Flemish Modern Farmhouse Kitchen

For this farmhouse in the Flemish town of Outgaarden, the Belgian architects 51N4E were charged with designing a new kitchen and adjacent storage space. They decided to split their allotted budget thusly: 70 percent of the budget would go to 30 percent of the space, while 30 percent of the budget would go to 70 percent of the space. This allowed them to be extravagant in the tiny jewelbox of a kitchen, fitting it out with fancy appliances, a Corian and 'BMW walnut' laminate island, and Carrara Bianca stone on the floor, while keeping things raw and utilitarian in the huge storage room.

To separate the two spaces, the architects devised an ingenious sliding door made out of 5mm-thick white marble, mounted on a 20mm honeycomb structure.

Depending on the time of day and the angle of light, the wall acts as a translucent backlit window or an opaque partition.

Here's the wall in action:

And here's a view back into the kitchen, from the storage room.

As you can see, they inserted the kitchen in the existing structure "like a precious jewel in its velvet box," as the architects put it.  Such gorgeousness.

Read more: http://www.dwell.com/articles/flemish-farmhouse-kitchen.html#ixzz0wEiCp0Bp

Discarded Clothes into Sculptures

Why not?  Guerra de la Paz turns cloths into sculpture.  

 Sometimes I wonder where they find the time.  Other times I'm glad somebody else thought of a way to reuse a material.  I just like checking these out. 

Vertical Spain Garden

Spain has been bursting forth with lots of green roofs and vertical gardens lately - these instances of urban agriculture must help keep them cool in the hot summer months! The latest project to catch our eye is this beautiful vertical garden located in the town square of San Vicente del Raspeig in the southeast of Spain. Designed by architect Jose Maria Chofre, the six-story vertical garden is installed on the facade of a new children's library, where it creates a spectacular organic contrast to the urban complex and the surrounding angular concrete buildings.

The six-story vertical garden consists of a metal frame structure built on a dividing wall between the library and an existing apartment building. Plants are inserted into the frame between two metal grids using synthetic felted material, which can be easily accessed from several corridors in the back and can be replaced. A suspended scaffold hangs from the front and allows workers to prune or replace plants as necessary.
Various species of flora and herbaceous plants are planted throughout the installation – one type of plant per square, with smaller plants at the top and ivy and ferns at the bottom. The lush ferns and ivy provide a cool courtyard entrance, which is located where the vertical garden meets the library’s door.

Read more: Six-Story Vertical Garden Sprouts in San Vicente Town Square | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World

Felt Rug

In a perfect world, I might live by myself and be able to own this gorgeous felt rug without fear of it ever getting dirty from dogs, friends, family, or husbands.  A girl can dream :)

From Viva Terra this rug looks like a good complement to a perfect world.  This admirable rug's thick braids are square cut to achieve an exceptionally lush, deep tooth. Softer than unfelted wool, the rug also delivers more loft and feels firm yet springy. It's striking in a living room, cozy in a den and efficiently appealing in a home office.

Affordable Low VOC flooring

I thought this was beneficial to repost because I get asked this a lot.  From the Green Home Guide from the USGBC.

What is a reasonably priced hard-surface flooring with low VOCs?  We have had our 800-square-foot ranch home remediated for mold and mildew; now we need to install flooring on plywood base.

Asked by Mairiyn Stefani
Royal Oak, MI

Answered by Randy Potter

Santa Clara, CA
EarthBound Homes

There are really two issues at play here; one is the VOC offgassing and the other is your mold and mildew problem.
VOCs, or volatile organic compounds, are most prevalent in carpet, vinyl and laminate flooring products, so stay away from these. They have the capacity to offgas for years after installation so this can be a serious issue, especially in a tightly sealed house in the winter when you have all of the doors and windows closed.
Your best green flooring options are hardwoods, bamboos, cork, tile or other hard-surface finishes like slate. Hardwoods, bamboos and cork can all be purchased pre-finished with either very low or no-VOC finishes; just check the manufacturer's information.
These products can also typically be laid with a glueless application so as to avoid the VOCs associated with adhesives ("floating floor" type products). The other advantage to any of these hard surfaces as opposed to, say, carpeting is that they will hold up much better to any future moisture issues like the ones that have caused your mold and mildew problems.
The next culprit to look at is your subfloor, which you have indicated is made out of plywood. Plywood, and similar products like MDF or particle board, generally use formaldehyde-based binders and can offgas formaldehyde for many years after installation. Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen and something you do not want to be exposing your family to.
You can investigate sealant/primer products to coat your subfloor which will significantly reduce the offgassing of formaldehyde from your existing plywood subfloor if you do not want to replace it.

