Interior Design Chat Thread: Somehow I bet an 80s music video was filmed here.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Hobbies, Crafts, & Houses > Interior Design Chat Thread: Somehow I bet an 80s music video was filmed here.

Kaiser Schnitzel: Mar 29, 2006; Schnitzel mit uns

Phil Moscowitz posted:

This is from a while ago but holy poo poo this is rancid

I have no idea what that cabinet to the left of the sink is, but I know that pull thing is just waiting for knees to destroy

E: not to mention the countertops made of wet, construction lumber 2x4s that have separated as they�ve dried. Have fun cleaning the crumbs out of those until they rot!

Kaiser Schnitzel fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Jan 23, 2021

# ¿ Jan 23, 2021 04:07

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 03:14

Kaiser Schnitzel: Mar 29, 2006; Schnitzel mit uns

Queen Victorian posted:

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 about buying it to be fuzzy thing for my feet.

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.

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.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2021 03:31

Kaiser Schnitzel: Mar 29, 2006; Schnitzel mit uns

Queen Victorian posted:

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.

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

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

# ¿ Feb 13, 2021 00:58

Kaiser Schnitzel: Mar 29, 2006; Schnitzel mit uns

The best way I've found to deal with their website is to just look at all the rugs and then filter by country and color. They used to have better filters like knots per inch and by style (Ghazni, Kilim, tribal, whatever) but they don't seem to do that anymore

# ¿ Feb 13, 2021 03:17

Kaiser Schnitzel: Mar 29, 2006; Schnitzel mit uns

SkyeAuroline posted:

Sounds about right. I'm always curious who actually sees "16 week lead time" for furniture and says "this is fine" when it's not some handmade custom piece.
Interior design's weird, man. My standards are low but I don't think I'm that out of touch. (though I'm about to have to hit the furniture hunt myself... not eager)

Some of this is from more furniture companies doing more manufacturing domestically and offering more semi-custom options like custom sized dining tables to try to compete with east asian imports. If you get a container of all the same tables from indonesia 3 times a year, it's pretty easy to ship tomorrow. If you're offering multiple finishes/sizes/materials etc. it may make more sense to make them to order instead of keeping a bunch of odd combinations in stock. 'To-the-trade' upholstered furniture has been done this way for a while-you pick the sofa and one of their fabrics (or supply your own), they upholster it to order in 8-12 weeks or w/e.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2021 19:02

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Hobbies, Crafts, & Houses > Interior Design Chat Thread: Somehow I bet an 80s music video was filmed here.