apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I'm planning on doing a whole wall of curtains, about 11' wide (in large part to conceal the tv on the wall between 2 windows). Does anyone have any tricks or product recs to make it look seamless?

Good morning!
So I need ATers help. I bought a new mattress (with a pillow top) last month. In the showroom it was on box springs, but the "box springs" were more like a platform, so I thought "yeah, no problem. I can put that on a platform without box springs and it will feel the same." So I got my platform bed together "Ikea" with slats (that were included because the frame is a new design) and the bed is harder now and I'm having trouble sleeping. Is there anything I can put under the mattress that will give a little more like true boxed springs, without buying box springs? Any ideas?
Thanks!

I'm struggling to find just the right shade of lavender for our living room -- in a low VOC paint.

Any ideas?

Holly over at Decor8 had some really inspiring photos of rooms with lavender walls, but it is impossible to know which paint was used or whether it was low VOC.

If I fail in my search, I may stick to a clean, crisp, if boring white.

Any and all ideas welcome. Here's a pic:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/15376711@N00/303614566/

I'm also looking for just the right low-VOC paint for the bedroom....probably green.... but we'll leave that for another day ;-)

hi mamachilanga,

any of benjamin moore shades are available in their new aura range...

question:

a little while ago i remember people posting about having range hood over your stove. in every apartment i've been in, there has never been one. i never really noticed anything in the other apartments, but when we moved into the current one, there is a ceiling fan in the kitchen. the previous tenant must never have thought to clean his fans regularly as there was at least an inch thick of dust on every fan in the house (we have three). anyway, the inch of dust on the fan in the kitchen was greasy and .. well .. disgusting. so after reading the post (i forget which one) about what all goes into the air and thus all over your walls, etc when you don't have a range hood, i figured that must have been it.

my question is how do you install one? is it a ventilation type thing? will i have to cut a hole in the ceiling, and thus in the floor of the apartment above me?

within the last month, maxwell mentioned a website that would create large format digital prints from your photos. i think it was just part of a post on something else, not a post devoted to this photo service. i can't track it down. i did see a link to photo 2 canvas in the advertisers. any experience with them? any idea the other place maxwell mentioned? i know a lot of places will do this, but i'm looking for simple, relatively inexpensive, and ready to hang.

thanks.

Lisa2,

We had a similar problem, though I"m not sure I can help. We had a box spring and mattress but upgraded our bed to a very low one with slats. We were told that it did not require a box spring (and in fact if we'd kept it the mattress would have been higher than the head board). When we removed the box spring the mattress was too hard, as you've experienced.

So we got a memory foam topper. It's made it all much more comfortable, but I'm not sure you can put that on a pillow top.

Elizabeth --

Range hoods come in different styles. Some are just a metal hood that sits on the underside of the cabinet. Others, have a built in fan and light, which have a mesh filter that help filter steam, grease, and odors. Others are more involved and include a ducted exhaust for which you would need to have a hole in exterior wall or ceiling.

The first iteration just screws into the underside of your cabinet. The second iteration requires electricity, usually hard-wired, but otherwise also is simply screwed in. The third requires modifications that likely could not be accomplished in your apartment without substantial time, expense, etc.

ooh. thank you! So, the one without the fan and light, does it work? the idea i had was that it sucked all that stuff up so it didn't get all over your walls, etc.

Emma:
So one is not just limited to the color palette on the Aura website?

That is good to know.

ALL:
Any ideas on the perfect lavender for the living room?

Thanks Eliza. I think I can add stuff to the top. It's so frustrating buying something for better sleep and then having slightly worse sleep.

OK, I have a stupid smallest coolest question:

Have all of the semi finalists been posted? They're announcing the winners tonight, right? I know we don't get to vote on them, but didn't they say that our comments would be taken into consideration?

elizabeth in AL -
we just got a range hood for our stove at Lowes for around $30. we bought the kind that has the light, fan and the mesh filter.

if you buy this kind then remember to get a plug to hardwire it. it didnt come in the box and we had to go back to Lowes to get it.

so far so good with the range hood. & it's nice to have a little extra light our small kitchen.

mamachilanga,

the whole ben moore palette affinity colors are available in aura.

however, the affinity colors are exclusive to the aura range.

hope this helps.
emma

oops. i meant to say ben moore palette plus the affinity colors...

Sarah7 - I think you are talking about the Rasterbator

http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator/

I have a small kitchen without a window -- there is a vent but it is only a gridded opening into the hollows of the building (1960s concrete construction) -- same is true of the bathroom. I'm thinking of getting an over the range microwave "hood" that would serve the same function as one of those fan/hoods -- it sucks up cooking detritus into the filter, and would get the microwave out of the way. But do they work? has anyone tried this solution?

Might Angelina do the trick?

mamachilanga -
are you in Canada? i thought maybe you were in MTL but i can't remember... anyways, all SICO brand paints are now low-voc. yes, ALL of them! we just painted 4 rooms in our apartment and it didn't smell much at all. they have a pretty extensive color palette as well. www.sico.ca

I am in San Francisco, actually. (Though I have a younger brother living near Vancouver, but on the US side of the border.)

Ommigod, I just read the comments in the Best Tech Winners post. The virtriol!

I really enjoyed AT's first Cool Space contest. It was fun.
Last year, though, it seemed to have gotten more negative, based on the comments that I was reading. I'm bracing myself for even more negativity this year when the winners are announced.

Personally, some people seem to be taking these contests a bit too seriously.

Laura-
I think that's it. Thank you!