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Just found out that they are airing Tacky House on the Style Network in Australia, featuring one of my favourite interior designers, Thom Filicia.  I have not seen this here in any of the channels I subscribe to so I will have to check it out on hulu.com to see if I can watch it online.  The show is about someone dobbing in your spouse or member of your family in to get a room makeover.  Ooh, I would not mind being dobbed in, even if it is a moment of embarrassment in order to get a room makeover from Mr Filicia himself!

Here are some of his work which happens to be in my design inspiration folders.

How I would love to have a kitchen like that!

Love his masculine tones in this room.

I like how he has subtly used a light blue into this room through the white chairs.

Love the Asian elements of this room above.

This would be my dream bedroom.  Love everything about this room from the gray walls to the bed to the sunburst mirror… perfect!

For those of you living in Melbourne, I believe Tacky House starts on Monday at 7.35pm.

I saw this dresser on Craiglist via the Apartment Therapy and I love, love, LOVE IT! However, I was wondering if it would go anything in our house.  So I stewed on it for a while and even dreamt of it last night! I looked at the link this morning again when James walked past the computer and saw a photo of it and he went, “COOL MUM!” So, with that encouragement, I decided to contact the seller to see if it was sold. We have been corresponding with each other by email and is a very nice lady.  We go to see it this Friday! Meranda paints furniture as a hobby. How talented are some people?

I stumbled across this free online magazine, it is so awesome, they have released their second issue and I just had to blog about it in both my craft blog and this one! (So that you, dear readers, do not miss out on it!)

Go here: http://www.lonnymag.com/

When we first moved from Singapore to the USA, we needed a dining table but I was disappointed by all the MDF stuff we were finding in the stores. There is a chap in DC who makes great furniture called Thos Moser and his furniture is like poetry.

Through daily reading of Apartment Therapy, I became influenced and started liking Mid Century Modern furniture, especially those by Danish/Scandinavian furniture makers.  We were particularly taken with a table by Hans Olsen and were prepared to buy it - but it would have cost us a lot of moolah as the seller was going to ship it by air.

Then one day, while scouting around in ebay, we saw the same table and chairs by Hans Olsen and it was at a ridiculously good price and even though we already bought a teak dining table via Craiglist, I knew we just had to have it. We won the auction and now it is sitting in our basement, away from the children’s harmful hands, ha ha ha. When we move into a better place, we will be able to place it in the right room.

Here are photos of it…

Isn’t she a beaut?

It can extend out to seat 6 people. That is not Matt’s hand by the way. It is the seller’s.

What amazing work.

The chair with three legs.

We love it! It is a keeper!

This is the one from Denmark we let go but I like ours more because of the three legged chairs.

Design Within Reach is having a 15% sale right now and I am drooling over these Eames chairs. I love them in their different colours as well!

I am really into this mid century look big time - who knew that buying old furniture could be so interesting. This is one I was admiring on ebay - it is absolutely beautiful and sold for US$2,385 for the pair.

Aren’t they just a beaut?

I am on the lookout for Verner Panton’s S chair - in orange. I want a pair - there are copies in overstock but after going to the Verner Panton exhibition, I feel that I would like to purchase an original.  I’d have to save up for it though.

My current interests for all things mid-century has led me to real estate - I should have known that mid century design is not just limited to furniture!  Last Friday, Matt drove me all the way to Alexandria, in Virginia just to go for an estate sale - kind of an upmarket garage sale where a person moves and decides to sell all their furniture in the house. It was a mid century estate sale and they had a Saarinen Tulip Table with Tulip Chairs.  I was interested in the table but it was badly scratched and cracked so we had a look around. 

The house that was amazing. On the outside, it looked unassuming.  It was split level, the dining and living areas were on the highest floor (you enter through the top floor).  The house was sitting on a slope of a hill for this to be possible. The house was mainly made of glass and stone but had privacy, covered by the trees - obviously planned by the architect. You opened the glass doors to the trees and wind. It was truly an amazing house - I could not believe I was only less than 10 mins away from Washington DC! It was so leafy and I felt I was in a jungle.  I have only seen a house like that once - in Melbourne, Alphington. My boss had her house designed by an architect and it was a piece of art.  That would be a dream house for Matt and I - he likes it too. We saw the house was for sale and it was surprisingly affordable, for Alexandria.  It would be absolutely perfect if we could find one like that in the area we want to live.

Who knew that buying furniture could be such a long process? Matt and I are very indecisive when it comes to buying big things.  If we had known wood furniture was so expensive here, we would have bought all our stuff in Singapore before leaving.

We are looking at beds for our boys - something that they will grow into.  We also take into account their sleeping habits.  C has a way of moving around a lot during his sleep and having a headboard and footboard is restrictive.  I am afraid he might hit his head while turning around. Our boys have a habit of falling off the bed so no bunk beds either. J wants a bed with a headboard and no footboard.

These are what we have narrowed our options down to.