• AFM Safecoat makes several no-VOC primer type products.
• For wonderful no/very-low VOC floor sealers, look at Bona Products; they make some great high-traffic products -- however, they do come at a price premium.

Whatever product you choose, just make sure that you work closely with your installer. The VOC content in any flooring application is going to come primarily from either adhesives or finishes, which much of the time are controlled by the trade professional doing the installation.

Cardboard Mounted Deer

This is probably the only deer I will ever hunt in my life.  Sorry, honey but even though we live in Idaho doesn't mean I have to kill something other then a tree.

You can have your own as well here.

Back to School

For all those kiddies heading back to school don't forget an apple for the teacher :)

This one even lights up!  By Qualy, you can get your own for $49 at Modcloth. 

Wire Hanger

Check out this wire hanger from Area Ware.  Simple, clean design that looks easy for anyone to install.  Sells for around $49 from areaware.com

Taking Liberties

Architect William McDonough often talks about once living in a house designed and built by Thomas Jefferson in Charlottesville, Virginia. He speaks of the quality of light and the ease of movement within this colonial building constructed over 200 years ago. “It’s got good bones.” That’s the thing about architecture: When it is really good—that is, when it’s got good bones—it cuts through simplistic, stylistic stratagems.

In San Francisco, nearly 3,000 miles from McDonough’s Jeffersonian muse, a house with a skeleton both men would admire sits unobtrusively on a leafy street fittingly called Liberty. Designed and built in 1878 for Judge John Murphy, the 4,400-square-foot white structure has, from the outside, the undeniable characteristics of a classic San Francisco Victorian. Stepped back from the street and resting genteelly at the top of a large hill, the house keeps a watchful eye on its neighbors and the city that surrounds it.

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The walnut cabinets in the kitchen, which update and warm the space, were designed by Nilus de Matran and fabricated by George Slack.

That’s what attracted Jennifer Roy and her husband, Jonathan Nelson, when they found the house in 2003 after several frantic years of scouring the city for a home with a modern feel. “There really was nothing,” says Nelson. “When we saw this place, though, there was just something about it, but at the time, it took a little imagination.”

As it turned out, it would take more than a little imagination. The storied house had been through several incarnations and served a slew of different purposes, all of which had left their indelible marks. During Judge Murphy’s tenure, the large living room hosted Susan B. Anthony and the beginning of the women’s suffrage movement on the West Coast. In the early 1900s, Okies fresh from the Midwest used it as a crash pad. Not long afterward, Roy says, a dentistry school took over the property, subdividing it into three separate units for student housing. At the height of San Francisco’s naval build-up during wartime, the navy acquired the building and used it to house intelligence officers. The house changed hands again in the ’80s, when it acted as a place for wayward rock stars to hang their hats, occasionally hosting impromptu shows in the grand living room.

Perhaps because of its eclectic history, something about the place spoke to Nelson and Roy. “After nine years of looking,” Roy explains, “we bought the house in a matter of days.” Though the dental school had done all it could to kill the building’s original grandeur, 14-foot ceilings and nearly floor-to-ceiling windows on every side of the house and in every room refused to allow bad design decisions to dampen the home’s mood. Despite the additions of carpeting, fake wooden wall panels, and criminal drop ceilings, the light-flooded space appealed to everyone who set foot in it.

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Homeowner Jennifer Roy takes advantage of her wired kitchen. LEM Piston bar stools by Shin and Tomoko Azumi; custom dining table; chairs by Ligne Roset.

Well, almost everyone. When the couple’s designer, Nilus de Matran, stepped in and saw what a mess it was, he said, “‘I don’t think you guys should buy it,’” Nelson recounts. “Obviously, it was too late for that.”

The transformation that lay ahead was, while not insurmountable, far from simple. Because of the house’s historic character, making it work was going to have to be strictly an inside job—none of the exteriors, including the windows, were to be manipulated in any way. “Jennifer and Jonathan have been architecture buffs for a long time,” de Matran explains, “and what they really wanted was something modern, something that would work with their lives today, which meant accounting for kids and a lot of visitors.” With three floors, eight rooms, and four bathrooms, space was not an issue, but reconfiguring it was.

“When we started to study the space,” de Matran says, “we started to see that this was not really a job of remaking it, but of stripping the house back to its original self, which was really a beautiful work of architecture.” What had served as three separate apartments now needed to be converted back to one house. “We simply had to do a little bit of deconstruction,” says de Matran, “before we could even consider any construction.”

