Several weeks ago a minor water leak reached an old dictionary that has sentimental value for me. Within a few hours, a small amount of water had wicked up through all the pages of the dictionary from the bottom and half-way up. When I searched for suggestions, the techniques for drying books were more extreme than I was able to try at the time, so I put the dictionary in the freezer, a method said to buy time before the actual drying. Freezing does begin the drying-out process. Soon after, I read your story about Manny Howard drying out his iPhone with rice, and I tried it on the dictionary. Several pounds of cheap rice and the frozen dictionary in an air-tight container for two days resulted in a dictionary with no moisture, not any pages sticking together. And I live in a very humid climate. Thanks for the tip!
It looks like this rice antidote might be a nearly universal approach to drying out water-damaged goods; a cell-phone (fine electronics) and a dictionary (paper) HAVE to be pretty good tests…
(The photo by Cuban photographer Abelardo Morell is a water-damaged book that did not get rice therapy. Click here to see more of Morell’s compelling photographs.)
We were scrolling through The Selby when we spotted these round magnet knife holders in a house in Connecticut. They are a nice sculptural change from the usual foot-long-or-so bar knife holder – the knives look like they’re floating. We hunted them down online here…
We got an email from Manny Howard this morning about an improvised save for water-logged digital appliances (and a great general approach to take when the #$%!! is hitting the fan). We know Manny to be prone to minor disasters from his book My Empire of Dirt: How One Man Turned His Big-City Backyard into a Farm and love him for it, because he so forthrightly throws himself into things (as, it seems, do his kids):
“kids doused my iPhone with water the day before a 5-day work trip to southern France.
In a panic I called up my buddy Norman Vanamee (my best bud who I always turn to him for automotive clunker advice)…
…So the screen’s all mottled in some places, faded completely in others, the apps keep switching without my input. it shuts off and then comes back on occasionally. clearly digital cardiac arrest.
I asked Norm: So, do I go to apple store buy new phone in case this one dies while i’m on the road in France?
A couple of weeks ago, we started posting about Lydia Wills’ former studio apartment in New York City; the 600-square-foot space had so much going on, we had to make it a series…
Here’s her renovated kitchen which, when she moved in, was the most generic of New York City apartment galley kitchens (there’s a gratifying “before” after the jump). A few years ago she ripped it out and rethought the original space. The question: How to create a pleasurable, efficient kitchen without moving any walls or spending a fortune?… read more…
Sometimes there’s no way around keeping a piece of furniture in your place that you’re not crazy about; you either need it (like a file cabinet or storage chest) or you can’t get rid of it just yet (you’re keeping it for the next place). Here’s an example of using a great fabric to hide a piece of furniture, from the fabulous house designed by the great Mexican architect Luis Barrigan that we blogged last week. Laying fabric upon wonderful fabric on the table and folding the corners in neatly makes it look interesting and intentional, rather than like a disguise (though we don’t imagine Barrigan is disguising anything in that house.)
We think, the example from Lonny Magazine, below, works pretty well, though it transmits subtle inklings of “disguise”. We think it would have been much more complete with another piece of fabric, or a runner (even placed front to back) draped over it, a la Barrigan.
Since we first set out on our mission to find good looking clips to make shelving out of boxes, we came across Indie Furniture‘s site. (That’s what happens when you hold an idea in your mind: answers and iterations start to appear). The folks at Indie devised a clamp/joint that can fit different sizes of wood, with instructions for using them. They are so passionate about creating a do-it-yourself shelving system that would allow people to configure their own unique shelving, that they even published a manifesto: read more…
OK Go is the band that made that hilarious treadmill video a few years ago. Their frontman Damian Kulash has issued tiny mission statements here and there: “We’re trying to be a DIY band in a post-major label world” …and the essential: “Our whole bag is having good ideas and making cool shit.”
