Obsessed With... Accordion Accents

December 29, 2015

For the longest time—since we moved into our house, really, we've been planning to turn a room on the 2nd floor of our house into a formal office/den. I imagined it as a den of the manly, modern-library sort, which would also functions as Dave's office (since he works from home).

It's been a long time coming, and in the meantime the room has functioned as a master bedroom (we tried it out when we moved in and decided we liked the light and details of another room better for a master), a family/TV room, a guest room, a junk-storage locker, and a combo office-by-day, nursery-by-night when our son was born.

Now that we've finally built out a bunch of other spaces in our home, that room is back to being just an office, and will get its makeover sometime in the next year. While it's currently filled with a mishmash of hand-me-down furniture, I've spent the last few years building a mood board for its eventual endstate:

The design revolved largely around that major light fixture, a piece that I found online. It's a perfect blend of old-school-masculine and funky-modern, no? Have another look—fabulous, ain't it?

But hey, now that we're almost ready to start buying the goods, guess what? The chandelier was discontinued by the manufacturer. Womp womp.

So now I'm on the hunt for a whole new chandelier that'll work with all the other elements I've chosen and now love for the room. I haven't found one yet, but in the meantime, I'm still obsessed with the cool articulating-arm detail that set that light apart. Some call those extending metal pieces "accordion"; others call it a "scissor" mechanism. You'll find it in industrial-style and campaign-style furnishings, and while they're really cool to look at, they're also uber-functional. Many of the pieces can collapse or extend if you need to make them bigger or smaller, and you can fold, move them aside, or pack them up with ease.

Let's shop for a few more pieces with the same vibe, shall we? Here are some of my top picks.

1. Arteriors Frasier table lamp, $684, wayfair.com. 2. Currey & Co. accordion four-light chandelier in Pyrite Bronze, $1,190, amazon.com. 3. Glimmer by Nameeks wall-mounted makeup mirror, $125, wayfair.com. 4. A&B Home 1-light wall sconce, $115, allmodern.com. 5. Creative Co-Op Bistro end table, $105, wayfair.com. 6. Pair of 1930s industrial brass scissor lamps, $3,000, 1stdibs.com.

Thoughts on whether #2 is a good substitute for my original pick? Or should I go instead for something that's equally brass-tastic but lacks the scissor-style detailing? Do share...

Our House: In the Beginning

December 22, 2015

Browsing the MLS real estate listings on my way to work yesterday—as entertainment, natch, not because I’m house-hunting—one of THOSE postings caught my eye. It was a house on Boston’s famed Acorn Street, one of the most photographed streets in America.

The listing. Source: Coldwell Banker — The listing. *Source: Coldwell Banker*

There were no interior shots—just a few images of the door, a shot looking out onto the street from the entry, a shot of a sad-looking deck, and a handful of images showing the property’s best asset, its unmatched location. (That cobblestone! Killer on heeled footwear, but so easy on the eyes...)

What a listing like this usually means is that the home is in total disrepair, and may or may not have a wild animal living in the basement. “For a buyer with vision! Customize to create the home of your dreams!” the blurb will usually say. At $2.7 million (dropped from $2.9!) and, oh, at least 200K of needed upgrades, probably more, there’s only a handful of people who’ll bite on this type of project. But listings like this always stop me in my tracks. Astronomical price aside, the cryptic listing isn’t unlike what compelled me and Dave to schedule a showing of our own place seven years ago.

This was the listing that got us:

Mansard roof complete rehab needed. 4 star location. wood floors period detail.

That’s it. Typos included, no extra charge! And this was the lone picture:

STUNNING, right? I mean, that industrial blue runner stapled to the stairs just really sets a tone.

We started poking around for more info, and Google Street View showed us that the home looked like one of these:

Heyyyy pretty housey! This was starting to get interesting. Eventually we got in for a showing, and took some pics of the interior. We were prepared-but-not-quite-prepared for what we found.

This was the state of the kitchen:

Those cabinet doors and drawers neither opened nor closed fully. And who wants to play "Is This Lead Paint?"

The homeowners were kind enough to leave us some cinderblocks that we could use as footstools. And that amazing "command center" with a free dry-erase pen! So sweet.

There was no fridge. The ancient range was fueled by a gas pipe sticking out of the chimney wall; we were advised not to try and turn it on. The sink was one of these bad boys, an all-steel hulk of a unit built by Youngstown Kitchens some time in the ‘50s.

Source:Restoreguy via Flickr — *Source:*Restoreguy *via Flickr*

We mockingly called the front room, with its broken lamp, Rubbermaid garbage can, and gratis postal bin, "the parlor." The name has since stuck, and now my kids, in weirdly Boston-like accents, call it the pahlah.

Really great job maintaining those floors, guys.