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Jonathan Nelson’s one wish for the master bathroom was for views from the Zuma tub. He got that and then some, and now three-year-old Jonas (pictured) and his older brother refuse to bathe anywhere else. The stand-alone faucet is by Lefroy Brooks from the XO collection.

First, the walls came down. “That is when we really began to respect and understand the house and what a find it was,” says Nelson. The couple, their architect, and their contractor began to appreciate the 19th-century craftsmanship—from the decorative door hinges to the fanciful window eaves and even the nail patterns in the hardwood floors—and set about devising a strategy for blending Victorian with modern.

Some rooms, like the living room adjacent to the entryway, were clearly meant to be left alone save for the refurbishing of the floors and the stripping of years of paint and wallpaper. Others, like the main kitchen on the ground level, needed complete makeovers. Despite being located right off the sun-fi lled garden, the kitchen had become one of the dingiest, darkest rooms in the house. It was obvious that this room
would need to be brought up to date and thoroughly reworked. “But,” says de Matran, “it still needed to work within the framework of the whole house. We didn’t want to create separate identities for each room, they needed to work together as a whole.”

Working with cabinetmaker George Slack, de Matran designed a marble-covered island with walnut cabinets to act as the centerpiece. “George did the cabinets at the new de Young Museum,” de Matran says. “He does exceptional work.” Expanding the previously boxed-in room allowed the breakfast nook to reemerge seemingly in the garden, capturing some of the spectacular sunlight that pours in throughout the day.

As much as the kitchen denies its history, the formal dining room around the corner readily embraces it. “Look at the fi replace,” says Nelson. “It is amazing. We didn’t have to do anything to it. We figured, if all these people who previously occupied the house, even the Okies who had squatted here, had such respect for this fi replace and room, we should too.”

Upstairs, de Matran converted what was once a living room into a master bedroom, a kitchen into a master bathroom, and a bathroom into a walk-in closet. “Again, the light and the height of the ceilings made these conversions relatively simple,” de Matran says. “The views from Jonathan and Jennifer’s bedroom are so fantastic that this was a great room even when it was a cramped apartment.”

Nelson explains that, for him, the main objective “was to have that view when I’m taking a bath and that’s what we got. It’s fantastic.” So good in fact that even five-year-old Jasper and three-year-old Jonas can’t stay away, despite having their own bedroom and bathroom just down the hall. “They won’t take a bath anywhere else,” Roy says. But the kids are onto something: Now that the family is fi nally settled in their strong, sturdy house with good bones, not only would they never bathe anywhere else, they wouldn’t want to live anywhere else either.

Read more: Dwell

Kids Toy

Kids' toys run the gamut from good-looking to garish, educational to, well, questionably useful in a young one's life. But you can never go wrong with a classic set of blocks, and millergoodman's graphic geometric prints make these basics even more fun. Your tot can turn these bright rubberwood pieces over—and over and over—in the box to create a new design (the Shapemaker Flickr pool has some finished masterpieces), then rearrange them again for a brand new look.

Read more: Dwell

Vintage Kantha Upholstered Chair

The vibrant patchwork fabric of Viva Terra chairs originates from vintage cotton saris. Indian textile artisans sew them into colorful quilts using kantha, a traditional running stitch embroidery. Each unique, comfortable and totally eco chair is also constructed with organic linen upholstery fabric, recycled fibers, down pillow fill, and certified kiln-dried hardwood frames. Joints are double-doweled and every corner is blocked, screwed and glued. The chair's bottom is studded where fabric attaches to frame; removable covers protect the armrests.

 Love it!

Catalog Living

Everybody needs a little comic relief in design. Catalog Living provides the perfect opportunity.  Imagine you lived in a catalog...Maybe this is what you were thinking when you set-up your room.

"I keep this on the hall table almost exclusively for the occasions when Gary tells me to shut my clam."

Advice from Jeffry & Andrew

Design tips from Jeffry & Andrew (Fisher Weisman), my former mentors :)

As published in One Kings Lane.

01  Banish the Bland
"There are endless ways to make a room interesting. Beige may be easy to live with but it's dull."
02  Let Your Personality Show
"Don't settle for a safe interior that looks like a catalog. Make it yours."
03  Think Multifunctional
"At the onset of designing a room, consider all the ways you'll use it. Would you like to read in the living room? Have a friend over for tea? Make the room layout work for as many functions as possible and you'll use the room more often and happily."
04  Pulling Together a Great Look
"Identify a decorative element that you love, like a color, texture, or even a rug, and build your decor around it. If the room is based on something well loved, you're already closer to creating a knockout interior."

