Category Archive

furniture

7 picks perfect for tiny spaces from Design Public

I took a little stroll through Design Public this week to pick out a few high-design items for ogling. They have SO MUCH cute junk, and some especially great pieces for the space-crunched.

I picked out some artsy odds and ends, fun seating, great rugs, privacy ideas, and ways to organize that look pretty while they work. Let’s shop!

Grab a Back Jack for floor-sitting

During our stay at Sacred Groves for the Offbeat Empire staff retreat last week, I discovered the chair meant for me. The Back Jack.

Use drawers as shelves

This is the EASIEST way to build shelves I’ve ever seen. Step 1: Find drawers. Step 2: Nail drawers to wall. Step 3: Profit.

Building a sofa: pros, cons, vague instructions, and valuable lessons

We needed a new couch. Wanting to build my own, I found this how-to instructional scanned from a vintage home maintenance encyclopedia. It took (a lot of) time, but the results are good! The thing looks nice, is child-jumping safe (so far) and saved us a chunk of change. Come see what I made!

How to build a Japanese-style heated floor desk

I’m all about floor-furniture like the kotatsu, a 14th-century invention used in many Japanese homes all winter. It’s like the floor-oriented table often associated with Japanese homes, but with the added convenience of a heater and blanket. Sometimes I have daydreams about how awesome it would be to have one of these suckers. SO WARM. So cozy. None of the crampy discomfort of a western-style desk!

I’ve got a little floor-desk of my own going on, and this IKEA hack came just in time for me to play with.

There’s no shame in not doing it all yourself: people exist who can do your projects FOR you!

The DIY movement has been in full force since oh, say, 2008. Its resurgence started before that, but that’s when it seems to have tipped over into a popular topic, when indie crafters got cool and became a thing you could be. The internet makes it hard NOT to see clever new things to make or fix or repurpose, and for some people crafting becomes a problem because the information is so available.

Thanks to the Internet’s cornucopia of information and ideas, I’ve very much taken on the attitude that I CAN MAKE ALLLLL THINNNGSSSS, even though truthfully, I’m fair-to-middling at making things. Given a little time and good supplies, we can make a good go at most things — which is a damn slippery path to the mindset DO IT YOURSELF OR IT DOESN’T GET DONE! Which doesn’t have to be the case.

The big pink chair and the white hot rage

When I was pregnant, I bought this rocking armchair I’d been lusting over for years. It had modern lines and a wide base and a friend had a similar one that I’d loved. It was going to be my special breastfeeding island, the magical place where I rocked the baby to sleep in a happy haze.

Things never quite turned out that way.

Un-bedside tables for easy book storage and access

Right now my bedside table is an upended suitcase — a failed attempt to turn it into a cat bed. No storage, and not pretty. To solve my problem, I’ve been fantasy shopping for an un-bedside table. As I see it, here are my options.