the dining chair dilemma
Apparently, the barstool dilemma was just a prelude to the dining chair dilemma. We thought we had this one figured out long ago, but no such luck.
Yes, just like 90% of you reading this, we wanted Eames side chairs. Even though I love the new colors that Herman Miller introduced this year, I just don’t like the plastic shell as much as the fiberglass. And the bases…well, I personally like the dowels but Kyle couldn’t get on board with the maple and black. (I’m sure the nice people at DWR found some entertainment in our discussion about the pros and cons of the different bases.) I wasn’t a big fan of the Eiffel base and overall, it would still be a big investment for something we weren’t 100% in love with. I’m completely envious of all those stories I’ve heard of people happening upon originals and you can be sure if that ever happens to us, we’d jump on it. But until the Eames karma rolls into Seattle, we need to find an alternative.
Last spring, we noticed this punchy (and affordable) yellow chair from West Elm. We haven’t ruled it out completely, but we are hesitant to buy something without trying it out. (C’mon West Elm, time to open in Seattle. You too CB2.) We’re also wary of getting something that can’t be pushed fully against the table. Small living = every inch counts. (Note: we’re keeping our solid beech table from IKEA for now. It just got a fresh sand and finish and looks great!)
I’ve also been eyeing these simple wood chairs from West Elm, but have the same worries about not being able to try them out first. Also, we have so much fir in the house now that we’re worried another wood species wouldn’t look right (though the chair does come in white too).
And then there’s Blu Dot’s version of the iconic bent plywood chair. We ordered a sample of the “ivory” and it really is too off-white for the bright white that is everywhere else. I do love the chair cozy accessory. Although I can totally hear my mom saying, “but you could make that!”. I know Mom, I know. Maybe this is the year I dust off the sewing machine and uh, learn how to use it.
There’s also an upholstered version that comes in brown or black faux leather. I just got the brown sample in the mail today and even though it seems like a good option, we’re just not 100% sure. Blu Dot is having a 20% sale through November 8th, but the chairs would still be around $150 each after shipping. I also don’t think this version really works with the cozy colors. Maybe the wheat…maybe not.
So here’s where we come full circle, back to the chairs we already own. We bought these standard IKEA upholstered chairs 6 1/2 years ago and made the mistake of buying beige slip covers. Seriously, what were we thinking? Even though I want a hard surface chair (light weight, easy to clean, visually minimal), we’re thinking about just buying new slip covers until we find something else. What do you think about this gray cover?
Are there any other chairs out there that we’ve totally overlooked?
As much as we want to make our house the vision that we have in our heads, I think we also have to realize that the best houses are those that evolve over time. And even though it’s been four years, it also feels like we just moved in.
talking trash
So here’s the great thing about house bloggers – even though I sometimes feel alone in my obsession with the details of domesticity, I take comfort knowing there are others out there who share my weirdness. And that’s why I think it’s ok to devote an entire post to waste receptacles. You see, I have been longing for the day when I could justify buying fancy trash cans.
It all started when I spied these pull-out bins from Simple Human (the double for trash and compost and the single for recycling). Unfortunately, our gloriously deep sink was 1/2″ too deep and the bins wouldn’t fit. Good thing I measured first.
With my Simple Human dreams crushed, I spent the better part of a lunch hour researching other refuse options. I found that if one is going the more custom route, there’s all sorts of fancy cabinets that swing, tilt and pivot, but we had a basic 36″ IKEA cabinet to work with. Finally, I found a few viable options from Rev-A-Shelf. They didn’t steal my heart (and they’re about the same price as the others), but they would work.
Assuming I would have to buy them online, I was scanning a few reviews on Amazon when one commenter shared that she found them at Lowes. So I swung by after work, and what do you know, there they were! Better yet, they had more options, allowing us to upgrade to a 4-bin system!
The two smaller bins on the left are for trash and compost. Here in Seattle, yard waste is picked up once a week so along with your weeds, so can throw in food waste including meat, dairy and biodegradable items like egg cartons and pizza boxes. I considered a countertop pail with a tight seal and carbon filter (love this new one from Simple Human), but we really needed something more substantial. Sadly, they don’t make lids for this size bin, but if it gets to be problem I have some ideas on ways to fabricate my own.