Plover Organic Sale

Plover Organic is gearing up for a HUGE online sample sale… For 3 days only (August 4^th-6^th), all non-sale items will be 50% off!! {1% of proceeds will also be donated to the National Wildlife Federation to help clean up the oil spill in the gulf} J   

Plover Organic is known for their deeply saturated, vintage-inspired bedding (for babies, children and adults), throw pillows and table top- all of which are block printed by hand in India under Fair Labor regulations. They use low impact, fiber reactive dyes and 100% organic cotton.

Weld Vases

What do you get when you combine a Mondrian with a Monet in a 3D medium? We’d guess something similar to Phil Cuttance’s amazing Weld Vases. With a visual effect referencing the geometric assembly of a modernist, fused with the nature loving sensibilities of an impressionist, the Weld Vase is the perfect way to add some life-filled graphic punch to any space. Best of all, these tri-tonal pieces are also eco-friendly — they’re handmade from 100% recycled plastic.

Each Weld Vase has been constructed from recycled ABS plastic sheets discarded by a local factory and joined together using hot air welding techniques. Far from a product of machine-made mass production, every vase has been carefully handcrafted to create individual, decorative and idiosyncratic pieces – characteristics not normally associated with the mold-to-fit manufacturing of plastic goods. By taking an alternative approach to a material that has essentially developed a standardized mode of handling, Cuttance shows us that you can indeed teach an old dog – or material – new tricks!

Read more: 100% Recycled Weld Vases Add Graphic Pop to Any Space | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World

Lawn Furniture

What are you doing this summer? The National Trust of Great Britain says that the average English family is spending 43 hours each week at home on their sofa. Rather than scolding the population for such appalling behavior, the Trust is asking everyone to try out one of their freshly planted outdoor "living rooms". They have built ten wonderful oversized sofas and have placed them all over the UK to coax ‘wasters’ into getting out into the fresh air and sunshine this summer. Tea and biscuits in the greens anyone?

Read more: Gigantic Lawn Lounges Sprout Throughout England! | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World

Wine Crate Cabinets

A couple in Barcelona raise a glass to the 3Rs with their new kitchen cabinets.

by Andrew Wagner at Readymade

Photos by Marc Goodwin

On a side street in the bustling Barri Gòtic neighborhood of Barcelona, an experiment in greener living has quietly been taking place for the past three years. In just over 600 hundred square feet, designer and writer Petz Scholtus and structural engineer Sergio Carratala have created a unique, light-filled abode that doubles as a lab to test the waters of sustainable, high-density urban living.
The couple bought the flat, which is in a 120-year-old building, in 2006 and immediately started applying their environmental theories to every square inch. Scholtus gamely dubbed their new home the “R3 Project”--for reduce, reuse, and recycle, plus some extras, respect and restore. Carratala mixed his engineering skills and his love of minimalism with, as Scholtus says, “my vision of what a good home should be--sustainable, fun, and practical.

"We saw an opportunity here to prove that a young couple in an urban environment could make their home exceedingly eco-friendly without huge overhead or inconveniences,” Scholtus explains. To that end, the couple leveled the floor, added one wall for the bathroom, and restored the woodwork--beams and French windows--by sandblasting and painting them with ecologically friendly oils. Following in a deliberate manner came new insulation, double-glazing all the windows, updating the water and electric systems to be more energy efficient, installing low-flow faucet aerators in the bathroom, adding a biodegradable cork floor, and sourcing reclaimed and recycled furniture.
The renovations culminated with what has become their signature--the kitchen cabinets and doors. After staring at their growing collection of wine crates, the couple hit upon the idea of using them as drawers and cabinets. Working with a friend, carpenter Rodrigo Diaz, the couple converted the boxes to function on a simple push system (eliminating the need for handles), and Scholtus and Carratala’s dream kitchen was complete. “Apart from the look of it, we like having memories embedded in our kitchen, as many of the bottles were either meaningful gifts or shared with friends,” Scholtus says.
After three years of tests and trials, their urban green laboratory has become a home--one so effortlessly comfortable that it is at times difficult to remember that the whole place is essentially a recycling center. But in the end, that’s really the point.

Top Photo: Petz Scoultus and Sergio Carratala set off the kitchen area with funky green and white tiles from a local, sustainably-minded producer.

