FJ!!'s Profile

What a shock: a store with an enormous inventory requires a little bit of research to find the pieces that fit your life.

I will tell you why I but IKEA: because I want stuff that I can afford and use now, and continue to use for years and years, and that looks like it was designed this decade. I really am not interested in "vintage" "craftsman" pieces that are more often than not behemoths of stupid outdated decorations, even if they are "made to last" which is code for "too heavy to move from house to house" and "requires constant spot cleaning / magic incantations / rubbing with yak oil to maintain luster and keep out worms" and "when a little part breaks you have to get that crafts person who never shows up, only works when you are at work, and will charge you three times a new couch at IKEA would cost anyway".

Thrift stores? Good god, does being on a budget now mean I am supposed to do glorified dumpster diving for someone else's cast-offs? Which I will then have to spend hours to refinish so that I don't look like a poor sod living in garbage, with refinishing skills I do not have so it ends up looking like crap anyway? What kind of elitism is this that lower-income people should live in outdated crap to satisfy someone else's needs for authenticity?

Oh, am I painting with a broad brush here? Why yes I am, very purposefully so: to show you how easy it is to do so. But let me then say something perfectly seriously: if you have the drive and smarts to successfully not get crap when shopping tag sales, thrift stores, and Craigslist, you have more than what it takes to make a smart selection at IKEA, and put it together.

In my LA Loft I went for full modern chandeliers. Everyone wanted to steal them for themselves.

http://bit.ly/cQ18ob

Mirrors pointed at the bed only work if you have a porn-worthy body. Otherwise you'll just catch glimpses of yourself in strange angles and have the mood killed when you realize you really look like that when you do that.

A taller fridge would have not allowed her to have that extra bit of counter top. It would also have meant having a big monolithic volume facing backwards into her living room, killing the sight-line into the kitchen and crampint the apartment. That second cabinetry unit is pretty much her living room, judging from the Dwell slideshow.

Really like the use of frosted glass to define an entryway.

And sometimes when your landlord leaves you nothing, you have to improvise:

http://exonome.com/fj/living_spaces/london-kennington/bathroom-storage.jpg

http://exonome.com/fj/living_spaces/london-kennington/bathroom-storage-detail.jpg

IKEA containers and the heaviest-duty 3M remoavble stick-on hooks I could find.

(Sorry about the huge pics.)

We bought an 'Orient Express' (a precursor of their 'Nomade Express' line) sleeper sofa floor model, hadn't been there for long, in the late 90s. And after 4 years of daily use, the top cushions had so lost shape they were hanging over the edge like a melted Dali clock instead of showing crisp modern lines, and the fabric was worn, faded, grimy, and could not be cleaned, nor removed from the tufted cushions for replacing.

We replaced the cushions with new foam and new upholstery, but it was never as attractive again, and some other parts of the textiles that attaches the cushions to the base started ripping. When 'Nomade Express' came out we took a look and noticed that some of the attachment points had been moved into places we now knew would make more sense.

We retired this expensive showcase sofa to the office / guest room where it served well as a couch or a bed, with a big futon on it that folds well where it has to fold for when it is a couch. Of course, the futon slides down after use and needs to be pulled up, but it works. We saved our money and bought a Casprini Salomé for the living room. It cost even more, but it has held up wonderfully.

I have to say that for the price we paid and the amount of time it actually looked good, I consider it a bad buy, and am very wary of Ligne Roset. I will only buy sofas now where the covers come off all the way and can be easily stuck into a washing machine, and just hope for the best with the cushions. Something like Togo costs a complete fortune new, and it takes just one coffee mishap to make it look dowdy forever, and I now know not all foam constructions last.

I just got a Herman-Miller Celle chair. If the Aeron is the mating of ergonomics with a sleek Alien, the Celle, a cheaper range, is the mating of ergonomics and a lawn chair. Yet it has all the adjustments and support I need. Suddenly I can take on the world behind my keyboard again.

Daring. I notice that if you look past the patterns, the color work is actually really nice, normal: yellows & greens in one area, hues of blue, a floor that is an exageration of wood tones, a blended metal, grey, black, and white for the bedroom... multiple rooms on AT we have seen are just like that. Its the patterns that throws it into a whole different place. I like it, if only for the attempt.

You know, for some people clutter and crap doesn't make a home, no matter how "personal". For me, personally, a space like this is most like home when it is visually smooth and unobstructed. That said, if you just watch the slideshow on the Times site, you can see plenty of personal items strewn about in other rooms not on this page.