For the two larger bins, it’s recycling and dog food. We can divert most of our paper, metal, glass and plastic for recycling (commingled even!) because yes, Seattle is just that awesome. For Bailey’s dietary needs, we had been planning on converting one of the island drawers to a dog food bin, but with room under the sink the fourth bin is perfect for his grub.
Thanks to a slightly off centered plumbing trap, the 4 bins fit perfectly in the space. This resulted in a mini celebration dance on my part, because of course things never fit perfectly. When I showed Kyle the setup, I got a one line, “sweet”, before he turned back to whatever he was doing. (He was probably just internalizing his elation.) Anyway, the pull-out tracks were easy to install – they have two stationary cross bars that get screwed to the cabinet base and that’s pretty much it.
The small space between (and in front of the trap) is just big enough to hold detergent, trash and compost bags and a few essentials cleaners (have you seen Bon Ami’s new retro branding? Love!). For now I’m using a wire basket that I had lying around, but I’d like to get something slightly deeper and with dividers (more compartmentalization, yes!).
So there you have it. No more unsightly trash cans or dog food containers out in the open. So c’mon, fess up – who else has a dirty (but well-organized) secret to share? I know you’re out there.
the barstool dilemma: update
First off, a big thanks to everyone for weighing in on our barstool discussion last week! We were ready to pull the trigger and place our order (the blue leather was our secret favorite), when we realized we hadn’t double checked to make sure the darn thing would fit. I know, seriously. The problem is, this is a barstool…and what we really need is a counter stool. Fortunately, the nice people at Steelcase let us borrow their showroom sample (with green cushion) to try out at home.
It looks good and is comfortable, but in general it is bigger (wider) than we were expecting.
And it just barely slides under the counter, so there’s not a lot of extra room for things like human legs.
I’m sitting on it now as I type this and it’s ok for casual blogging, but it’s not ideal for meal eating. It’s designed for commercial use and feels a bit large for the scale of our space.
Defeated by a barstool once again! So here’s out backup plan – I’ve been eyeing the Sebastian stools from IKEA. I noticed them on one of my recent excursions and also heard good reviews from a few of you. Despite the chrome base (argh!), they’re the closest runner-up to the Scoop (but in a more functional 24″ height) and at $50 each we won’t feel bad if we find something down the road that we like better.
P.S. – Thanks to our neighbor for walking his counter stool down the street to help confirm our suspicions. It takes a village, y’know.
Also, a bit of housekeeping –
I’ve been messing with the header and sidebar fonts with Typekit. This is what it’s supposed to look like…is this what you see? For me, it looks fine on Internet Explorer but defaults to sans serif (or something similar) on Firefox.
Also, we’re a little late on this, but a HUGE thanks to everyone who voted for us on One Project Closer’s Before & After contest (especially our moms, who told all of their friends)! Unfortunately, we lost out to the patio project, but we appreciate all the support nonetheless. *group hug*
installing cork flooring
[warning: long post alert]
New flooring, finally! First though, to truly appreciate the “after”, let’s reflect on the chezerbey flooring of yore.
The living and dining room were graced with green carpet. Fortunately, there were decent oak floors underneath.
The kitchen had linoleum from an unidentifiable era. It may look retro cool, but any natural oils it once had were now long gone and that thing acted like a sponge, collecting dirt and crumbs and refusing to relinquish them without a lot of scrubbing.
And let’s not forget the astroturf in the back porch (which is now part of our kitchen). HORRID!
In the last six months, we have removed all traces of bad flooring and installed a new subfloor over the original fir floors (which were under all the other gunk). Even though the oak could have been refinished, we would have had a funky elevation change and in the interest of not having a giant threshold across our new cohesive “great room” space, we opted to cover it. The added layer also made the floor more stable, reducing any creaky spots.
Our first step was to prep the new subfloor. Even though we installed it to be perfectly level, cork is susceptible to imperfections telegraphing through, so this meant we needed to fill all of the plywood joints, indentions from screw heads, etc. That’s right, it was time for some self leveling compound.
First though, we needed to paint on a coat of latex primer for better adhesion to the subfloor. We used this product from Sakrete.
Since aesthetics weren’t important, we used a couple cheapo rollers for the job.
Poor Bailey, trapped in the bedroom by the two things he fears the most.
The primer dried quickly and left a shiny, slightly tacky surface.
