful as itty-bitty flats and miniscule houses can be, the reality is that most furniture is scaled for the comparatively palatial homes that remain en vogue in the US. As reader jojokaffe recently found out, the makers of things like couches either assume either that their buyers have large living rooms or that buyers who want smaller furnishings are only interested in modern pieces. Wrong and wrong.

My own living room is by no means large, but it does accommodate a full-size couch and a few chairs, so I had my pick of the furniture litter. However, as I’ve mentioned, I did once live in a tiny little flat in NYC, and my roommate and I did not furnish it in the modern style. I suppose our style might have been called “scavenged,” but that’s beside the point. Instead of a couch that would have overwhelmed our small space, we filled our living room with a love seat, a not-quite Louis chair, an armchair, and some cute side tables.

If you need to do the same and are currently shopping around, Furniture for Small Spaces published this helpful — but by no means exhaustive — sizing chart:

Other than that, fitting a sofa into a small space is a matter of downsizing certain features. A couch with no arms or slim arms and one with no legs or hidden legs will usually look more natural in a small room, even if it is taking up a great deal of that room. No matter what style of sofa you prefer, look to avoid excessive curves that widen the sofa without adding usable seating space.

(And speaking of accents for small spaces, don’t forget to enter to win a 3′x5′ FREE hand-woven jute rug!)

It seems that today, being Memorial Day, is an appropriate day to post about how wartime homes can positively influence the evolution of small and/or affordable housing, at least in terms of interior space utilization. You see, once upon a time in the post-WWII era, the family home tended to be smaller, forcing the people who lived therein to make the most of all available space.

“In the same way that the proud new householders of wartime homes made numerous accommodations and undertook several modifications as a means of coping with the small size of their residences, so too can designers of contemporary affordable housing devise methods of living comfortably in a space no larger than 1,000 square feet,” state [Avi Friedman and Maria Pantalopoulos's in "The Wartime Home as a Paradigm for Today's Affordable Housing Design" (1996)]

I have a personal interest in this sort of thing, because my own home (which measures in at 1,100 square foot) was built just after WWII. While it’s not quite affordable housing, it is on the smallish side, so The Beard and I do what we can to keep our little cottage tidy and clutter free. We do a good job, too, though I can’t say we are quite so thorough as the homeowner in this wartime home case study:

One Affordable Housing Research Project drew the following conclusions from Friedman and Pantelopoulos’ article:

SPACE
There are numerous ways a space can be designed so that it feels more comfortable and inviting. The relationship of rooms whether they are adjacent or removed can interrupt or guide the circulation patterns in a home. The amount of natural light that enters a room is also important. Usually, a space will feel larger when there is a plentiful source of natural light entering the room. Floor space is extremely valuable in today’s compact houses. Built in furniture is an excellent way to maintain maximum floor space, especially in bedrooms where built in furniture eliminates the need for dressers and desks.

STORAGE
Abundant storage is necessary in the design of today’s compact houses. Storage is a key selling point, because families accumulate more and more belongings the longer they live in one home. Therefore, the designer must be receptive to the demands for ample storage when designing a small, compact house (Friedman and Pantelopoulos, 1996, 191). There are many ways unused spaces should be used for storage, such as in the corners of rooms, and areas near the ceiling. Attics and basements are also ideal areas for adequate storage space.

Yes, yes, and yes. Then again, is it just me, or does this all seem like common sense?