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Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018

With our TV den we’re going for an eclectic David Lynch MCM sort of vibe. We’re in no rush since we still have a bunch of remodeling to do, but I always have my eyes peeled for furniture pieces. We recently bought a new TV and figured it would be a good opportunity to pick out a high quality media console aligned with our vision. My husband found a great furniture maker on Etsy or somewhere, and the guy had a piece that was pretty much exactly what we wanted, but it was several thousand dollars and would take 8+ weeks to ship, and there were a couple customizations we wanted, like slightly shorter legs for ideal ergonomic viewing height, that would have added to cost and shipping time. So we bought a particle board piece of crap from Wayfair to tide us over until we can find/commission the piece we actually want. Finding the right furniture is hard.

As much as I like the look of designer poo poo, I wouldn’t spend five figures on a piece if I could get a similarly exquisite one from a non-designer-name artisan for four figures. I just don’t care about designer prestige at all.

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Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018


I’m the fake HDR making the walls look dirty.

actionjackson posted:

There is definitely a price bump if the designer or brand is well known / well established, has won awards, etc.

that being said I can't imagine spending anywhere close to five figures on any piece of furniture. My media unit was originally 2300, but I got it 60% off as a floor model. I think 2-3k for a custom built, high quality credenza on etsy is pretty reasonable.

I would imagine for most people their most expensive piece of furniture is their sofa, and for a standard (83") size you absolutely do not need to go beyond 2-3k for fabric or 5-6k for leather. And you can often get a decent discount if you are patient enough. The only reason I can see someone actually hitting 10k would be for a very large leather sectional. The new standard one from blu dot is 15k, but it is absolutely gargantuan.

I want to say that the console we were looking at was around 4k or more, but it was very very nice, impeccable build quality and gorgeous wood. I don’t mind spending a lot on good furniture that’ll last forever.

There’s a pile of mostly mystery heirloom furniture that we’re slated to receive once we finish remodeling, so there are very few pieces we know we need to buy at this point (the media console is one). My dad is being a butt and deliberately not telling me what’s included because he wants it to be a surprise. From what I understand, it’s about enough furniture to entirely furnish our house.

As for couches, we are already good on that front. Our couch currently is a gigantic red leather beast of unknown provenance. It’s about 9’ across, really beat up, but the most comfortable couch I’ve ever sat on, so I extracted it from the lovely college house I used to live in and moved with it twice. It needs a huge restoration job, which we’re happy to pay for because the couch cost $0. It’ll go in the TV den eventually. The other one is my grandma’s couch (not yet in my possession), which is a carved wood frame antique one. Needs reupholstering.

One thing I want (that I’m pretty sure is not included in the furniture mystery box) is an Eastlake hall tree, and ones in good condition I’ve seen for sale online tend to go for mid four figures, so that’ll be a big purchase.

Also rugs. My parents have a lot of rugs but they don’t seem to want to part with any of them, which means we’ll have to buy our own. Big ones get into the five figure territory. I’m resigned to the fact that if I want a legit handmade Persian rug (and not a mass-produced fake from some Chinese factory), I’ll have to pay out the rear end for it or get lucky with someone on Craigslist or Nextdoor trying to unload one not knowing what they’re worth.

Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018

actionjackson posted:

Is "big" like 12x15?

DWR does have a few 9x12 and 12x15 rugs that are 10k+, but even their Maharam ones don't get that high. Roche Bobois rugs top out around 9700. I know that's not Persian, but that's my only reference point.

In the ballpark of 9x12. Our living room and dining room are both around 13x16, so perfect for a single large rug but too small for 2+ smaller rugs.

I managed to dig up some pics of rugs that we looked at a couple years ago when we were pending on our house. We were visiting my parents in CA for Christmas and went to a Nordstrom Home store that was closing and liquidating its inventory hoping for some deals.

Mostly picked over but they still had a ton of rugs:



These were two we liked, especially the blue one. I absolutely loved the blue one (which was Pakistani). Sale price on it was $24,095 though so lol. Rug department guy seemed keen on just getting the rugs sold so we probably could have haggled it down a few grand, but that wouldn’t have helped us be able to afford it, especially at the precise time when we were funneling all our spare cash into the down payment and wedding poo poo and I was still at my old job which was severely underpaying me.

