Eames Storage Unit

Exciting news on the Record Storage I built for Rod Parks the owner of Retro Inferno, its in a small pic in this month's issue of Spaces magazine. Barrett has some pictures of the storage unit and as soon as I get them from him I will post some pics of it in action. The last part of my furniture trade with Rod involved a large Eames Storage Unit. I can't say that I would have been able to stomach paying for one of these as they are really really expensive, but it was a lot easier to justify when I was trading some of my sweet equity and not actual cash. The unit is awesome and looking back it is one of the best pieces in the house. It looks cool and is extremely functional and well built.

I finally got the house numbers installed on the house. I put them on a scrap of Teak I had and simply hung them on the brick.
I finally got around to painting out the doors on the closets. I struggled with the idea of painting these for almost two years, I should have just followed my gut from the beginning. Since our house has so much Birch Paneling I always thought adding a strong punch of color would really set off the closets. I went with two colors to tie the house together. The brown is actually the exterior color of the house. The blue picks up the blue of the tile and the blue of the Angela Adams Rug. I really like how the blue pulls together all three levels of the house now, its subtle and I'm probably the only person who will ever notice but I'm really happy we did it.

Walnut Bed is done!

I got the bed done last week as promised just in time for the scout for Better Homes and Gardens to come by and look at the house. She liked it and they snapped about 30 pictures of the place to show to the editors. I don't know when I will know something about if they want to shoot the house or not. My friend Bob Greenspan is going to be taking the photos and he said that a local magazine he shoots for is interested as well. So hopefully one of these will pan out and you all can be looking at pictures of the house in a mag. Barrett came over and took some pictures while I had the place cleaned up. Here is a shot of the bed and the nightstand. As you can tell it didn't take Bella long to find her spot and do some power napping.

Busy Weekend

I had some exciting news last week this Wed. a scout for Better Homes and Gardens is coming to take a look at our house to see if they are interested in photographing it. Jessica is out of town on vacation so that nominates me to get the house all cleaned up and ready. It also made me tackle projects I had been procrastinating on for months. So look for some really nice pictures of the place at the end of the week.

Back of Bed headboard.

The bed prior to being disassembled for finishing.

Eames Shell Chairs

We got our set of Eames Shell Chairs from Retro Inferno last week just in time for the Fourth. Here is a shot of our dining room after we put them in place. I struggled for a long time with what to do for dining chairs. I kept looking and looking for a cool danish modern set of chairs that went with the table and credenza. I always considered giving some really bright chairs a chance, Rod mentioned that he had some really nice blue shell chairs so since blue is my favorite color we decided to pull the trigger. I couldn't be happier I think they look awesome it give our kitchen/dining a punch of color that I think looks really nice. The chairs have the narrow shock mounts so eventually I can add nicer Eiffel bases to them. The print in the background is new as well its an Alexander Girard for Herman Miller print that we picked up with our couch a few weeks back. The bed is coming along nicely expect a post on it asap.

Bed Progress

Well I enjoyed the unusually cool weather this past weekend and made some serious progress on the bed. I've begun to make a big push to get this and a few other little jobs done I'm hoping to get the house photographed sometime late summer. So here is the base of the bed all assembled it went together extremely well and is rock solid. I may add a few more reinforcements but I'm going to wait till I get the headboard on and see how that stiffens it up. Since its bee so long you have to look back a ways to find the old post of the bed design.

Barrett came over and helped on Sat. and Sun. trying to teach him a thing or two along the way. Sunday we planed down a huge stack of oak I recently got a really cheap deal on craigslist. Of the 20 3"thick 10" wide 8' long boards four of them were white oak(which I plan on using for some outdoor patio furniture this fall) I had a few that were birch, and a bunch that were red oak. So after getting them planed down the next task will be cutting them into the slats that make up the base of the bed.


I'm quite proud of my ingenious little method to hold the frame together, just a simple 1/2" bolt in the corners. It worked really well and is incredibally strong.

Design Snob

I turned the ripe old age of 27 today, this past weekend we cashed in some of our trade with Retro Inferno. If you remember I built some Record storage book cases for Rod about 5 months ago, I'm trying to get in to his place to get some photos of it all set up I'll post them when I do. Well as part of our trade I got to pick out some stuff from his store and let me tell you shopping there on credit is an awesome time and Rod and his staff are very friendly and let us try out a few things that didn't look quite right in our house. First up is a shot of Bella on our new Eames Aluminum Group office chair, she took a liking to the chair immediately and I'm pretty sure she claimed it for herself. Over the past few months Bella has become some what of a design snob she only naps in the finest examples of modern furniture.

We also picked up a really nice print, I don't remember the artist but we really like the way it looks in the living room.

We recently picked up a Dux sofa from another furniture seller recently, its very comfy and almost 9' long so you can really stretch out on it. Obviously Bella approves of this selection as well, its her second favorite place to take a nap. On the floor you can see a new Angela Adams rug we picked up from Retro Inferno. It looks really cool I'll try to get a better picture of it soon. We are picking up some other new stuff later this week.

