apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Yeah, but getting the stove in the overhead compartment on the return trip is a real bitch.

I'm a frequent reader, seldom-poster, and though it's snowing beautifully in Boston this morning, I'm at work. With a burning question for AT readers: I tuned in to SSBS last night to see Patrick's segment (great!) and in another part of the show they showed the best Murphy bed ever, with shelves and storage on the flipside so you never even know there's a bed there when it's closed. Anyone know anything about this fabulous bed?? There's no sourcing info on HGTV's web site...

Where would I go for a modern-looking wood stove? I have shopped and find only Vermont Castings-type things. They are very pretty, but very traditional and not my taste. There is a company in Denmark that makes these beauties

http://www.stovesonline.co.uk/wood_burning_stoves/Hwam-wood-burning-designer-stoves.html

but no one in the US carries them, and I haven't found any others that are carried here that are modern. Ideas? Thoughts? I could justify a trip to Denmark this way if I tried REALLY hard, but, a cheaper solution must exist.

A trip to Denmark is a great idea.
And SAS and Icelandair run great specials, making it an economical choice as well.

That photo of The Gates is beautiful. And yes, I LOVED them, and it was during that time that I had my friends come help me paint my paint-by-number mural with me, and I have to admit that some of them were more easily lured there, because of how close my apartment is to the park, and they had sort of a double-barrel populist art experience.

I loved The Gates from almost every single angle.

Oh, that photo of The Gates tugs at my heart!

By the way, if anyone out there is interested in meeting Christo and Jeanne-Claude and expressing a little appreciation, they are signing books at The Strand next Wednesday night, the 14th, from 6:30 to 8 PM.

HGTV rarely gives sourcing info. I would also like to know about the murphy bed on last night's SSBS episode. Also, how do these people get on this show? And with some of them, it seems they've put so much $$ into this tiny space that it would have been possible to purchase a larger space. Yes? No? Re: The Gates, awesome. I came away from the experience with a nose that nearly dropped off from the cold, and a few fabulous photos. I was amazed at how these simple pieces of fabric traced the wind and brought such incredible movement to a stark and wintery place. It was as if a million crocuses were waking up all at once and swaying. Ok, you had to be there...

An omission on my part re: Patrick's apartment on SSBC - I'd move in in a heartbeat. Nice going. As I watched, I looked around my place and thought "Crap". So I'm quite inspired. Colors, use of furniture, the whole thing. I'm going to through out all my non-essentials this weekend. I'll keep the cat. By the time the snow melts no one will know its my stuff. Seriously, nice place.

I volunteered at The Gates and was out in that weather everyday. But I met so many people from all over the world who came just to see the installation. Everyone wanted to talk about it and only 3-4 people actually said they hated it. Everyone else was in awe of the huge scale of the project and how it made them feel walking thru it. I loved it!

"And with some of them, it seems they've put so much $$ into this tiny space that it would have been possible to purchase a larger space. Yes? No?"

No... bunch of reasons. (1) The "design" work may have been done gradually, not rolled into the mortgage.

(2) The work may not have triggered a reassessment, so property taxes are lower than on a larger place. Out here, there's a *very* short list of events that lead to reassessments.

(3) If the homeowners wanted that level of finish regardless of where they lived, they couldn't have afforded to do it on a larger place.

(4) In San Francisco, when you pick a neighborhood, you're accepting severe limitations on the variety of housing stock. Neighborhood choice makes a huge difference in lifestyle here. The next size up *in that neighborhood* may have been out of the buyers' price range.

(5) Homeowners may like living in a small space. I'd never do a big house again, even if property prices here plummetted. (A slightly larger apartment, yes.)

my views of the christo beauties!
http://www.eyemaze.net/gates/

Patrick, you are so rock star! Absolutely flawless segment, both your place and your presentation of it. Don't mean to make this a big cheesy love fest, but you really have set a great example of how to weed out the extraneous and showcase the gems in a home. (I also vaguely recall the before pics and something about you receiving a buck for every design mag you let out the door...) The still shots just didn't do your place justice like moving ones do. Love it, love it, love it. Your treatment of the 'bedroom' is my favorite aspect.

Abbe & jmarieb--

Thank you! (and a SPECIAL thank you to mia for her comment on an earlier thread right after the show... you made my night!!)

Wende is right about the "move up in space" situation assessment, but seriously, aside from furniture (much of which I've had years before this apartment, and have purchased with an eye towards "years after") the only thing I've done is paint and window treatments (okay, and cabinet/closet pulls, and the switch-out of two overhead light fixtures...)

And here in New York, there would have to be a SERIOUS windfall (of Lotto proportions) to get me into a *much* bigger space-- while staying in the city itself-- any time soon.

But I am seriously itchin' to do another interior project now that this place is "done".

I too am a regular reader and not so regular poster, however mention of The Gates certainly pushes me to express appreciation for the greatness of it. Central Park is heaven on earth (to me) and the piece of NYC that would and has made it difficult to think of going back home (Los Angeles). I've been here two years, was planning on one, and experiencing The Gates has been among the greatest highlights. I miss it.