These were brand new, but they don’t really get much cheaper with age. I don’t have any preference for new vs antique because they’ve come off the same looms for hundreds of years. I just care about authenticity - I want a quality rug and to support an age-old cottage industry (and not succumb to the temptation to buy a cheap lovely Chinese counterfeit that’s an order of magnitude more affordable).

I think I need to just seek out a good rug dealer (preferably from the middle east with contacts and sources in the old country) and immediately buy some smaller stuff to show I’m serious and work towards finding some good big rugs. My friend did this with an antiques dealer - just walked in and bought some nice end tables and then asked about some bigger MCM pieces he was after and pretty much got right of first refusal on new acquisitions and soon got the pieces he wanted.

As for those modern rugs on DWR, drat they are nice! If I had a modern setup I’d be all over them. I actually tried to imagine a good spot for one of those rugs in my house, but it doesn’t quite work. I think I need the patterns and color in the oriental rugs. For the most part I want to go whole hog Victorian, but with some adjustments. Victorian interior design made gratuitous use of colors and patterns and textures to the point of being suffocating, so I want to tone it down (like with some solid color walls, maybe some minimalist modern art, more subtle upholstery, etc), but I don’t think the rug is a good choice for minimalizing - it’s too important as a visual anchor in achieving the overall Victorian vibe, and it’s a flat rug on the floor, so you can get a ton of visual interest and texture without adding more furniture and tchotchkes and poo poo.

What I find interesting about modern styles of rugs is the crazy difference between high design pieces and mass market crap despite extremely simple patterns and colors. High design stuff comes out looking subtle and sophisticated, while mass market stuff using similar colors and thematic elements just looks severe and/or garish. Can’t tell if the manufacturers don’t care about design subtleties or if they DO care and it’s the garish basic designs that the mass market actually wants over the subdued exquisiteness of the high design. We learned a lot about the “good design”/“populuxe” dichotomy in design school - how there’s often a disconnect between the designs that designers think are good and the designs that the people think are good. Like mid century, designers were really into minimalism but the populace was really into over-the-top space age curves and chrome and poo poo.

And an unrelated rug side story: a couple summers ago I was on vacation up north and went to a farmers’ market where a local alpaca farm had a stand. They were selling doormat-sized alpaca wool rugs and I bought one. While paying for it I remarked that it will be perfect in the winter for putting my feet on when I got out of bed and the guy was like, “Wait you actually want to use it as a rug?? FINALLY! Everyone who buys these wants to mount it on their wall like it’s a piece of art :(.” So I felt extra :3: about buying it to be fuzzy thing for my feet.

Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018

actionjackson posted:

thanks for that info - yeah I don't know anything about the Victorian style, but I can see how the rugs you mentioned would draw a ton of attention due to their colors and patterns. So any rug of that style is going to be a definite focal point in the room.

The rug I'm getting is going to be a focal point as well, it's a three stripe rug, and it actually really stands out, which is uncommon for modern rugs. But I'm coordinating my living room around it.

https://www.bludot.com/right-on-rugs.html

The actual rug is darker than in the pic - they use very bright lighting when doing staging pics.

That’s a really nice rug. It is indeed nice to see one that’s not afraid of color - it does seem like most modern rugs are neutral-colored or otherwise muted.

I was getting deja vu from the colors, and I finally figured it out. My grandma’s giant Turkish rug had the same palette:

(Not my grandma’s actual rug, just a random rug with the same colors)

Also, I would recommend an extra grippy rug pad - I have a smallish rug with that same type of weave and it bunches like a mofo.


Hutla posted:

According to my friend whose parents used to be rug dealers, you'll probably have to find the nearest city with either a good sized Armenian or Pakistani enclave. In Chicago, the Armenian dealers have a pretty good grip on the rug trade- I go by at least 3 different shops in my 15 minute commute to work. They're pretty chill- one of them let an operetta I was in borrow a gigantic $15k rug as set dressing. The day they moved it in, everyone was called to the stage and threatened with more than any of their lives were worth it anything happened to the rug.

Yeah I’m not sure that Pittsburgh really has much in the way of significant middle eastern enclaves. Quick search didn’t reveal any useful stats. I do know we have a good number of Turkish/Mediterranean restaurants. There is a rug shop nearby that seems good (been meaning to pop in for a while, but then pandemic). It has an Irish name, so I’m assuming the owner/founder is not middle eastern, but he seems to know his poo poo. Also I can pretty much walk there.

