apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Anyone else like to stay home, cook,have drinks and listen to Garrison Keillor on Saturday night?

It's looking good for me to ask a question already!
Looking to do something dramatic with lighting, i.e., a chandalier-type event. Saw an antiques place on greene street - any other recommendations. Lessons learned?
Also, any good tips on CHEAP marble fireplaces? (2nd hand is perfectly fine by me)

Thanks AT

Richard--
What's the overall style you're looking to hit? The word "event" in your post makes it very intriguing!
Panky--
I am a big fan of the stay-at-home Saturday night.

I'm a renter, and I love tiles. The new place has good potential for sprucing up. The bathroom is uggg-ly, unlike my current place, which I am about to vacate.

Is this crazy-talk, or is it possible for me to take a wooden frame (almost a shallow wooden box-- a frame with a back set back far enough to fit tiles and the junk that goes around it), design a mosaic with tiles, set it within the frame, then mount the framed mosaic to the wall?)

Would it be too incredibly heavy? I would be soooo happy with nice tiles in my new place (either in the kitchen or the bathroom), but I obvs cannot throw up a backsplash in the new apartment or tile the bathroom. (My coworker *did* put down a temporary new bathroom floor in her new rental.)

Any of you read Living Etc magazine from the UK?

karenw, seems tricky--what kind of walls do you have?
richard, I admit to liking antler chandeliers, at future perfect and elsewhere

Ordinary walls. The giant freestanding mosaic thing is sort of a pipe dream. The more I think about it, the more ridiculously heavy I think it would be.

I hand-painted some tiles at a pottery place a few years ago, then hung them in my current bathroom (just three tiles, 3x3). I guess if I really want tiles, I can do that with a larger number. Might look kind of cool, actually.

I was also thinking about doing a mosaic-like 2d painting for my wall. I have a giant canvas that is only covered in gesso right now.

If we don't have these crazy unworkable ideas, we'll never come up with cool workable ones, right?

On an unrelated note, I started to pack this weekend. But it was more sorting and throwing out than anything else. AT, you should SEE my almost-empty medicine cabinet!! It's actually very peaceful to open it in the morning and see just 5 items-- the five things I need to get ready for work. Everything else is compartmentalized into big ziploc bags with labels and stored away until I can come up with a fancier and more permanent solution after the move.

Richard,
If you want a chandelier event for not much money, I suggest www.greatchandelier.com. I don't know about the quality but the prices are great, with the majority of their stock coming in under $300.

Chris, I occasionally read Living Etc but my real love is Elle Decoration. I like the British shelter porn better than the US; they're more eccentric and more service/reader focused, I think. Elle Decoration also has a thread of naughtiness running through it that I enjoy.

Finally, I often end up at home on Sat. night, but I don't think I've made my peace with it. I think I'd feel better about it if I were in a relationship and it felt like more of a treat as opposed to the absence of other options.

I spent my weekend in Zionsville, PA, in a house chock-a-block full of country-ana. I love my friend, I've known her the vast majority of my life, but yikes! It's the type of home where the toilet paper in each bathroom has a little wooden house with cutesy flowers on it to live in. Not my cup of tea, to say the least. But I did get out on Sat. night.

In case anyone has been desperately waiting, crochet hook at the ready, here's a version of Martha's poncho called, I kid you not, the "Freedom Poncho"

www.interweave.com/knit/events/freedom_poncho_pf.asp

Karen, I think the tile in wooden frame idea could work. How about constructing the frame, cutting out the side pieces so that they fit over the existing tiles and the wall at the point where the tiles stop (assumimg they don't go to the ceiling) and then screwing the whole frame to the studs first before doing the tiling. When it's time to leave you have to remember where you put the screws in (take a picture and mark it), break the tiles where they are and unscrew the frame. I would make sure that you protected the screw heads from tile adhesive with some kind of collar to enable you to easily unscrew.

If you want to do a large area then do more than one frame and maybe the frame could be thin enough to match the grout lines and you could fill the joints with grout.

The only problem I can think of is that of moisture getting into the wooden frame which would have to be sealed properly.

Ruth, I love UK Ells decoration too and also like Living Etc. I have just finished a 3 or 4 year subscription run with another UK magazine called Kitchen, Bathroom and Bedroom which is a great showcase for the kinds of kitchen I like. I got a lot of the bathroom ideas from there also. There are actually two UK magzines with that name with the one I did not subscribe to having in small print the words "The Essential" before the KBB part. This is also a good magazine but ususally a bit too full of flashy designs for my taste.

Richard, brownstoner had a post about finding a great old bath tub and I figured the link to their post (where they link to the place where they found it) may be useful for you

brownstoner.com/brownstoner/archives/2005/01/brownstoner_sco.html

Has anyone ordered anything from The Magazine? Just wondering if anyone has had any positive, or more importantly, negative experiences with them.

Chris,

I love Living Etc. -- every single month I run around looking for the current issue because the couple of stores here that stock it are never sure when it will come in.

I also sometimes buy Elle Decoration, but I always, always buy Living Etc. No US magazines even come close.

This may be a bit of a non sequitur, but I'm repainting my bathroom and kitchen and I'm at a loss. I have no eye for color--the rest of the house only came together by some kind of miracle. Can somebody just tell me what color to paint my stupid bathroom and kitchen? Yes, I'm going nuts with this.

helpless -- um, I can pick a color out of a hat for you, but I'm guessing you want something better... What's the rest of the place look like? Is your kitchen sunny? Do you want the room to look cosy or expansive? With nothing to go on, I suggest you look at those paint sample colors that Benjamin Moore and a few other brands offer. If nothing else, it's easier to look through a brochure of 300 or so pots rather than a kazillion paint chips...

Coffee table repair. In dumpster-diving fashion, I found a terrific mid-century style coffee table that I like a lot although it is in need of some repair to make it more stable. And, to make it the right height for my sofa, I'd like to cut the legs. My other thought is to mosaic the top. I don't know how, nor do I have the tools, to do any of these things. Any suggestion? And I don't want to spend more on this than it's worth. Thanks.

To correct the height problem, all you need is some masking tape, a tape measure, and a hacksaw or miter saw. Measure, tape, cut, done. Add a little wood glue to the joints for stability.
Mosaic will make the top much heavier than it is, so make sure the frame can handle it.