Another slow week.

I wish I could say that I got the bed finished this last week, but it didn't happen. I should make some progress this weekend, if I don't spend the whole weekend out planting in the yard. I think spring is finally here, many of our plants are leafing out and I imagine by the end of the weekend we should be in good shape. Here is a picture of our latest furniture additions. The green Eames rocker is a new Modernica version, it was a wedding gift from my Grandma. The chairs that Bella is checking out are two Walnut Cherner chairs, I don't know a whole lot about them. My boss picked them up for me last night at the Pembroke Hill garage sale. I think I'm going to use them in our dining room, so if any of you know were to find four more I would love to have a set.

Our Platform Bed Design

Ok here are some preliminary images of the bed. I havn't really resolved the built in nightstands but everything else is very close to what the final bed will look like. Let me know what you guys think.

Help Pick our Upholstery

Well we are going with the Wormley Sofa. Now the question is what fabric. I've assembled a huge collection of fabric samples, with more choices than one should ever have. Jessica and I have pretty much narrowed it down through the process of elimination. A few classic Maharam choices and a couple Classic Knoll choices.

First up is the Eames Large Dot Pattern in Taupe, by Maharam. This is Jessica and I's lead choice, we always thought we wanted a pattern. This might be a little cliche, but we decided we didn't care.

Next up is the Knoll Textile Circa in Brick. Its really a rusty red color and is probably the boldest color we thought about using. It certainly would stand out in our house. I will say Jessica absolutely hates it, but I love it so its still in the mix.

Next up is the Knoll Textile Circa in Charcoal. Its a really nice color and would look very sleak, I don't know how well it will look with the Walnut legs on the sofa.
The last choice is the Eames Small Dot in Sand. This color is really nice, but its probably too small of a scale of a print for the sofa.

Wormley Sofa

Help us Pick our Retro Sofa

Now that I finished the record storage units for Rod, we are now in the process of picking out our sofa. First up is the Milo Baughman designed sofa above. We will be having it reappoulstered in the fabric of our choosing and we will probably have them rework the rear cushions so it looks similar to the classic Florence Knoll Sofa shown below.

The next choice which is the one I'm leaning towards is an Edward Wormley designed Dunbar Sofa. It will be reappoulstered as well, the fabric and these photos don't really do it justice. Its very nice and comfortable, and I think with some killer fabric it will be very nice. I really like the Walnut leg detail on the back of the sofa. This sofa is a little more expensive than the other one but I they are both in our budget.

The Dresser is Completed

Well last weekend Eric and I finally put the finishing touches on his dresser. Barrett from the Noshery came over and took a few pictures for me on his fancy new camera. I'm really pleased with the way it turned out.

A detail of the Paduak drawer pulls.

Storage Units in Transit

Here is a pic from last weekend. All but one of the record storage units are done(yes I screwed one of them up). Here is a shot of them in the trailor we used to move them. As soon as they get completely assembled and done I'll post some more pictures. Let me know what you all think.

Record Storage is almost done

Well its been a while since I posted. I havn't really been up to a whole lot. I got the record storage units built and Doug my painter sprayed them with lacquer this week. I must confess I did screw one of them up, so I have to make one more. Here are some pictures I took while I was cutting all the material, and glueing them up. I'll be selling my tablesaw soon I found a larger saw for myself so if anybody who reads this is interested just message me.

This is the various shapes all cut out ready for glue up.

Glue up was a real pain since the shapes are so complex. I think they turned out pretty cool, not as perfect as I imagined them but hey I'm still getting the hang of this. I have several other projects on the boards. My neighbor Eric and I are gettting ready to start a small desk for his house. I'm also getting ready to start on a Teak shower bench for a project I helped design at work. I possibly have a few more bookcases for another client and I'm also talking to someone about doing a small childrens bed. So as you can see the work is piling in but thats good I'm trying to save up to buy a truck to make things alot easier.

Dresser is Almost Completed

Eric's dresser is almost completed. These pics are from over a week ago, taken the night we mounted all of the drawer slides. We thought it looked pretty good in this form.

I can't wait till we get the Walnut and Paduak drawer fronts on this thing is going to be awesome. I think Eric is really pleased with the way everything turned out. He did the majority of the work, I supplied the tools, a little bit of knowledge, and a little bit of design.

We went with Walnut for the drawer bottoms to contrast nicely. The back panel is Walnut as well. I really like the color the Shellac gives the Walnut though Eric said it was a pain to put it on. As you can see we went with the full extension drawers, a lock rabbit on the drawers to hold up to some good use.

I'll try and get some pictures of it when its completed. If you like the dresser let me know, If you want one for yourself just email me that can be arranged. I should be finishing up the record storage by the first of the year at the latest, so I'll post some more pictures of that in the future.