My dad in CA has an Iranian rug guy who’s really good and I’m jealous.

Kaiser Schnitzel posted:

I'm a maybe late to rugchat but I've had good luck with https://www.ecarpetgallery.com/us_en/. They usually have free shipping. If you're in Canada I think you can even get real iranian/persian ones. There was a brief time a few years ago when we were less mad at Iran and you could get them in the US too. They are all new rugs, but you can filter just for hand knotted ones-higher knot counts usually means a better rug. Several of mine are from Afghanistan and I'm quite happy with them. I think I also have Turkish and Russian/Caucasus rugs. My old boss was the master of buying old oriental rugs for cheap cheap cheap on ebay, but he knew a whole lot more about them and what to look for than I do. There are some good sellers there too though. I'm a big fan of the bluer ghaznis and also kilims, which are woven and then embroidered rather than knotted. Usually a bit bolder and more patterned and I think can fit well into more contemporary spaces, and they don't trap stuff like a knotted rug. Good for the kitchen.

I took a look and they have a ton of gorgeous stuff, though a lot of it was suspiciously cheap (or is it just because oriental rugs are not en vogue right now?). I do wish they were more specific about provenance/style/pattern - the Persian section was “Persian style” rugs that seemed to be mostly Turkish patterns from Turkey (every single one I clicked on was from Turkey).

The Indian-made replicas are certainly tempting... much better lower cost option than machine-made synthetic crap.

quote:

Except for the really light colored oushaks, oriental rugs are really out of style right now and it's a buyer's market. A decorator friend has a closet full of them that's she's saving for when they come back. Her clients have just given them to her to dispose of as they've replaced them with blue chevrons or whatever.

That’s funny because those light oushaks are the one of the very few subsets of oriental rugs that I don’t like. While they are pretty and I can definitely see the appeal given the pasty trends of late, I can never kick the feeling that they’ve just been left out in the sun for fifty years.

And I guess that would explain why this abomination on Wayfair is so popular it has nearly 32,000 reviews.

The idea of an oriental rug not being a timeless immortal fixture in your house is kind of weird to me. My parents have always had the same rugs. They’ve added more rugs over the years, but never to displace the old ones. The idea of handing off your oriental rug to your decorator for “disposal” so you can chase trends is mind boggling to me. Good on your friend for hoarding them right now.

One look I personally love is a huge oriental rug in an otherwise austere and modern setting with natural wood finishes. I could see something like that coming around and making them popular again.

In the meantime I’ve been trying to take advantage of the fact that most of the stuff I’m really into is currently super out of style (everything except bin pulls, basically) - it’s been fun buying up silver plate and cut glass and such for peanuts.

PS: sorry for continuing to drag out rugchat - takes me a million years to write a post

Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018

Sirotan posted:

Double post for rugchat


Thanks for this link, I am about to be in the market for a decent sized rug for my living room and they have some nice options here that I haven't seen on all the other popular online rug stores.

Since this is the design thread, can we discuss why this is a thing and who even likes it:



This is a brand new rug. It just baffles me how often I run across the "oops, I spilled all my bleach" style of overdyed rugs. I hate it. Traditional oriental rug styles aren't really my thing but this just seems like sacrelige.

It’s like ungodly expensive designer jeans that come already ripped to shreds but in rug form.

I think it looks gross and it’s also a fake as gently caress look. I’ve seen some actual old oriental rugs that have been beaten to poo poo for a hundred years and they just look threadbare, ratty around the edges and dingy like they’ve been soaked in filthy dishwater. You wouldn’t be able to achieve this sort of look on a rug without a bleach splatter accident and some deliberate tampering.

I linked to one on Wayfair that’s straight up trashy and way worse than this one in my opinion. But it’s the same general faded pseudo-distressed fakey vintage sort of look and it’s loving everywhere. My guess is boho/shabby chic that’s gotten completely out of hand and been commoditized.

I think old things that have been beaten up and worn down through normal use over a long period of time can be really interesting and beautiful, but I find that the beauty and interest comes from the thing being genuine. So fake-distressing something to achieve the “look” misses the loving point as far as I’m concerned and comes off as stupid and hollow.

