Melba123's Profile

What a lovely post, coming into summer!

In some situations, clearly calling the police is the only option, for safety's sake. But how sad for all of us if this is the first resort in other circumstances. I'll echo all those who've said that it's important to consider your neighborhood. If you're living in the inner city, surrounded by students or young people (or older urban grooovers, for that matter...), I don't think it's reasonable to demand that everyone around you keeps suburban hours. If you move into such a place, you can't expect to enjoy the day-time advantages of urban life and not put up with (why not embrace?) the night-time aspects. Aggressive & scary stuff is another matter. But if we're just talking noise, I don't think it's fair or generous or civil to call the cops over a bit of late-night revelry in a vibrant city.

Likewise smoking... I've never smoked a cigarette in my life, and no-one smokes inside my apartment. But turning this into a political/moral crusade -- really? Drinking (which I do) causes cancer too, you know. Also eating meat (which I don't do), driving cars (don't) and eating processed food (oh, dooooo!).

I don't lecture carnivores over dinner, I don't turn away guests who arrive by car, and I'm happy to provide an ashtray on my balcony. If anything, I think the first two are bigger sins against humanity/the planet. But seriously, have we become this judgemental & unbending?

Three cheers for porches! Thanks for the post!!

I don't think this idea is "stupid", as some have said (btw, wow: how close is AT now to playground name-calling?...), but I am surprised to see it elevated and celebrated as a great interior-design idea. I've been propping badly framed artwork on chairs, stereos, crates, boxes, etc, etc for as long as I've been renting places that don't allow tenants to install hooks. Personally, I think landlords who refuse permission to add hooks are horrible -- surely a tenant who cares enough to hang art is a tenant you'd want to hang on to? -- but there are plenty of landlords who simply refuse. So, I've often had paintings propped up on stools, chairs and what-not.

But is it especially original or aesthetically appealing? I don't think so. It's one of those less-than-ideal compromise solutions that can have its own bohemian charm, but that just becomes try-hard pretension as soon as it's adopted by mainstream designers who don't NEED such a compromise -- they could afford to hang real-life hooks!!

I clean these things reasonably regularly (I think), but I do have a kitchen-cleaning confession to make:
I have a horrible gap, maybe an inch wide, between my stove/oven and the nearest bench. It's a rented apartment and this space was disgustingly filthy with grease and crumbs when I moved in: I suspect it hasn't been cleaned in years. The grease is so encrusted that regular scrubbing doesn't seem to work -- it's a hard spot to reach, but even with determined scraping/scratching/straining, the encrusted filth doesn't want to come off.
I *hate* the thought of being elbow-deep in some unknown person's cooking dirt. But I'm desperate to get this cranny clean. Any thoughts/advice about making this task easier? All gratefully received!
Thanks,
Melba

"Principles of civilized dining" aren't incompatible with eating at something resembling a coffee table, are they? My background is Korean, and I grew up eating at a low table while sitting on mats on the floor. I now do the same as an adult, and it happens to combine well with a small city apartment that doesn't have room for a coffee table *and* a kitchen or dining table. We have a big round low table that doubles as a coffee table when we're on the sofa and as a dining table when we're eating. This doesn't mean "TV dinners" every night - we set the table, turn off the TV and enjoy dinner-conversation just like other "civilized" people. Much of our seating is floor seating - again, this is partly a reflection of what I grew up with, and partly a matter of convenience in a small studio flat - it's easily moved around and tucked away when not needed. I don't see why this is any less "civilized" than a taller Western-style dining table and chairs.

That rant aside, friends of mine in a similarly tiny one-bedroom apartment have a long formal dining table. It takes up nearly their whole living area, leaving room for a couple of small modern armchairs rather than a sofa. People told them they were nuts when they ordered it, but it works wonderfully. It does completely dominate the small space - but they love to cook and to eat and to entertain, so having their dining table dominate their space is welcoming, hospitable and appropriate rather than ugly or awkward: you know you're in for food, wine and conversation the moment you enter their apartment.