I wish we had more pictures to share of the self leveling compound process, but honestly, it was a bit chaotic. The directions advised not to mix more than could be worked in 15 minutes(!). So we messed around with trying to mix a half bag which meant estimating the mix and then converting the appropriate amount of water from liters to gallons. (We also added some of the latex primer to the mix to give it some elasticity.) Let’s just say we didn’t get it perfect the first time around and the process generally went something like this:
“More water!”
“We need to mix this more!”
“Rags! Quick!”
“It’s already curing!”
“AHHHHHHH!”
Fortunately, Kyle soon got the hang of it and it turned out fine. He ended up troweling it on to make sure the mixture spread into every nook and cranny.
As soon as we were done, we found ourselves stuck outside and it had just started to rain. After rinsing off our tools, we made our way up through the basement and jumped from the top of the stairs to bedroom where we hung out until the floors were dry (or almost dry, as evidenced by all of our footprints, most of which lead to the fridge).
I really think Bailey could care less about the condition of the floors. This marked the end of Day 1 (last Saturday).
On to Day 2 (last Sunday) – there were still some areas that needed leveling out – nothing a little spackle couldn’t handle though.
After the spackle dried, Kyle sanded the areas smooth.
With a fresh coat of spackle dust all over the floors, we ran the vacuum through before laying any tiles. Mr. Dyson, we may be pushing the limits on what your products were designed to do.
Before we glued any tiles down, we needed to figure out where to start. This step may have been a bit over the top, but it ended up saving us a lot of headache. First we took a print-out of the plywood layout plan we had done earlier and then took as-built measurements of the space. We then adjusted our floor plan in AutoCad and superimposed a 12″x12″ grid over that. We then moved the grid around until we had found a layout that didn’t have seams in weird places or that would result in tiny strips of cork at the edges. We also wanted to, as much as possible, minimize cork joints that happened directly over plywood joints. Once we found the best compromise between the different factors, we chose a central spot in the living room and (using a 90 degree laser level) snapped a chalk line in both directions, with our starting place being the intersection of the two lines.
We bought 12″x12″ Capri cork tiles from Ecohaus. Typically they come unfinished or pre-finished with polyurethane. Since we wanted the ability to spot repair, we opted for a wax pre-finish. Unfortunately, after the tiles were delivered (months ago) we discovered that there was little to no finish on the tiles. More on that later.
The tiles are adhered with a special adhesive that most closely resembles Elmer’s glue. The process is similar to working with contact cement. You apply a thin coat of glue to the backside of each tile and to the floor and wait for both to dry before installing. We used a couple thin, low nap roller brushes and disposable plastic trays for the job.
We turned our kitchen island into a glue rolling station. Even though our particular tile color was fairly homogenous, we always worked from a minimum of 4 different boxes, mixing the tiles to ensure there would be enough variety.
We also found that rolling the glue on the diagonal kept the roller from accidentally slipping off the edge and getting glue on the sides of the tiles.
First tile!
After the tile is set, a good smack from a soft headed rubber mallet helps ensure that both surfaces are in contact with each other.
For the subsequent tiles, we found laying them at a slight angle and adjacent to a previously installed tile produced a good, tight fit.
This isn’t so bad! Only 500 more to go!
One of the challenges was finding space for the tiles to dry once they’d been coated with glue. With the tiles and glue we used, we could have applied the glue to the tiles up to 24 hours before installing. If we ever do this again, we may take that route since Kyle could lay them down faster than I could roll them.
The glue goes on opaque and turns clear, but still tacky, when dry enough to install.
We had to custom cut all of the edge tiles, but the process went smoothly with the use of a 12″ speed square, utility knife and small cutting board.
As the night wore on, our energy was dropping and our bodies ached but we had.to.finish.
Every hour or so we stopped to roll the areas that had already been set. We bought a small hand roller for the edges and hard to reach areas.
For the main areas, we rented a 100 lb. roller from Home Depot ($20/24 hrs – the sight of seeing me heave it into the back of the car – priceless). Anyhow, it worked like a champ and was well worth any public embarrassment.
The finished product looked more like suede and was pretty scuffed up from our footprints. We learned later that lower quality tiles can vary in size from tile to tile (!*@?) and we were so grateful that ours were all exactly the same size.