As for wanting to emulate generational wealth via pseudo-distressed fake antiques, I don’t even know, it just reads nouveau riche to me.

actionjackson posted:

yeah I had my interior designer order me a really nice, thick felt rug pad from Surya

can the rug pad itself be cleaned in the same way you clean the rug? It's inevitable my dog will pee on it at some point, so it will soak through.

My rug plan is warm water and white vinegar blotting, then leave baking soda on for a bit before vacuuming up to deal with the odor.

Not sure on the rug pad - we’ve always had the rubbery mesh kind that I think you just hose off and hang up to dry. There should be care instructions included.

If you don’t already have Nature’s Miracle on hand, get some. It is an enzymatic cleaner specifically for pet messes. Works great.

quote:

Besides the lack of color "trend" I'm guessing a lot of people want to emphasize certain pieces of furniture, in which case a colorful rug could distract from that. If for example I had a bright red womb chair or sofa, I would probably not pick a rug that stood out.

I honestly think a lot of it has to do with being “safe” with decor. Going with bold colors takes commitment and a vision. I saw a Houzz topic where a woman bought an antique sofa and was asking about which jewel tone of velvet she should pick when reupholstering. I was like “sapphire blue! DO IT!” but so many other posters came in with “safer” suggestions like loving beige and taupe. It kinda pissed me off - finally someone on that dumb discussion board has a bold vision and you rush in to talk her down? Ugh.

But still, neutrals are indeed a safe bet if you’re not sure of what you really want. They are unobtrusive and easy on the eyes and can look super nice.

Kaiser Schnitzel posted:

I think they are cheap because a)they are mostly not all that finely knotted which makes them much faster to make and b) turns out most oriental rugs are marked up like 4000%. Real persian rugs aren't available because we are still embargoing Iran and a Hamadan or Shiraz rug comes from a town in Iran called Hamadan or Shiraz, not some town in Turkey or India where they make their own pattern. I've been perfectly happy with my like 8? e-carpetgallery rugs and for the price they are fantastic but they are not the finest 200 knots per inch persian rugs for the most part. Get felt and rubber pads like these:https://www.rugpadusa.com/collections/felt-and-rubber

Haha guess I’m just not used to seeing not-marked-up-4000% prices on rugs. Honestly I like the look of “coarser” knotting on rugs, so I’m not specifically looking for super high knot count. I was mostly remarking on the categorization methodology - been poking around at rugs a lot lately (thanks hyperfocus!) and learning more about regional/tribal categorizations and styles and then didn’t see those designations on eCarpetGallery and just seeing them all labeled as Persian even none of them (at least stateside) are technically Persian. Actually in my original rug post I should have just said oriental rug but was in a Persian rug mood that day or something.

Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018

Took me a bit to realize what was bothering me about the knotty pine one in Lake Placid, but I figured it out: why are the non-knotty pine parts of the wall the same color as the knotty pine?? Either paint a different color or go 100% knotty pine (I secretly love gratuitous knotty pine (when it is darkened a bit with age/staining)).


Moose Lodge loving owns and I sort of really want it. It’s the kind of hyper rustic place I’d dream about as a mountain getaway. I’ve seen some places like it out west but those have a different vibe/style.

I hope whoever buys it gives it the restoration it deserves and not a lovely tone-deaf “modernization”.

Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018

Blowjob Overtime posted:

This is the second time I've seen a small to medium sink on the short end of the island in one of these, and it really is a baffling choice to me. This one looks too small to fill bigger pots and pans, but much bigger and you have a sink with zero usable counterspace to the left and right of it.

Might be a kosher kitchen. They have two sinks and tend to be bigger with more counter space to make food prep easier with all the strict ingredient segregation and other rules.

Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018

Liquid Communism posted:

Someone at HGTV needs to be fed into a wood chipper for starting this.

Behold, a normal, mid-50's midwestern house!



Now let's take a look inside.



Uhoh.



What in the world...



This poor house.



It did not deserve this.



I don't know which bedroom this is, they're identical.



They even did the basement. :psyduck:



Drumroll please.... 864 square feet, sold for $112,000 in October 2020. Apparently doing this... thing to it without even bothering to repaint the outside makes them believe they deserve an 72,000 dollar payday, as it went on the market for $184,900.

