One of my strongest memories of my ex-boyfriend is sitting on his couch, his hand on my knee. Couches and couples are a natural pairing and, this week, our picks from the Los Angeles Times Home & Garden section focuses on both. A husband-and-wife architect team's solution to expanding their Venice cottage and another who landscaped their front yard to echo their Greene & Greene Craftsman. Room and Board, a great resource for couches (and other furniture) has finally come to Los Angeles, with a branch in Culver City and an idea from the 100% London Design Show for updating your old boring couch. More, and links, after the jump...
Photo snapped during a sneak peek visit at the new Culver City Room and Board showroom. The team was still putting the finishing touches before the opening party and the official public opening all this weekend.
Room & Board in Culver City: A sneak peek at contemporary design store set to open Monday: This week's big design news is the upcoming opening of a branch of furniture retailer Room and Board in the Helms Bakery complex. The LA Times got a look inside (as did our own Gregory). Hallelujah! We'll finally get to test out our favorite Hahn Sofa by Vladamir Kagan.
Venice couple builds a modern home on top of a Venice Cottage: What would you do if you needed more space? If you live in Venice, home to some of the more intriguing homes in Los Angeles, and you're husband-and-wife architects Robert Choeff and Krystyan Keck, you build a modern house right on top of your 1913 cottage.
100% Design London: Tuft it yourself? New buttoned furniture lends an idea for that old couch: The LA Times was at the 100% Design London show which just closed. If you weren't able to get to London for it, they've spotlit a few of the highlights, trends and arresting ideas. Our favorite: contemporary sofas from Ziglam & Brook and Then Design which bring the multiple button stylings of traditional Chesterfield couches into the 21st Century. Tired of your old sofa? Try sewing buttons on it!
A frontyard is crafted to match a Greene & Greene Craftsman home in Pasadena: What would you do with your front yard if you lived in a classic 1906 Greene & Greene Craftsman home? If you're Pasadena couple Susan and Derek Pippert, you turn it into a turn-of-the-century landscape garden to match with the help of landscape designer Gabriela Yariv. Click here to see more photos of this garden, as well as Ms. Yariv's other projects.
[photos: Robert Gauthier / LAT; Anne Cusack / LAT; Kristin Hohenadel; Gabriela Yariv]
Wow. I've never commented on the collective we before, and I KNOW this isn't what posts are supposed to be about. But the image of "our boyfriend" with his hand on "our knee" made me laugh. Should it possibly be our knees?
In any case...fun links.
view fresh.air's profile
Evidently they (and by "they," I mean "she") delete posts critical of their usage of plural personal possessive pronouns.
view quark's profile
One of our strongest complaints of your (plural) blog is our distaste with your plural pronouns. We think our reading experience would be much better if we didn't have to read about your (plural) experiences.
...I kinda wish I wrote this in French or Italian for the full effect.
view atfan123's profile
It is silly. Wouldn't it make more sense if the bloggers were allowed to be "I" when discussing experiences a reader knows that singular human being experienced (our husband) and "we" when it's an experience that the whole of AT is having, as a blog (our love for green sofas, we're featuring stripes this week, we were blown away by this house tour)?
I kind of feel bad mocking any blogger here who spends their time doing such a labor intensive non-job, and is required to participate in the we collective, but it is occasionally a very very silly overall style rule.
view e6's profile
"One of our strongest memories of our ex-boyfriend is sitting on his couch, his hand on our knee. "
You're just toying with us, aren't you?
Here's a big reason to drop this rule--these bloggers might want to use their blog posts as writing samples for future jobs, and most editors would just laugh to see such tortured syntax.
view FantasticMrFaux's profile
Not only the editors laugh.
Sometimes (like the example above)
it's comes across as trying too hard.
view t3d's profile
I thought I was the only one annoyed by the royal we. I guess I should check the comments more often. It does seem affected and especially inappropriate for informal internet writing.
view Fern @ Life on the Balcony's profile
I didn't even read the rest of the post after that first sentence... I just went right to the comments to see if anyone noticed.
view Joan A.'s profile
Thanks for the edits! Much better.
view Joan A.'s profile
Oh Abby, I'm so happy YOU were able to talk about YOUR ex-boyfriend in the edits! Yay!
view fresh.air's profile