Sunday, April 27, 2008

Furnishings...


We are slowly refurnishing the house. Prior to and during the remodel, we sold a lot of the furniture we didn't want to keep. So the house has been pretty empty, but slowly I'm filling in the missing pieces.

Back in October, I ordered bar stools from DWR which arrived over a period of several months. In November, I ordered a new Poliform dining room table from Europe-by-Net in a wood that matches the kitchen. It arrived in the beginning of April, in perfect shape. (It's also serving as my new desk!) Sadly, Europe by Net is not selling much to the US any more, most likely due to the weakness of the dollar (they did their sales in dollars, rather than in Euros or Pounds, and probably got burned badly on the currency fluctuations).

I was also able to pick up a couple of nice area rugs from a Roche-Bobois floor sample sale (so they were somewhat reasonably priced). You can see the one that Coda's perched on to the left. She certainly likes it!

I had to go to Italy in late March for a friend's wedding, and during that trip, I picked out the fabric for our sofa, having settled on the Flexform Groundpiece. Prior to the trip I had designed the layout for the sofa, so having picked out the fabric, I was able to get pricing from several stores in the US, Italy and the UK. intirium.com (in the UK) was the winner by far, although there was a lovely store in Ferrara, Italy that was a close second. My only hesitation is that I had to buy it in Euros, so now I'm the one speculating on currency. Hopefully the Euro won't change much relative to the dollar between now and the time it arrives (when I have to make the last payment). The sofa should arrive some time this summer, at which point we'll do the furniture shuffle (sofabed downstairs comes upstairs to guest room, sofa upstairs goes downstairs, and new sofa goes in living room).

Having the major pieces in hand, I bought a lovely B & B Italia accent chair yesterday from someone on craigslist, which is a nice compliment to either the old sofa or the new one. I still need to purchase dining room chairs (trying to decide between Baleri Italia mari' and Zanotta Lia), and a real entertainment unit for downstairs (to replace the $69 Ikea piece I got a few months ago). As the weather's nice, I need to get a small outdoor patio set and a BBQ (will most likely get the small Fuego, since it has a very clean design). Eventually, I want to get a bedroom set for downstairs, but for that I'll continue to monitor craigslist for a bargain. There are so many great craigslist items for sale... you just have to be patient and wait for the right thing to come along.

At some point, I should put up some artwork too. But I'm still afraid to put holes in the wall!

Finishing touches (again?)


I haven't posted for a while, and you may think that the house is done, but of course those last little finishing details take the longest time to finish.

Our remaining end cabinet + filler strips for the kitchen finally arrived a couple of weeks ago while I was out of town. Unfortunately, the cabinet was slightly damaged (again), although it looks like this time the damage is repairable. One missing trim piece fit perfectly, but the filler strip for the end of the cabinets was too wide. But most importantly, there was no room between the end cabinet (a pull-out pantry) and the adjacent set of cabinets with the ovens in them. Since the drawer/door pulls are all recessed, what to do?

The most complex (but correct) thing to do would be to slide all the cabinets over a bit to the right (heck, we've got about 6 inches of space at the end). Unfortunately, that would require moving the electrical, redoing the small backsplash next to the ovens, and overall, be a big pain. Fortunately, there is about 3/4 of an inch to move the cabinet to the left so that it's flush with the wall, and that gives us enough space. Since the end filler strip was too wide, we think we can use what we had to cut off to fill the gaps between the oven and end unit. A new (different) cabinet guy came last week and will come again on Tuesday to finish off the install.

We still have to figure out what to do about the miscut shelves in the buffet, and the cabinet guy is ruminating over that, so hopefully by Tuesday we'll at least have an answer.

On another front, the electricians are coming on Friday to finish their remaining pieces. So by next Friday, I think, I hope, I pray that we will really be done with the remodel! And then it will be on to other things, like landscaping, and finishing the furnishing (see next post on that).