Hooray I can see the rest of the images now! Couldn’t see anything but the first image on the app but changed the file extension to jpg from webp or whatever Zillow image links default to that screws with display on mobile.

Anyways, I can’t stand interiors where you find yourself wondering why the photographer was shooting in black and white. So bleak and sterile and not cozy. This house is especially atrocious. Not even any garish staging to offset the colorless depressive vibe.

The only interiors where I like monochrome are art museums so that you can enjoy the art and not get distracted by poo poo that is not the art.

My friend who was looking at houses would send me links and I stopped being able to tell the interiors apart because they were all agreeable gray mostly with LVT floors of varying levels of grayness/ugliness. They were all prewar cottages and row houses built from templates so they basically all had the same layout so no differentiation there.

I wonder if we’re heading for a tipping point where if you want the house you’re selling to stand out and be the least bit memorable you paint it not gray or monochrome, or at least paint a few rooms interesting not-gray colors. Like “oh yeah the house with the sage dining room - I distinctly remember and therefore like that one” instead of all the samey gray interiors bleeding together in a buyer’s mind.

Facebook Aunt posted:

What ever happened to linoleum? I've lived dozens of places and they all had lino in the bathroom and kitchen. A couple had lino tiles, which are awful and filthy, but sheet lino has always been a friend to me. Now people talk like it's not even an option anymore.

I think most of the contemporary roll-up sheet stuff is vinyl rather than proper linoleum. We had the unconvincing travertine flavor in our apartment kitchen and bathrooms and in a rental it was fantastic - indestructible, easy to clean, and soft (I dropped plates and poo poo on it and they didn’t break).

The term linoleum has come to be used for more flooring materials than actual linoleum, kind of like tinfoil in that we’re really talking about aluminum foil. A lot of the stuff I assumed to be linoleum for a long time was actually just vinyl-based products or sometimes terrazzo (cool as gently caress flooring that’s not really used residentially anymore even though it should be because it is awesome).

Youth Decay posted:

Pink bathrooms are the best bathrooms. Baby blue, mint green, pale yellow and lavender are also acceptable. Turning an older colorful tiled bathroom into generic monochrome trash makes baby jesus cry.

We looked at some houses that were built late 30’s to early 40’s and a few had at least a couple completely original bathrooms. I’m kicking myself for not taking more/better pics, but here are a few:



This is the best toilet - perfectly preserved, hilariously giant tank that definitely uses like 30 gallons a flush, set in an adorable fully original bathroom with matching lavender fixtures and tile trim. I told my husband that if we bought this house, this bathroom would stay exactly as it was for all time. We did not buy that house, obviously.



This bathroom had a more unusual color scheme - magenta/tan/pink, but I still dug it. Looks like it was mucked with at some point (vanity looks kinda 60’s and might have replaced a pedestal sink), but the tile work on the walls was in perfect condition.



They also did monochrome in this era, but made use of super high contrast and neat little details like in the border trim and intricate tile designs in the floor and also neat fixture design (note the cool angles on epic original deco sink and the bland nondescript curves of the contemporary replacement toilet). Far cry from the pallid monochrome poo poo we have today. Today’s trendy monochrome looks just feel... meek in comparison. Just washed out and bland. I think this bathroom was in the same house as the lavender one. Only things I would have done in this bathroom was paint (not a fan of that taupe) and replaced the toilet with something better-looking, like one of Kohler’s more angular vintage-looking models or actual vintage).

Overall, the quality of the tile work in this era is largely unmatched today. So if you tear it out, what you replace it with will very likely be inferior. My buddy has a prewar house with a 50’s bathroom that’s mostly been trashed/cheaply modified except for the cerulean wall tile, so I advised him to rip out everything except the tile work, roll with the color and go from there.

Our house has its original Victorian wall tile in the bathroom, all bone white subway with cute colorful detailing and trim.



It’s over a hundred years old so it’s starting to deteriorate and the hand-painted glazing on the cute ribbon and garland tiles is mostly rubbed off, but when it comes time to our bathroom remodel, I’m going salvage as much of the material as I can. I really really want to reuse the cap tiles. And the plain subway tiles, which are completely flat and and have no bevel. Also want the super thin grout lines - would have to convince the tile guy to put away his normal spacers and use pennies, which was how they did it back in the day, or penny-thickness spacers if such a thing exists.