From left to right,

1. Collegiate Furniture The Oak Plateau Platform Bed from Platform Bed Superstore

2. Catalina Bed from Pottery Barn Kids (love their website!) but there is a footboard on most of their beds.

3. Hawthorne Bed from Home Depot

4. Modus-Newport Platform Bed from Bedroom Furniture

5. Narrow Leg Wood Platform Bed from West Elm

6. Calvin Bed from Room & Board.  This bed is far away from our budget of around US$500 per bed (remember we have to buy 2 of them!) but I LOVE this the most and wanted to put it in my website. Why? Just so that I can go back and look at it one day and think, “I wish….”  If you go to the website, you will see that it is solid maple wood, no particle board or veneers (which I am not too keen about) The workmanship is amazing.  I like it in its natural colour.

7. Sunny Pine Mate’s Bed from Overstock.

8. Clarion Twin Sleigh Bed from Value City Furniture. I liked this one and it is on sale, $200 off, but after reading reviews on the net, people reported that the quality of the furniture is bad, stay away, etc. The downside is that I cannot order it online, I have to drive miles away to Virginia to the nearest store to collect it myself.

9. South Shore Platform Bed from One Way Furniture.

Or the other choice would be to make a bed for the boys, since we are after simple platform beds!

(This is not a paid post. I just linked in the sites just in case my readers wanted a closer look at the beds.)

We wanted this:

But we bought this from craiglist for $600, including the hutch at the back with the glass cabinet. What a bargain! It is teak and very well taken care of. He made soft pads to put on top of the table to protect the surface. I am really  into this mid-century look right now!

I love it, it is so cute! I love how it is so clean and uncluttered. Note the hutch in the background. The black things on the chairs are the protective pads.

This photo was taken by the owner so the carpet and things are not ours.Any ideas on how to modernise the look?

We have been looking around for furniture and although there are a ton of shops in DC, nothing has really jumped out at us. We have started looking at second hand furniture and we both really like the clean Scandinavian lines such as furniture from Hans Olsen, Eames, Peter Hvidt - etc.

Just look at some of these pictures. They were taken from ebay - I am watching them at the moment and bidding for one of them.

Eames Table

Table and Chairs By Hans Olsen. These are all antique pieces but they look like they were made for today.

This Hans Olsen one is my favourite. If I knew where to buy it, I would get it in a heartbeat.

This one isn’t Scandinavian but I like it anyway. They are 1950s club chairs (from China?) and I have been looking everywhere for them.  Fortunately, I found a place - in China, that sells them and will ship to the USA for a reasonable price.

I have been following The Censational Girl’s blog since I was in Singapore and she is a real inspiration to me.  I did not have much of a chance to do any of the projects because we lived in a small flat and didn’t have a garage to do a lot of the toxic stuff, so I drooled a lot over her beautiful and clever makeovers.  Now that I am here and not finding what I want, I have turned to Craiglist and found some excellent condition Danish furniture. Some have tear and wear but I am wondering if I have the courage to get a whole dining set and work on it??? I would have to do my own upholstery and re-staining!  I will let you know because it has been a few days since I contacted the seller and he might have sold it. I am dying to do this but not sure how the furniture will fit in with our Chinese furniture.

My friend Jenny and her family invited us to the Art Museum in Singapore where there was an exhibition of Verner Panton’s work.  There was a workshop for kids to produce a collage based on his ideas so we all went to have a look.

This is the National Museum of Singapore. Can you believe, this is our first time there? My boys are monkeying around in the foreground.

I love the architecture of the building.

The big sign outside, advertising Verner Panton. I don’t profess to be very knowledgable about design and its concepts but I appreciate a thing of beauty when I see it.  He designed some revolutionary furniture and lighting. Everything was in darkness and it was only illuminated by non direct light.

This art piece greeted us at the entrance. I am not sure if it is his work (I wasn’t really concentrating because I was talking to Jenny) However, I do like how the tanks are in pink and the nozzle is a heart shape. A bit of an oxymoron. Pink, hearts and tanks on a pile of broken bricks.

Another view.

Panton’s famous furniture pieces. Can you believe, some of these were designed in the 1950s to 1960s? They look so timeless. Many copycats have taken from his concepts and we see them in offices and homes today.

Panton never liked to use glaring white lights, preferring to play with light and simple geometrical designs. (I wouldn’t call it simple - his designs look like there was a lot of thought into it)

There was a room which the boys absolutely loved. Flash photography wasn’t allowed so this was one of the times I thanked my lucky stars I had a DSLR.

So the children went up with a lady to a lab where they put everything they learnt on a piece of paper, conceptualizing and planning their collage. This is what they came up with:

James’ Work

Cameron’s work.  We noticed that most people did their collages in circles but C was the only one who did his in squares. He was very excited and attentive during the talk, he kept asking questions and giving answers which I thought showed that he was quite drawn to art.  The workshop was meant for 7-12 year olds but he was tall so no one thought to ask his age.

What a great day it was!