1. Take off the backs and sides of the wooden boxes and remove all the nails.
2. Lay out the fronts in your desired design to form the layout of your cabinets as a whole. Overlap and mix different kinds of wood to meet your aesthetic specifications.
3. Once you have your layout, cut the 8mm board to the size of each door. (This adds strength.) Use these pieces to mark where to cut the pieces of the wine crates so they fit exactly.
4. Mount the crate pieces to the 8mm wooden board with nails or screws (a greener option than glue). Nail from behind the wood boards so the front stays free of hardwareŃuse nails that are long enough to hold but not so long that they’ll poke through the front.
5. Add knobs to any drawers. Attach hinges to each door and install, making sure to level.
6. If the wood from the boxes isn’t varnished already, we recommend adding a layer or two so fingerprints and possible cooking spills can easily be removed.
   
   
   
   

How to Make (Almost) Everything

A friend gave me the book "How to Make (Almost) Everything" by Readymade magazine for my birthday.  She literally hit the nail on the head with her gift.  A great book that was released a few years ago it has some fun re-purposing ideas for the economically challenged budget.  A cd holder made from a FedEx box?  A coffee table made of used phone books?  Maybe your own Pringles coffee cup holder.  It's all detailed in this lovely book with some great history on recycling and material usage as well. 

Design Blunders

We're not talking grave lapses in taste, like plastic-covered sofas, avocado-colored fridges or anything resembling a doily. We just mean the little blunders. Think: harsh overhead lighting, behemoth TVs masquerading as "art," or oversized sectionals crowding tiny rooms.
Awkward? Yep. Fixable? You bet. Read on to find out how.
Mistake #1: Unlivable Space
The Problem: If you can't enjoy your room then no one else can.
The Solution: Ease up about using that white linen chair because your afraid to get it dirty.  If it can't be used then why own it.  It's not a museum is it?
Mistake #2: Furniture that Needs a Crash Diet
The Problem: Whether it's the dining room table crammed into the breakfast nook or the jumbo sectional shoehorned into the too-small den, disproportionately scaled furniture can wreck a room.
The Solution: If it feels awkward, it is. As soon as possible, replace the offending item with a smaller-scale piece. In the meantime, keep the rest of the room as stripped-down as possible to avoid claustrophobia. Measure the room, and carry the dimensions with you. That way, the next piece you buy will be perfectly sized.
Mistake #3: Regrettable Paint Choices
The Problem: That awesome mint green paint chip turned pea soup once it hit the wall, but you've been reluctant to repaint. Maybe you consider painting to be the lowest depth of human misery, or maybe you were just hoping it'd grow on you.
The Solution: Trust us -- it's not growing on anyone. And life is too short to live with a room you don't like. Repainting is the only way out. But relax -- this is a single-day project. Once the hideous color is gone, the healing can begin.
Mistake# 4: Not Knowing When to Say "When"
The Problem: Coco Chanel once famously said that before a woman leaves the house, she should take off one thing. The same principle applies to your home, where editing is key. Unless you're a hardcore minimalist, you've probably got too much stuff.
The Solution: Removing just one object -- a vase, a picture frame -- will make the remaining items stand out. And cycling items in and out of decor rotation will ensure that all of your best-loved pieces get a chance to show off.
Mistake #5: Sticking to a Single Design Era
The Problem: Unless you live in a mid-century Swedish design museum or on the set of "Mad Men," variety is the spice of life.
The Solution: It's always a good idea to mix and match pieces from different eras. Think: an industrial-modern lamp next to an overstuffed couch. Otherwise, a space can look stage-y and unnatural.
Mistake #6: The Super-Sized TV
The Problem: As TVs grow increasingly ginormous, they can dwarf your space, making it look like a cramped bachelor pad.
The Solution: There's nothing you can do once a too-big TV is already crammed into a regular-sized room, but there are ways to minimize the awkwardness. First, make sure your TV has company and isn't starkly placed against the wall. Put it in the recessed area of a fireplace or built-in shelving space, on top of a console table, or even surround it with like-colored picture frames.
Mistake # 7: Bad Lighting
The Problem: The worst offenders include glaring overhead lighting and the unflattering old-school fluorescent bulbs that make your bathroom look like something from an '80s horror flick.
The Solution: Use soft white bulbs and dimmer switches for your overhead lights. And make sure your CFL bulbs are marked "warm white."

Article from the Nest.

Alison Berger Glassworks

Alison Berger's "Script" pendant light is brilliant!  I'm wanting three for our dining room.

Mid-Century Rocker Chair

I've been scouring the web for new upholstered side chairs ideas for our living room.  Of course only budget for us but love this idea from Urban Outfitters.

and not to mention this matching lovey~

Antique French Rug

Hello gorgeous! French deco at it's best.  

Offered by Nazmiyal Collection