But yeah, it’s white, so the new bathroom will be predominantly white, but I want to do actual colorful stuff in it too, like use a neato colorful marble as the vanity top, decorative trim tiles, and a contrasty design in the floor.

quote:

Also I don't understand why so many builders and renovators will just put in showers in their bathrooms, even when there's space for a bathtub. Like, do they not want to sell to families with children? Or really, any adult who wants to bathe once in a while? I just have a shower stall in my apartment and I have come very close to renting a hotel room for a night just to take a dang bath.

I don’t get this either. Even my dad was advocating ditching the tub and just having a big shower in our bathroom, which would be dumb because we do eventually want to start a family and this is the one bathroom where there is enough space for a proper tub (unless we want to build a full bathroom in our creepy unfinished basement for some reason).

quote:

Also also linoleum is better than vinyl and far more environmentally friendly. I've heard good things about Marmoleum which is lino with more recycled/sustainably-grown materials.

Yeah for sure. You’d think that with the push for sustainability that stuff like linoleum would be a more popular option and that vinyl, a petroleum product, would be getting a bit more scrutiny. But I guess it’s easier to dissociate it from the oil industry because it’s a building material, not fuel being burned.

Also Marmoleum has some super cool patterns and colors. I’d take it over wood/stone-look vinyl any day.

Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018

Youth Decay posted:

People often conflate linoleum and PVC and/or assume that they are both plastic products. Linoleum was superseded by vinyl in the 1950s-60s and never really regained popularity, so the ugly, peeling, yellowed kitchen floors many of us grew up with and called "linoleum" were just cheap vinyl.

Yup. I don’t know how many of y’all watch Restored (an excellent show that is what it says on the tin) - its host, Brett Waterman, has a thing for linoleum and gets super excited when he pulls up 20 layers of plastic crap and finds the original 1910s linoleum in the kitchen and and will go to great lengths to meticulously patch and restore it. Will also install new (real) linoleum if appropriate for the house.

Seriously, he is one of two HGTV/DIY people I’d let do things to my house, the other being Nicole Curtis of Rehab Addict.

Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018

oXDemosthenesXo posted:

Still not sure what to do with the floor though. I've got rugs in a few places but in the end it just looks horrible. If it weren't brand new I would have replaced it before I moved in.

If you want to get away from laminate/LVT in general, pre-finished hardwood is always an excellent choice, in my opinion. Material-wise it’s on the expensive side, but easy to install and waaaay less of a hassle than site-finishing a hardwood floor. Also the finish they use on it is applied with dark voodoo magic and is extremely durable and will last for decades and look good all the while (after which point it can be sanded and refinished because it’s solid wood and then last for decades more).

Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018

actionjackson posted:

laminate is not the same as LVT, just clarifying. I didn't do LVT because I heard it can have issues where it's exposed to direct sunlight.

depending on where you live, hardwood might not be a great idea. I'm in a condo and we aren't even allowed to put in hardwood - I don't know the exact reason but something to do with the subfloor? not sure.

Also I've heard that areas where you have large changes in humidity throughout the year you have to be a bit careful because the wood will naturally expand and contract.

that might be related to the no hardwood thing in my building - there are definitely areas where there's a very small gap under the moulding, and areas where there is not, so I assume the subfloor is just slightly uneven. We have huge humidity swings so perhaps if it was hardwood it would be unable to expand in certain spots.

In cases where humidity shifts/moisture is a concern, there’s always engineered hardwood, which remains dimensionally stable and looks just like solid hardwood (due to the surface being real wood).

There’s also quarter-sawn oak, which will also remain more stable in temp/humidity shifts due to the much greater uniformity in its grain. But it’s a good deal more expensive than plain sawn.

Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018

pastor of muppets posted:

Hey, that's the exact floor and almost the exact surround in my bathroom! My house is an old kit house built in 1937, like most of the houses in my neighborhood. I haven't been able to pin down who the manufacturer is; Montgomery-Ward, maybe. i love my bathroom, but a lot of the tiles are cracked and the floor has some stains. We were looking into reno-ing it at one point and wanted to make a point of trying to stay as period-correct as possible. I really love the black and white.

e. I really wish I had pics of the bsthrooms in my mom's last house. She had one pink, one powder blue, and one in shades of tan tile. The tan she decorated with teal accents; It looked really nice.

Can’t remember if the house with that bathroom was ‘39 or ‘41, but still definitely a contemporary. Early to mid 20th century was a fantastic era for bathroom design in general.

The black and white motif is one of my favorites and timelessly classic. It is like Chuck Taylors in that it will never not be cool. Problem nowadays is that it’s all white without the definition and contrast you get from the black. It’s why I was going on about the current trends feeling meek in comparison - no boldness or conviction.

Pigsfeet on Rye posted:

Maybe look at some place like this?
https://restorationtile.com/

I was going to suggest https://heritagetile.com but Restoration Tile looks mighty good also and I’m a sucker for supporting Little Rock companies. They also seem to be more upfront about their tile reproduction services, which I personally would be very interested in (might need more cap tiles and also need to replace a lot of cracked and busted glazed tile in my fireplace hearths and mantelpieces).

actionjackson posted:

ah ok, I'm not sure if the restriction applies to engineered hardwood. But yeah huge humidity shifts here, in the winter I have to use static guard on stuff constantly because it gets so dry.

does engineered hardwood have some of the issues regular hardwood does in terms of pets? specifically their nails cause scratches on the surface. I read you want a certain amount of hardness to avoid that.

also definitely more expensive, my laminate was 2.19/SF, many of these engineered ones are at least twice that.

If there’s a restriction for hardwood due to moisture/slab&subfloor interfacing, I imagine that engineered hardwood would get around that because it’s designed to get around some of the issues of solid wood in those regards.

As for dogs, I think it also has the super tough factory finish like the prefinished solid hardwood, so it should hold up fine unless you have a pack of mastiffs or something. You can also pick tougher woods like hickory or hard maple. And in my opinion, real wood wears a lot more nicely than laminate or vinyl, so when it does start getting dinged up, it’ll still look fine. But for me personally, glossy perfection is not the goal with hardwood (same with kitchen countertops, which is why I’m gunning for marble in our kitchen even though I know it’ll get etched and beat up).

Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018

Holy poo poo that library rules. Having a library like that in my house has long been one of my life goals.

As for that sunken tub, why is it positioned so it has you staring right at the toilet when you’re relaxing in it? It’s like the opposite of the hidden coward toilet. Just imagine being in the tub relaxing and minding your own business when your SO comes in and plops down on the toilet and starts talking to you and/or pooping.

PS: lots of those houses have excellent rugs and I would like to have them so I can put them in my house.

Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018


There is not a circle of design hell deep enough for this stupid poo poo. If I found myself buying that house or one will similar fuckery I’d make a loud point at closing within earshot of anyone responsible/complicit about how I’m gonna take a crowbar to that poo poo as soon as I get the keys and then install some proper walls and doors. I’m very much not a mean person but this brings out all my meanness because the smug feelings of the PO/flipper/designer/listing agent deserve to be hurt. A lot.

Also totally gonna follow that Twitter account.

Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018

Blistex posted:

Just needed a place to vent about this.

Building a house this spring, and I for sure wanted a smart thermostat. I was looking around and saw this...

The Honeywell M5 smart thermostat prototype.



:gowron:

It's sleek, minimalist, clean, classic, and smart. I always loved the old Honeywell Rounds, and this was the perfect 21st century version of it.

A few months later their round, smart thermostat hits store shelves...



It's sort of silly, but I'm legit disappointed they took a thing of beauty that looked timeless, and turned it into a bigger, uglier nest. :bahgawd:

I don’t think your disappointment is silly at all. That’s a gorgeous high design prototype that they completely ruined. I hope there is a special circle in design hell reserved for the type of higher ups and committees that kill good designs.

I have an ancient T87 right now and it’s not going anywhere until there exists a programmable (but preferably not internet connected or too “smart” for its own good) thermostat that isn’t an ugly hunk of plastic with a dumb glowing screen. Like I’d kill for a T87-like retro-looking thermostat that has optional smart capabilities but a completely analog no-screen interface and the ability to function as an analog unit if the computerized aspect gets bricked or you disable it. Also anodized aluminum or brass casing. And it needs to not get confused by cast iron radiators (last time I checked, smart thermostats had a tendency to get tripped up by old radiator systems because they do everything extremely slowly and keep radiating heat and raising the temp even after set point is reached).

Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018

Blistex posted:

It seems that a lot of the newer smart thermostats are surveillance devices first, and thermostats second. I don't want a device that runs off a company cloud and comes equipped with one or more mics. The Google offerings are basically consumer data mining devices, and I'd be happy with a strictly wifi one that I can adjust from my phone while driving home. Probably going to just get a 7day programmable one and star stuck in the 20th century.

Ain’t that the truth. The whole suite of Nest products creeps me out. When I was in my apartment, which also had an ancient T87, I got an email from maintenance saying they were going to install Nests and could they please have our WiFi password. Reason being was that they were tired of fixing burst pipes after their idiot student tenants went home for winter break and turned the heat off instead of down, so they wanted to be able to monitor temperature in the units and prevent burst pipes. I declined because gently caress Nest and gently caress giving my landlord my WiFi password and reassured them that I knew better than to turn the heat off in the dead of winter. If they’d asked me to plug in a dumb temperature sensor that they could ping, I would have happily obliged.

My parents still have the same programmable thermostat that they installed while remodeling the house in the mid 90’s. The interface is a bit obtuse and it falls into the ugly hunk of white plastic design category, but it works fine and doesn’t spy on you.

I get sad looking at vintage specimens of mundane household fixtures like thermostats and light switches because they used to look so goddamn cool. Especially the Art Deco stuff (it is the 20’s again Art Deco needs to come back). I guess the intent in recent decades is for them to be “invisible”, hence bland white/beige plastic, but that just made them ugly and stand out like a sore thumb if your house is anything other than bland white/beige contemporary. I need poo poo that looks good in a dark wallpapered Victorian and white plastic and/or glowing round screen with trendy UX typography simply won’t do. I suppose I could manufacture custom casing for anything I deem too ugly/anachronistic if there aren’t better options...

Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018

That San Francisco house is amazing - structures that survived both the earthquake and fire unscathed are exceedingly rare, which makes the idea that some philistine tech gently caress with more money than taste could come in and “re-envision” it for “modern life” extra horrifying.

San Francisco is full of architectural crimes, sadly, and I put most of the blame on the tech scene nouveau riche. They come in and want trashy glam box mansions and don’t find any of those in Pacific Heights (renowned for its exquisite Victorian and Edwardian houses) or other fancy SF neighborhoods, so they buy what’s there and trash it.

Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018

extravadanza posted:

Holy Moly those Condo/HOA Fees!!! up to 9k+ per month!

I guess the cocaine den with the mirrors is the best deal then - that one’s COA fee is only $3,723 per month.

Then again there seems to be some weirdness in those listings - all but one has square footage listed as 212,505 sq. ft., which I presume is the entire building, so maybe Zillow is aggregating something wrong. Because a COA fee surely couldn’t really be pushing 10k even in ritzy buildings, could it? Or maybe there was a massive assessment recently? Still though :psyduck:

Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018


Lich Laugh Love

Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018

The description on that last listing isn't the worst, thankfully, but I hate when the language is like "here's a pristine, perfectly preserved example of high design [old awesome style] for you to desecrate reimagine to match your basic bitch trash vision". Stop encouraging that poo poo, seriously!

In other news, husband and I went on a walk and met the new neighbor moving in around the corner. I'd checked this house out on Zillow and it's another Victorian like ours that had managed to hold onto most of its original interior detail, with especially cool inlay parquet floors in foyer, living room, and dining room (we only have the cool parquet poo poo in our foyer). New owner is a total bro and had a bunch of his bros helping him move in. We introduced ourselves and chatted a bit and the dude was psyched as gently caress to be living a totally dope Victorian. There is still hope.

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Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018

I can only guess that there was some sort of catastrophe that caused 1993 to get all over the 1893. Dear lord.

And yeah, I'm thinking that white paint would probably be better in this case. You're going to have to strip it either way so you can apply new stain and finish, so might as well have it look acceptable instead of blond wood overload.

When we redid our attic pine plank floors, we tested a number of stains and finishes. Sanded down, the pine was super pale and new-looking despite being over a hundred years old. We ended up staining it a bit darker because leaving it natural would have given off too much of an early 90's ski cabin vibe.

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