apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Good Morning AT,
Not really deswign advise but just wanted to let everyone know that starting today at the Javits Center and running thru Monday is Art Expo. With all the talk about art over the last few weeks, it is worthwhile to go check it out. Everything from sculptures to paintings , prints, jewelry pottery and fossils.Today and tomorow is trade ony, Sat & Sunday ope to the public. Enjoy.

Picking up the ikea sideboard issue from yesterday, I just wanted to say that I bought an unfinished pine TV stand and bench (used as a cocktail table) from Ikea awhile ago and stained them--and they look much better than your standard Ikea. People ask me where I got them.

New tenant, I'm not sure if this will look too industrial for you but when you asked your question yesterday I immediately thought of the ISS shelving that Amy had installed in her Mott St place. I know you're in a rental but you're not averse to putting in a few screws (or even molly bolts) based on your Lack experience so take a look at this link to see a picture of the shelving and also, if you are interested, work in progress pics from prior threads.

I agree with the last set of commenters that the clutter detracted from what seemed to be building up to be an exceptionally clean and functional design but, hey, you have to be able to live in the place and not just admire it.

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/091405/house-tours/the-inside-out-amys-micro-palace-in-detail-003895

There is a link to the ISS shevling in there.

anyone have any suggestions for coat hooks or a wall rack for coats? I would need a minimum of four hooks, preferrably six. Thanks

Hi guys,

A friend of mine is trying to sell a place FSBO in chicago and I was wondering if there were any real estate blogs in Chicago (other than the new AT)? Thanks.

Hey guys!

Okay, so I have a midnight platform bed from CB2:

http://www.cb2.com/family.aspx?c=400&f=2521&q=midnight&p=&fromLocation=Search

and a Tempur-pedic mattress. We have the foundation (their version of a boxspring), but obviously don't want to use it for this style bed. Here is what Tempur-pedic says: "If your platform bed has a solid surface to support the mattress, you do not have to buy our Platform Foundation. We do not recommend placing our mattress on a platform bed surface constructed of slats."

This bed has slats, and to boot (as in the photo) the slats show. So I'm thinking of buying some kind of solid surface and painting it black to put in place of the slats.

The question is, what material...plywood, particle board, masonite, MDF?

Thanks!

Looking beyond today's NYT Home section . . .
to the NYT Metro section
and a big goofy chandelier made of ping pong balls

there's a bit of rainy day DIY for you

(clink on my name)

Jennie, I am a big fan of MDF but I think it would be too heavy and not worth the extra cost for this application. Masonite is too brittle and not stiff enough, particle board is typcically not finished so you would have a hard time painting a smooth surface and it may not be stiff enough over a large span like that.

So that leaves plywood which is a great choice. Stiff and lighter than MDF, and cheaper too. You can get different grades on the top veneer so make sure you get one that can be painted smooth. Go here for more:
http://www.sizes.com/materls/plywood_softwood.htm#Veneer_grades

The only problem I can see is that the ply would sit proud of the slats and you would see it. I guess you could mount it underneath but then I'm not sure if the presence of slats themselves prevents your type of matress from performing as it should. The ply underneath would certainly stiffen all the slats.

Now having said all that, amd not really having had a box spring for a long time, I think box springs do have a masonite type of top don't they? Mounting masonite on top of the slats would work because the slats are spaced close enough to keep the masonite from cracking anywhere and it would be thin enough to be almost imperceptible.

Jennie,

I would go with plywood and cut it slightly smaller than your mattress so that you don't lose the effect of seeing the slats while still supporting the mattress with a firm base. It would fast, cheap, not too heavy and indetectable not to mention easy. A win/win IMO.

RE coat hook:

http://www.designpublic.com/shop/blu-dot/172

Hey, we've got a "more" button on the bottom of the page! Hooray!
Well, kinda.

I really do appreciate the fact that a change was made but do find it easier to see original posts within the context of the others. Thanks though for listening in the first place.

just stopped into the vitra shop in the meat packing district yesterday and saw my new object of desire, the bahut sideboard by prouve, which just arrived. however the $9100. price tag is keeping it from my grasp.
bc moss on greene street has a painted metal hook rack of 5 hooks. the design is a single sheet of perforated steel that folds into a rack when your ready to install it.i've had it in my hallway for the past year and it's great.

BC, re: the coat hooks: http://www.topdeq.com/topdeq/category.do?catid=us_24

Jennie - one more thought about plywood - if you're going to put it *over* the slats, then cut it smaller than the slats, as jamiepup said. When you do that, I recommend getting a rug pad or similiar 'non-slip' type of material to put on the slats under the plywood. Otherwise, with 2 smooth wood surfaces together, you might get a bit of slippage during more vigourous 'sleeping'.

