apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

The hot water pipe in my bathroom is ugly with a big pipe joint 2/3 of the way up. I want to cover it. If I wrap pvc pipe around it will the pvc accept paint? Will the heat destroy the paint? My other thought is to buy a large diameter bamboo pole to cover the pipe. Where in NYC can you buy large diameter bamboo poles?

Gotta love old pre-war buildings! In my apartment, my predecessor simply wrapped the pipe with a natural fiber/hemp rope like a coil. If you really want to get creative I'm sure you could paint the rope or dye it first... I prefer to just leave it natural.

Mason--

Try the Flower District on 28th for big "girth" bamboo. Oh my.

Search the site, too... I think Maxwell did an online tutorial about wrapping a pipe in rope as hejiranyc describes. And one of the early Smallest Coolest entries had a similar problem/solution... perhaps Robert's "Golden Handcuffs"? Oh my.

How To: Wrap Your Hot Pipes with Rope

Mason: There are paintable wraps. The ceiling of my loft has 8 pipes running across it and theyre all wrapped in paintable material. It looks like some sort of paper/fabric and elbows and joint covers are also available.

A completely other question : What happened to the Links-Drive suggested in July ?

Thanks to all for your suggestions. I have seen the rope wraps and it doesn't go well with the over all look of the bathroom. In addition, there would be this giant bulge over the pipe joint. Will check out the flower district for the bamboo pole which is likely to be the best solution.

I would not recommend bamboo on a hot water pipe, particularly given the temperature NYC apartments often keep the hotwater. In all events, even with PVC, it should not be touching the pipe and you should put appropriate insullation on the pipe before covering.

I would suggest a simpler approach that requires a bit more work. I assume that you are referring to the copper supply lines. I had these on the ceiling of my loft. Rather than trying to hide them, I cleaned all the paint off them and got some copper polish and shined them up. Now, they look like they are part of the texture mix of my industrial loft.

wow. Somehow I missed that rope wrapping thread last winter. I totally have to do that now-- we have the ugliest peely gross pipe in our bathroom and the rope would be just the trick. Plus maybe the cat would stop destroying the furniture...

Has anyone ever restored a vintage stove?

I am considering bidding on this,

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=180153141525&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT&ih=008

since a) it is exactly the profile I want (with burner cover), b) it's in New Jersey, which means it's accessible, and c) the price (if there's no higher reserve) is right.

But the person says she's not even sure it works, and even if it does there's clearly some work to be done with one of the bottom drawers.

Does anyone know a person in the area who does this kind of work, and is it prohibitively expensive?

O.k. I remember these pipes from my first visit to NYC.

Are these pipes actually supposed to provide heat to the bathroom as well as move the hot water?

If they are intended for double duty I could see shrouding it in something defeating that purpose. But I'm only speculating on the heating functionality.

Lightenup, if this is an old apartment, the pipes are probably not copper? They are probably iron with lots of corrosion and paint on the outside?

If you could get the surface of that pipe smooth enough by sanding, with breathing protection, then priming with a high heat primer, maybe something like this could be an option? http://www.forrestpaint.com/stovebright/high_temp_aerosols1.html

mason,
check out the color card and powder coatings. they also include a primer.

DC area question:
anyone know a mill where one can take a big ol' tree and have it cut into planks? Or even better, a residential tree cutter that provides that?

In the spirit of Eat Local, one can Decorate Local too, right?

just found these on Craigs...sure hope some AT'er scoops them up cause they are so dang cool!

http://newyork.craigslist.org/jsy/fur/410681246.html

(no they aren't mind and I don't know the seller).

I made a great discovery that I wanted to share. I'm sure there's several people who enjoy the parons desk from west elm as much as i do. I just found this desk:

on overstock.com this morning. As far as I'm concerned, it's an exact copy of the parsons and comes in the colors that west elm no longer sells. pulls it's only $150!

not sure what happened to my photo but here's the link to the desk
http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Student-Desk-White/2542757/product.html

cleaning question.

if you're squeamish, please stop reading. =)

my dog (p/too's favorite dog on the planet, by the way) had a bit of a, well, intestintal issue. for several hours. allll over my relatively new bamboo laminate floors. had to get her to the doggie ER (she's fine now) but that meant that things didn't get cleaned up right away.

so now i'm looking for a way to get the floor as clean as possible. and yes, i suspect that there was a certain amount of absorption that i need to figure out how to displace or at least render odorless.