I can't find pics of the rest of the house, but rest assured it was all in similar condition. The house had been owned by one family for many decades. After the kids grew up and the mother passed, the real estate agent said, the home was rented to relatives of the family, and then others moved in after that. Neighbors have told us there was a junkie living in the house at one point. There were holes punched in the doors. There were sticky beer stains on every wall. In the basement, we opened a door and found an iron toilet with a wooden tank hanging above it, a vestige of the time when servants lived downstairs. The toilet was buried under a pile of broken bricks. There was one bathroom in the house, upstairs, and it had a blue faux-marble sink unit and a rusty clawfoot tub enclosed by a mildewed shower curtain.

In short, the house was disgusting. And we loved it. We loved the plaster moldings, the staircase spiraling up three floors, and the heart pine floorboards we knew were hidden under those layers of dirt. We loved that it was an end-unit single-family, and I adored the Victorian styling of the home's bay window and mansard roof. We could see it all coming together, from the grease-encrusted marble mantels that begged for showstopping mirrors to the front entry that ached for gleaming, glass-paneled doors.

Because the sale was complicated, with an estate and multiple sellers involved, and because we had a condo to sell and no means to carry two mortgages, we didn’t close on the place for six months. By the time we closed, in March 2009, a bird had taken up residence on the second floor. Add it to the list, we said: Remove Bird.

We moved our stuff and our cat in, and treated ourselves to one night at a nice hotel before donning rubber gloves and starting the cleanup process. When we arrived the next morning, ready to work, our house was covered in feathers, there were blood stains on the wood floors, and our cat was chirping like a madman. ~~Remove Bird~~.

We are brave people, I tell you. The next seven years were full of (more) blood, so much sweat, and so many tears. Today it’s close to the home of our dreams. There are several more projects to wrap, and of course there’s all of the the inevitable tinkering and maintenance that comes with home ownership and a life in the decor industry (read: I’ll never stop redecorating it).

But if you’re the renovating type, you can’t help but peek at these listings when they come around. Just to see what prices things are going for, you tell yourself. All I can say is, it’s a good thing I don’t have $2.6 million burning a hole in my pocket right now. In fact, I think there are ACTUAL holes in my pockets right now.

Godspeed, 7 Acorn Street. I wish you and your future owners the very best.

Nailed it: Pantone’s 2016 Colors of the Year are Here!

December 3, 2015

Excuse me if I seem a little bit high-horsey today. Neighhhh.

You see, last week one of my fave sites, ElleDecor.com, reached out looking for my color predictions for the Pantone Color of the Year. (If you’re not familiar with Pantone, they’re a go-to resource for graphic, fashion, and home designers looking to build palettes and communicate color in a standardized way, and they've made a name for themselves in color forecasting for these industries.)

I zeroed in on three shades: Rose Quartz, Lilac Gray, and Serenity. You can read the full article right here.

Well, the announcement was made today, and I’m two for three!

For the first time, the Pantone Color Institute gave the title to two shades, Rose Quartz and Serenity. Whatever the interpreted meaning (gender equality, it’s being said), I’m smitten. Unlike 2013’s Emerald, which took me some time to come around to (I was ultimately won over by a flood of emerald-green malachite home accessories into the marketplace), 2014’s Radiant Orchid, which I’ve never liked, and 2015’s Marsala, which I like but not really in my closet or home, I loooooooove these shades.

I actually made this moodboard in a Serenity-esque shade last year:

And I fell for these goodies in pink at October’s High Point Market:

Screen Shot 2015-12-03 at 7.38.14 PM.png

I couldn’t help but pick up Benjamin Moore paint color cards in the shades on my way home from work today.

Needless to say, this is one year I’ll be bringing the Color(s) of the Year home. Will you?

(Still) Obsessed With... Beaded Chandeliers

December 3, 2015

To be fair, these have been around for a while. In fact, you’ll find a bazillion Pinterest tutorials for DIY versions and handmade knockoffs aplenty on Etsy. But I’m newly infatuated with beaded chandeliers, owing in no small part to the deep blue specimen I spotted last fall at the Selamat showroom in High Point, North Carolina.

Then, last week, while visiting family for the holidays in California, I was bowled over by how well my sister was rocking a Regina Andrew wood-bead chandelier in her backyard palapa:

Because my sister is way more fabulous than I am, and she has things like a backyard palapa.

Here's another shot:

"It's like a tent made of baskets!"—my four-year-old upon seeing this view — *"It's like a tent made of baskets!"—m*y four-year-old upon seeing this view

I believe the trend started with designer Marjorie Skouras’s stunning designs in turquoise, still available via Currey and Company. You can see why everyone was quick to jump in with their own versions—they’re stunning.

Here they are installed—double trouble!

Source: Apartment Therapy — *Source: Apartment Therapy*

Skouras has reimagined them in all manner of colors over the years, from shades of iridescent blue, deep coral red, and ombre pink. There's even this funky black number on her homepage: