Furniture Wish List

Half the fun of owning a home is drooling over stuff you can’t afford.

Case in point, the Thomas Wold Block Party Book Case over at Design Public.

Clocking in at a mere $3990!!, this is one of the coolest book cases i’ve ever seen. It’s designed to partially display/hide objects in the shelf. Some of the panels slide back and forth, while others open like doors.

Meanwhile on the affordable front, Ikea’s launching their new eco-friendly PS line August 1st.

The Woven Palm Vava Lamp ($70) has been getting tons of play all over the internet courtesy of Inhabitat

Looks like it would be a good affordable replacement for the pink flower chandelier in our bedroom that we haven’t gotten around to replacing yet!

On the frustrating front is the Deneb Collection from Design Within Reach.

The frustrating part is that Design Within Reach keeps mailing us their catalog and making us drool over their awesome furniture when it’s nowhere remotely within reach. It’s $1248 just for an outdoor coffee table. I’m not even going to bother pricing out a full outdoor set… sigh.

CardboardDesign Kids Rocketship

Socket’s new playhouse: his cardboard rocketship! Courtesy of Cardboardesign
Thanks for the birthday present Uncle Pete!

Irvine Antique Market

Our new favorite past time is hitting up the outdoor Irvine Antique Market at Irvine Valley College the first Sunday of every month.

It’s much smaller than the massive Pasadena Rose Bowl Flea Market, but we end up finding way better deals on really nice pieces. Here’s some cool things we liked this week:

And here’s some of our latest scores that we picked up over the past few months. First up, a new walnut bar for our kitchen. The top panels open up for expanded counter space, and the inside has racks to fit liquor and wine glasses:

Next up, Flathead’s pride and joy – a 60’s Drexel bench table. We picked this up in beautiful condition for $100 and later found them online selling in the $700-800 range!

Not as fun, but still a good find, was this antique mirror that we picked up for $15. The lady who sold it to us said there’s an old newspaper lining inside from the 1920’s that was there when she got the piece, but I haven’t opened it up to take a look yet. It’s replaced the gaudy etched oval mirror that was in our bathroom before.

Also, the coffee table in our living room was one of our first purchases at the Antique Market – only $40 – you can see pictures of the coffee table here, or newer pictures of it covered with foam corners here, now that it’s Sockets favorite thing to climb up and jump on.

Somehow we always manage to score at least one really good find every time we go, so it’s highly recommended to anyone who lives nearby. The Antique Market is the 1st Sunday of the month from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., and located at Irvine Valley College, 5500 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine CA 92618.

Building Cabinets

In the office, Flathead wanted to create some storage and workspace inside the closet. We took off one closet door, and her dad helped build the wall & some shelves using nice wood purchased for super cheap in Ikea’s AS-IS section. Then, inspired by Adam’s furniture, I took my first crack at building cabinet doors for the shelves. Had the wood cut to size, painted & lacquered it, then spent about an hour trying to get them to hang evenly so they’d close right! It was a little difficult because the shelves weren’t 100% level, but it turned out all right. Toss on some handles & magnet latches & boom, nice green office cabinets.

Adam & Jenny’s house

We just got back from Boston for Adam & Jenny’s wedding and were totally in awe of their house. Adam’s always done a lot of woodworking, but his skill’s raised a few notches from carving pipes in college, to now handcrafting Crate & Barrel level furniture. The wood art, green computer desk, veggie tray, and orange kitchen shelf are all his handiwork.

It was a nice reminder that you don’t have to buy expensive furniture to make your house look nice. You can do things DIY and keep them looking classy.

Baby Proofing

So apparently all of the stylish low furniture we have is completely impractical now that baby Socket is starting to crawl/walk.  Our bookshelf for example now looks like this, otherwise all the books get dumped on the floor and the pages eaten/ripped out:

Also, all the open doorways in the house (and there seem like tons of them) are now baby jails! If any parents are looking for a good solid gate that’s relatively inexpensive, we recommend the Evenflo Top of Stair Gate. It attaches securely to the wall, is easy to open/close, and can be removed in just a few seconds.

Not to mention our coffee table, now complete with the newest trend in home design: foam corner non-eye-poker-outers!

We’ve also had to lock up most of our cabinets drawers & found that most of the child safety latches out there either break the first time you test them, or are so fool proof that it’ll take you 10 minutes to open it. The only ones we’ve found so far that work well are these adjustable straps.

Craigslist Fun Finds

I’ve been obsessed with Craigslist since getting this house. I’m hoping to landscape the backyard though it’s Free section. Here are some goods I came across. That last one is from the Salvation Army.