I used to walk across the Park every day, usually a similar, but not always the exact same, route. As The Gates went up, I became increasingly aware of the terrain of the Park and for the first time the differences in width of the same paths that I had been using every day. Aside from the unique sensation of having a foreign art installation in public space for which I feel a great deal of private pride and ownership, the way The Gates required me to re-examine my own prior observations of the Park were my favorite parts of the experience.

Wende seems to have been reading my mind, on all points. So for me, just search-and-replace in your mind SF for NYC and you're all set.

EXCEPT... one COULD roll your credit card debt (assuming that's how you bought your stuff) into the mortgage if you re-financed your apartment for more than you paid, once you had enough equity to justify it, AND if the rate was lower.

good source Famous architects

Wende: I have to say, I hadn't thought of any of that. Thanks. Now it makes more sense. I live in a small space 20 minutes from NYC and forgot about the costs of living in the "City", although I do work there and where I live is also expensive....but different.

Patrick: It really is impressive and if you feel like doing another small space, do mine! Trust me, you'd win an award.

My expertise is paint and color. I'm still learning the rest of it. What do you suggest for an apartment that has NO natural light - I have lighting issues - big ones. The overheads are awful and how many lamps can one human have?

The Gates, ah yes. Nearly a year ago, 'twas. The city went from being its usual gritty crowdedness to being a full-on C.S. Lewis novel. I kept thinking about alternate realities and how each orange frame could be the gateway into another universe. Or they looked like the legs of a robot army. In skirts.

Or the stalwart sentinels of time itself. Or an abstract art interpretation of road construction people waving orange flags, as if to warn people not to walk through there. Or the valves that flow the blood in our veins. Or the powerlessness of organic beings against the winds and tides of fate/inertia. One thought process was, "It's like a storm of orange. A saffron storm. A saffron...monsoon! OMG like the character from Absolutely Fabulous!!!" Sometimes they resembled nothing more than the sum of their parts.

Those darn things were pretty good mood indicators.

My mom suggested that I just "get a one-bedroom" instead of a studio, but I pointed out that here in nyc it takes twice the money to get that one stupid door and you don't necessarily get more space just because you have a 1br over a studio...

Mary -
You're SO right about the 1br vs. studio. My current studio apartment (539 sq.ft.) is within juts a few feet of being twice the size of my old one (284 sq.ft.).

But since my evil plan was to go from a studio to a 1-br, you should have heard the voicemail I left on my broker's cellphone when she asked me to look at this studio! Thank goodness I managed to not actually use any curse words, but I didn't exactly "watch the tone of voice".

Long story short: it's as big as (or bigger than) most of the one-bedroom places I looked at, which were all on the East Side, and they all hugged the East River -- VERY long way from the trains. But they had similar square footage to this one, but you had more of a claustrophobic feeling there, because the bedrooms were so small. Here, my Murphy bed gives me miles of elbow room.

I finally caught the SSBS (thank you DVR) with Patrick in it, and I thought the whole episode was really great. Loved the filing boxes, sofa table to dining table conversion, idea about defining the space with different color walls that can be seen from the bed, variable seating combination.

Also, I loved that Murphy bed in Miami. Soooo cool.

My SO also remarked that a lot of the design seems expensive on SSBS. I kind of agree. The homeowners do a lot of gut-remodel or serious remodeling.

But I also had the same thought ("why pour money into such a small space when these people can probably afford to live in a bigger one?") and I am glad to have a satisfactory answer from the peanut gallery here.

And now, a question: has anyone done anything with metallic paints/paint effects? I was thinking about doing the backsplash wall in metallic paint (like in a bronze or brass color) because right now the cheap paint that my LL used is coming off on the sponge when I try to clean the food spatters off the wall. I thought a metallic might be nice in the kitchen, because drab white ain't cutting it.

The gates!

I've been trying to decide what to do about artwork in my new apartment and you inspired me to dig out my photos of the gates and get some of them framed for my walls.

did anyone else see the website some guy put up with a spoof on the gates installation. He took pictures of his cat posed with all these miniature orange gates around his apartment. It was pretty funny.

I was really impressed with the SSBS murphy bed/wall unit - funny that someone should bring it up. I was fantasizing about it on the way to work today in the subway,

oops. I'm not (curious) New Tenant anymore. That was just for one post where I had a question. Back to being just plain old New Tenant.

New Tenant--would love a link with the cat and gates spoof.

I couldn't resist looking -- and while I found an article on the Gates/cat parody, the article says the creator had to take it down.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7032564/

But I spoke too soon -- it's back!
http://www.not-rocket-science.com/gates-complete.htm

Wende-thanks for finding. hilarious - I remember this now.

New Tenant-I love the idea of putting something like this up in frames.

Wende

Thanks for finding the link! The last thing I heard about it was from the msnbc report which said it had been taken down. I'm so glad it is up and running. It was fun to look at all those pics again. I particularly like the comparison chart of the two gates installations.