Their new video is nothing but brilliant and silly ideas, one after another, so good, I wish I could watch it in slow motion (watching it without any sound is a whole other experience). It was designed and built by Syyn Labs who describe the amazing constraints they had to work under on their website. They call it “Rube Goldberg Machine”. It’s an homage to the work of Rube Goldberg, after whom an adjective was named; he was a cartoonist known for his wildly-elaborate inventions designed to accomplish some simple task, like this “Simplified Pencil Sharpener”: read more…
Yikes! have we had a glitch sending ‘the improv life’ via Twitter. So this is a test to see if we’ve finally got it figured out…
…we’re sending along a teeny post: a very simple cool way to disguise a sofa with panels of fabric, to take the focus off the original homely cover without denying it’s existence (which never works).
Years ago, New York photographer Maria Robledo designed this simple, functional and really cool-looking storage for her studio. A few hours before she moved to a new space, I ran over to photograph them for ‘the improvised life’ because they are so smart and great, even though she’d emptied them out. They once held an impressive amount of office and photographic supplies, and linens and props for shoots.
Maria’s wall of cabinets is an unfussy, easy-to-duplicate approach that would translate well to all sorts of spaces. read more…
Just about every cook I know has a favorite fork or a spoon that they use for all sorts of purposes in the kitchen; they reach for it before any other tool when they need to toss or stir or shift something in a pan, because it feels right in their hand, makes them feel right in the kitchen, and able to deal with whatever comes up.
Ellen Silverman took a picture of mine. I am certain that each utensil in this odd assortment HELPS me to cook. Each has a unique feel of its own. All are balanced, attuned in some special way that helps me to listen to whatever I am making. These implements are so much a part of my cooking that I am often not aware of all the different things I do with them.
They are the opposite of kitchen catalogue offerings; all except one are cheap and beat-up. They all have stories. read more…
I continue to mull ways to merge office and bedroom without sleeping in the midst of the fray of papers and projects…and stumbled on an interesting variant of the idea posted earlier, of creating a little shed in the office/bedroom that would be a sleeping cocoon, protected from officey stuff and the idea of never-finished work. This version of a “room (cocoon) bed” from Hotel Aire de Bardenas in Spain has a wonderful view (a nature preserve). Not so in my city digs.
To create a view, I’m fooling around with the idea of making a “room (cocoon) bed” whose fabric walls are printed with a trompe l’oeil photo mural, read more…
Suzanne Shaker, whose spare modernist house was posted here a while back, wanted a window shade for her bathroom that afforded some privacy, let light in and didn’t block the view completely. She found an old japanese screen with paper on the back that was ripped. She removed the paper and her husband Pete added hooks and simple chain. It’s a beautiful bit of repurposing. Here’s another picture. read more…
I stumbled on an archived post on Automatism of some pictures of jewelry designer Ted Muehling‘s New York City apartment. Blogger Lori had reprinted an article on Muehling’s apartment that she’d saved for years, from Maison Francaise in the late 1990′s. The place looks as appealing today as it did then (THAT’S style). In response, a woman named Joanna wrote “SO beautiful. i’m downloading these for the inspiration journal… xo”.
The Inspiration Journal. It reminded me of folders I’ve often kept of clippings from magazines: of spaces I liked, or ideas I wanted to pursue. Seeing pictures can help you bring to life your own ideas, as you take the gist, or a kernel, or a detail and run with it. Nowadays, it can be done digitally of course, and kept on a computer or printed out. An Inspiration Journal is a much better way of framing things than a “bookmark”. read more…
Remodelista posted some terrific pictures of my friends Suzanne Shaker and Pete Dandridge’s perfect summer house on Shelter Island, 2 hours from New York City. Suzanne, an interior designer and stylist, and Pete, an art conservator, worked with Deborah Burke & Partners Architects to build the 1250 square foot from-scratch house. It seems incredibly spacious, due in part to large glass doors and picture windows (one whole side of the house) that bring in the surrounding woods and nature, and a 20-foot dining/living/kitchen area. Ample storage keeps the minimalist house from looking cluttered.
What Remodelista doesn’t mention is that the house was made on a strict budget – less than half of what a house in this part of the world would normally cost. Every design decision was meant to be both beautiful and practical, if not always easy; the budget demanded that Suzanne and Pete give up some ideas they’d seen as essential, and become more resourceful in finding solutions. They went with inexpensive materials in many places, to spend more on others. read more…
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