If you're *not* keeping the slats, I would paint the whole thing black and set it in the frame, and bolt any center supports to the plywood to make sure you don't get center splitting and sagging. If the surface is really smooth on top, you might have to use the rug pad technigue there as well.

:)

We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto!

While I believe in free speech, I also believe in the right to kick people out of my apartment when they are boring, obnoxious, or both.

I dig the ping pong balls...

Maxwell, thank you!

Very much!

[sigh of relief]

There was a guy who kept posting on our local town forum, insisting on using abusive language. After many very reasonable requests to stop, and then warnings about what would happen if he didn't, he was blocked from posting, which is an accepted right/responsibility of a forum host, and his most offensive posts were removed. In a huff, and supposedly not understanding what was so offensive about his language or attitude, he went off and formed his own forum (in his words, the "uncensored" forum), where many of his posts consisted of bashing the person who hosted the first forum. [And now he, himself, has blocked certain people from posting on his forum!]

So yes, thank you, Maxwell!

yayyyyyy!!!!

Hmmm, while I respect Maxwell's decision to remove posts I'm not so sure removing them all was necessary.

I still say that most ppl were complicit in giving jonathan a reason to keep posting. Simply ignore a troll and he will go away. They rely on responses and reactions to their inflammatory comments and the AT community seems not to be well versed in troll behaviour and how to deal with it.

This of course is part of its appeal. I have said before that we are remarkably free from trolls here but as we can see it makes a lot of us ill equiped to handle it when a troll situation occurs.

Please in the future, just ignore those types of posts and they will go away faster than this one did. Really, it's true.

BTW, by all means email Maxwell to ban his IP but never respond to the troll.

Thanks Maxwell!!!

Leave for a while and you miss everything. I saw one bad post earlier today, but I guess there were more. Glad I missed them.

Maxwell: Kudos to you!

sarajane: HA! Well said.

Just for the record, I wrote to Jonathan yesterday to get his side of the story and he never wrote back.

We always first attempt to engage people directly before doing anything editorially hard-nosed on this site. That goes for stores, designers, readers or advertisers.

We also don't want to waste ours or anyone else's time and there will be no babysitting. If this is to be community, it has to have boundaries and a sense of decorum AND those have to be self generating. This was totally brought to my attention by your comments and emails to me. Thanks for being stewards as well as readers.

Now, onward! There's bigger fish to fry...

Sometimes, there is a corner of your apartment that can only be filled with a sherbert-colored indoor swing:

http://www.modernconvenience.com/swing.html

For those of us without the need for the swing, a whimsical ottoman:

http://www.modernconvenience.com/lucy.html

The ottomans remind me of the clamation programs of my youth and I am intrigued by the fur-coated underside.

Maxwell: Thank you. I'm sure it was a difficult decision.

And, I very much like what SaraJane wrote.

Well said avocado. That swing pic on the right reminds me of the swing episode in Sex and the City.

what did I miss? Can I assume that Maxwell barred Jonathan from AT? I don't see any reference to it other than the ones thanking Maxwell.

This is funny - no matter where I am on the AT homepage, when I hit refresh it lands on that picture of Brenden Frazier. Is that really Brenden Frazier because eeeuuwwwww - that does NOTHING for me. He looks like he's in a toddlers underwear.

no waaay!
if that's Brendan Frasier in the y-fronts, it's absolutely the worst picture he ever took.

Am I allowed to say that I thought Jonathan was hilarious and misunderstood and that the site was more fun with him?

Wow. I’m not a Brendan Frasier fan anyway but… yeek.

I’m sorry for posting fix it/chuck it questions when we’re supposed to be talking about design but I thought one (or some) of the AT folks might know the answers.

My dilemmas—toss offender or fix? (I’m leaning towards the former)

1) Our garbage disposal, which we rarely use, is not working well. My guess is that one of the grinding plates (or whatever they are called) is loose/broken. Should I chuck it and buy a new one or fix it (or get it fixed)?

2) The temperature control knob on the shower handle has come off and gluing it back on does not work. Chuck it or try to fix it?

3) The mirror in the bathroom fell off the wall (don’t ask) and left a lovely Cy Twombley design behind it. The wall is torn in a couple of places revealing what looks suspiciously like gray cardboard. Rip out the whole wall panel or patch it with something? Simply painting over the patch (even with primer/sealer) results in lovely paint blisters.

Thanks guys. Even if no one replies at least I got to air my home repair grievances.

Does anyone have a coupon code for the AD design show? Very excited

OK, so Jonathan is kicked out? Bummer, he was absolutely daily entertainment! You have to relax and not take things so seriously - an angry man can really have some excellent points. I'll be sorry to not be able to read his rants... I thought, at first, that he was a gimmick - an AT "thing" to hook people in controversy. LET HIM BACK, I say....

Apparently I have not been paying much attention, because I have no idea who Jonathan is.

A while ago in an OT I mentioned a book called SMALL SPACES, GOOD IDEAS (my name is the Amazon link) and said I'd say more about it later. I only wanted to make note of this book because I think a lot of AT ppl would like it. There are no apartments of more than 1000 sq feet in it, and plenty are in the 400-700 range. I think the smallest is around 100. Some are concept apartments that you've already seen - they've been featured here briefly, like that one that is the room with the revolving cylinder in the corner that's meant to "repurpose" the main room, and that other one where the wooden dining table and its seats are hydraulically-raised from the surface of the floor when needed. But there are a lot of others, many in Europe. Worth a look if you live in Tinyland USA (or Tinyland Elsewhere).

My thanks also Maxwell.

Update: The night I posted the bed question, one of the sltas broke. I'm not sure how long this bed is going to last!

Jamie, thanks for your recommendation and the link! Rachel, I think your last suggestion is what I'm going with. I guess I wasn't clear at first about the slats; I DON'T want them to show. So I think I will chuck those, get a thick grade smooth plywood (cut to size at Lowe's), paint it black, and put it in place of the slats. The rug pad is a good idea, indeed!

Where is the pic of Brendan Fraser? (note correct spelling)

Jonathan got kicked off? I didn't realize participation was based on popularity. I guess I better be careful about what I say.

New Tenant, I know you "got" jonathan and liked his style but the point is that most ppl - even if they got what he doing - found his posts either offensive or of no benefit, waste of bandwidth/time, etc. so because this site is basically a community and does require a certain level of decorum to prevent it degenerating into something else entirely (how about a craigslist forum where attacks are common from ppl who think they are being funny?) then because Maxwell got enough complaints then he did something about it - after trying to contact jonathan in the first place.

I understand what he was trying to do. This site can seem to be a little "safe" and homespun at times (but obviously not all the time - and the level of respect and politeness we have here cannot be underestimated or diminished) and I'm sure ppl like jonathan and his other fans would like to shake things up a little but, truth be told, there are other sites that you can get your rocks off doing that. For example, urbanbaby, curbed, craigslist, gothamist. So why not go there if that's what they want?

I think it is that simple. If ppl don't like the style of a site then they should simply go to one they do like. I'm sure they will find it.

For the record, one of the posts that I think should have been left up was the one to you about your reading material. Your response makes no sense otherwise and that may as well have been taken down but then if that was done then the sympathetic posts directed to you should have been taken down.

And I'd add that I don't think Maxwell's choice was based on "popularity" at all.

As you know, I'm certainly no prude, but I don't really come to AT to read expletives (I hear enough "f-ing" on the subway from high school girls, thank you very much), even if they are under the guise of wit or as a lead-in to actual real advice (which he did offer , every now and then).

And I REALLY don't come here to see the word "hate". Enough of that "in the real world."

While I did not lobby to have him blocked, I can't say I miss the tone.

It's not really about whether I liked or disliked him, but people are different and express themselves in their own way. I think people took his comments way too seriously and they ended up missing out on someone with a great sense of humor who had something of value to contribute. I just wish people had given him a chance before deciding that he needed to just be shut up.

And Jamie Pup, I think Jonathan did like the style of this site. In fact, he said he loved the site and I believe him. I know people think he was a troll, but I think he really was just being himself - maybe a bit more exaggerated, but lots of people do that when they are on line. It makes me feel really bad that someone basically got ganged up on and then banned because he didn't express himself in the way that other people could understand or accept. Maybe it bothers me so much because I've had a lot of experience very authoritarian institutions where people are punished and even expelled for being unique and expressing themselves in a way that is outside the accepted norm. I just wish y'all had given him a chance to find his voice and try to fit in better. I think in time it would have happened if he had felt more accepted here.

So New Tenant, what did you think of the link I posted at the top?

I think he was a scary cyber-psycho (or possibly a malicious 12 year old). He was attacking people left and right and saying extremely offensive things. That may be his method of personal expression, but it's offensive to a lot of other people here and was unresponsive to our requests for him to be more sensitive to the fact that those comments could be offensive to others. He was also unresponsive to Maxwell's communications with him. As the site manager, Maxwell has the right to try to ameliorate the situation and see the side of the person who people are complaining about and I'm not aware that such an action is taken very often or lightly. I don't think that a group of people has to be controlled by the craziest person in the group. This site is not an authoritarian institution, which many of us would be quite sensitive to and would not be part of. I applaud Maxwell for taking the actions he did.

One more thing: he didn't get ganged up on -- he was the bully!

I disagree - i think he did get ganged up on. It was like 20 to 1.

jamie pup

Are you referring to the ISS link - i think that stuff looks great. But I think I will probably wait until I move into my own house before I do anything that elaborate.