Seeing them pull this off has been a lesson for me in taking risks even in small spaces - the "small space, small furniture" rule generally works well, but it's worth breaking occasionally.

I agree that they're unnecessary and somewhat naff (especially if monogrammed...).
But reusing cloth napkins - is this true? How do napkin rings suggest this? (aren't they just a decorative thing?) And does anybody out there really do this? I'm disturbed and intrigued.

Ohhh...
This is a bit off-track for AT I guess (thought it is about "renovations" of a kind), but here goes:
She looks beautiful. I love her, musically and pop-culturally. But she looks 30 in the main photo, when we know she's not. She may have carried it off, but there's still something depressing and offensive about it, knowing how much money, energy and thought she/her doctors have put into making a 50-ish woman look 20 years younger. I guess you could argue that it's her money and her face, so who cares? But that money/thought/energy would be so much better used elsewhere. And how disheartening for the rest of us -- is a 50-year-old woman's natural face really so disgusting that it has to be lasered/botoxed/surgeried/whatevered out of sight? Most of us will never be able to do this, so are we supposed to just feel dismal about ourselves as we sink into middle age?
As for the interiors -- they're just "meh" for me, especially by Madonna standards.
I would really have liked to watch her beautiful, distinctive face grow older and wiser, a la Joan Didion, QEII, Judy Dench, various wrinkly others.

Plants, especially edible ones, are my biggest home-thrill -- our little first-floor flat feels like a haven so long as I've got a wall of windows full of herbs and what-not. Even when it's cold out, it's like a greenhouse in here (the main advantage of a small top-floor walk-up?!). It's fun to try new things - latest experiment is a jasmine vine in a pot, which is growing well so far - and the splashes of real green are by far the most aesthetically pleasing thing in my home (and, unlike cut flowers, they don't die or need cleaning-up after). They also make it easy to cook spontaneously (I never have to run out for herbs etc at the last minute), another simple pleasure.

Re the laundry debate, I'm also a bit baffled by the idea of daily washing, but I guess it depends how many people you've got and how many changes of clothes you go through in a day. Someone said, in defense of daily loads:
"waiting until the weekend and doing 7 loads in a row? The math is always the same."
This isn't true. At my place, we'd never ever be able to fill seven loads a week. We do two loads each Saturday -- one for whites, one for darks. If we have the occasional thing that won't fit either -- an in-between colour, a garish red, or whatever -- we wash it by hand. So -- it is definitely possible to get by without a load a day, and this doesn't necessarily mean, as some have claimed, giving up a whole day of the weekend to laundry. BUT - I'm talking about a couple with no kids. I'm sure a big family with many kids would have to do things differently.

To each his own. But for everyone, I recommend plants :)

Yes, please reupholster! I can see what you're getting at -- if this sofa could look OK anywhere, it's in this room -- but it's still disgusting. Maybe the best thing is to learn something from the sofa -- ie, incorporate some kind of kitsch 1960s/70s element when re-upholstering -- but even so, this particular fabric goes too far -- it's just ick. There are plenty of, in hindsight, admirable ugly/beautiful kitsch fabrics out there. But this, surely, isn't one of them?

"You know, isn't it great that we are all different and that is great. It's called freedom."
A good point. Likewise, we're all free to put in our two cents -- especially on a blog like this, where posting an image/house tour/whatever amounts to an invitation to comment and discuss.
Lately on AT, there's been an "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" resurgence. I agree that we should phrase our comments, negative or positive, politely. But "say nice things or shut up" doesn't equate to free speech. I've learnt a lot from AT arguments/critiques/rows, and i'd hate to see them go for the sake of a bland "anything goes, everything's relative" niceness.
My two cents. That makes four.
Mel.

Oh, this home is just beautiful! Pretty to look at, trendy, personal and enticing all at once. Thanks for sharing.