any suggestions?

and i have a bit of a spellting issue. =)

mike -- glad to know your dog is fine. Wish I could help with the floor problem.

boomer -- are you out there? You can now add cut-up suzanis to your cut-up kilims rant. There are stacks of them at ABC Carpet and Home.

everyone -- hip and humble home is having a moving sale. The style is ethnic/tribal moderne, for lack of a better tag.

mike, the "enzyme cleaners" made for pet messes work pretty well
I have no experience with a bamboo floor and that particular problem/product
but it works great on other surfaces
(I've had more than my share of barfy dogs - glad your pup is okay)

It's sold in pet stores - usually a white bottle with red cap - and online. The Mrs Meyers people also make one.

p.s.
After the enzyme cleaner, I'm thinking you might have to bleach/stain/refinish
jeez

Mason--here's something I saw at Anthropologie that I have wanted to do to cover my cords, but it could work just as well on the pipe: cover them with fabric. They use nubby-looking wheat colored fabric and then snake their cords everywhere, and if I didn't see it, I wouldn't think it could look good, but I think it looks lovely. I plan on sewing velcro up one side for easy on-off.

Thanks for the link, vertigo. I have been considering buying a pair of those desks. I've decided to work on our bedroom for the fall cure, but if they're still available in a few months I would love to save some money. They really do look identical to the west elm ones.

Hello ATer, I'm looking for something interesting to do with some great photos I have. I remember two cool photo projects here, one, where you can reproduce your photo in 8x10 section to make it huge. The other one, was, you can create a photo with those tiny little photos, but I am unable to locate the sources with my poor search criteria. Can you help?

hey All!
I hope youre having a fabulous weekend!
I'm looking for a little advice. We are trying to choose tiles for our kitchen backsplash and I'm just stumped. I just like everything. I have posted some photos of the kitchen and the tiles in question to my blog, which you can get to through a link on my profile! Thanks!

Hi Eliza,

From the 5 options on your blog, I like number 3 best. Your kitchen cabinets look very chic, by the way. Personally, I think something more pictorial would look great considering that you have that nice chocolate brown backdrop to work with. The kitchen looks very Scandinavian modern so why not start there? Does Marimekko do tiles?

eSusan--
One of the things you are talking about is the (and I am not making this up) "Rasterbator."

Eliza-
1,3, or 5, leaning slightly away from the blue if I had to furtehr rank.
If you *do* the dark tile, make sure to install undercounter lighting... it does not need to be high-powered... just something to punch it up. More accent lighting than task.

Eliza,
Very nice kitchen reno. I would like to see the blue tile against the cabinets and stainless steel. I also like that you showed how Ikea can be a little tricky to get perfect. While the price is great people should be aware that is a diy product and can be a bit challenging.

Thank you Lucy, P2 and Art for your advice and tile ideas!
I am really leaning towards tile #3. I like how it is unusual but would also tie the gray cabinets to the wood (not that it needs it that much, but...) and also add a little color. It is dark, but we do have undercounter lights (perhaps they weren't obvious-- they are falling off at the moment, anyway) and a lot of direct sunlight. Plus we have that damn white floor...

Art, argh! I can't get those cabinets to line up! It's driving me crazy!! (Someone said, maybe here, that Ikea is European and therefore has all those weird gaps. It sounds like a joke to me, why shouldn't it look clean like anyone else's cabinets?)

Eliza,

Sorry your cabinets are so frustrating! Did you install them yourself? If so, or if someone else did are you or they used to installing things like this?

If not, there are lots of little things that could cause the cabinets not to line up. I AM NOT A CARPENTER! I'm just trying to help you troubleshoot because I installed some Ikea cabinets myself.

The first thing I would do is remove the toe kick from the front of the cabinets. Then, double check with your bubble level that everything is absolutely level. If it is not, especially with that double cabinet where the doors are not lining up, you may have to shim a couple of the cabinet feet until things are level.

I would also check your door hinges and see if altering them will correct the problem. There are small screws on the hinges themselves that can alter the position of the door.

Hopefully these suggestions will help! Good luck!

Art,

The cabinets themselves line up and are level. It's the doors that aren't, and I've been futzing with the screws to make it work. They are better than they were, I'm just not sure they'll ever be perfect, which is a shame.

Thanks for your suggestions!