Phew, end of Day 2. Per our original plan, we would have been done at this point. But since there was a glitch with our order, the distributer and manufacturer worked it out so a third-party finisher would come out and do 3 coats of wax finish (using Osmo Wax), with no charge to us. We decided to schedule the 2-day finish job for when we would be out-of-town, since we wouldn’t be able to walk on the floors for those 2-3 days. So while we were at an out-of-state wedding this weekend, our floors were finished (hence the mad dash to get the install done last weekend)! And here is the finished product:
The floors have a matte, more organic looking finish, which we like a lot better than what you might get from a poly-based finish.
The appearance of the cork varies depending on the lighting and what angle you’re looking at. Looking across the room, it reads as a more homogenous, single color flooring, but if you look straight down, you really see the texture and variation of the cork granules.
And the finish is very smooth. For regular cleaning, we’ll just vacuum and use a microfiber cloth mop. The finish can handle a small amount of standing water, but there’s no need to wet mop this floor.
Finally, here’s a peak of the kitchen island against the flooring. The blue-gray high gloss cabinet finish is a chameleon itself, ranging from a light gray to a deep blue-gray depending on the lighting and how you look at it.
So there you have our exhaustive cork experience. Definitely leave a comment or shoot us an e-mail if you have any questions or have gone through the process yourself and have some additional tips to add. (You can also read more about our cork selection process here, here, here and here.) So far, we’re really pleased with how it turned out. In fact, we have (as of today) officially initiated our “no shoes” policy, which is a big milestone because before, it was more of a “no really, don’t take off your shoes” policy.
the barstool dilemma
One of the things that our friends ask us the most is, “how do you agree on things?”. Over the last few years, we’ve learned that it’s best to divide up tasks based on personal strengths and interests. But when it comes to the design process, we’re equally involved. Fortunately, we both have a similar design aesthetic and subconsciously, sometimes I wonder if it’s part of what attracted us to each other – dark hair, blue eyes, mad design skills. Anyway, there are those rare times where we completely butt heads on something. The most recent victim – barstools. A few weeks ago I casually e-mailed Kyle some ideas, and he came back with his own, very different list of favorites. Here are just a few examples…
Exhibit #1: I liked the simplicity and price of these IKEA barstools and I don’t know, I just really liked those handles. I wasn’t crazy about the red, but assumed they could easily be painted. Kyle shot back with the sexy LEM Piston Stool. Wood and $ vs. steel and $$$$. Oh dear.
Exhibit #2: I liked the industrial, slightly retro feeling of this stool, while Kyle was drawn to the this. See the similarities? Yeah, exactly.
Exhibit #3: Ok, so maybe comfort isn’t a top priority of mine. I kept finding things that were slightly industrial, and I thought this one from CB2 would provide a nice contrast to some of the other things we have going on in the space. Kyle picked out the “stool stool” from BluDot. No back versus back cushion. This wasn’t looking very good. Ultimately, we decided that we wanted something with a little support but that could still tuck under the counter (because you know, that’s easy to find).
At one point, the only thing we could agree on was to do a throw-back to our architecture school days and get these crazy cheap drafting stools. And no, they’re not comfortable at all. In fact, most people only use them for a semester or two before realizing that they’ll be spending the next 4-5 years in studio and to just pony up and get a comfy chair. (Just found this photo, one of my favorites, while trying unsuccessfully to find a picture of Kyle’s “captain’s chair”.)
Exhibit #4: And then, when we both thought it may never happen – consensus. Well, almost. We both gave the stamp of approval to the Scoop stool from Steelcase. It’s modern (but not too modern), it has a bit of back (but still slides underneath the counter), and the colors work with our palette (it comes with an optional cushion). And in full disclosure, we were also thrilled to learn that Steelcase has a great architect pricing program which definitely helped seal the deal. Still on my mustard yellow kick, I liked the idea of finally getting some more color in the space. Kyle commented that it looked like a fried egg (ugh, so true!!) and wanted something closer to this camel color.
A few days later, Kyle stopped by Steelcase’s showroom, only to learn that the fabric options and colors are nearly endless. Now we’re thinking of doing leather(since the pads are unfortunately, not machine washable). So now we’re torn between a light blue and a dark brown (I know, we’re really going outside our comfort zone here).
In the end, crisis averted. So what do you think? Is it a good fit for chezerbey? Should we do the blue or the brown? We’re both leaning towards one color, but are curious to hear what others think.
