The Home Crowd

Duck Hunt, the leading sign that your lawn has gotten beyond your control…

Two years ago, we came across the ‘Doc’, a couch which transformed into bunk beds – Link.

Resource Furniture, a NYC store has brought the ‘Doc’ and many other transformative pieces of furniture here to the U.S.  Some of the pieces seem to be much more than traditional murphy beds.  Instead of simplified hideaway beds, many of their pieces are transformed into couches, seating, desks…

Oh sure, this seems perfect for small, cramped, new york city apartments.  But is it worthwhile for the average suburban home?  Depends on the way you use your space I suppose.  Maybe you have a den or office which would be better suited as a guest bedroom around the holidays.  Certainly, you can pop up an aerobed in a few minutes, and wedge out a little space amongst the clutter, or plan your space around a permanent guest bed, taking up precious floor space like the giant elephant in the room it is.  Or you can have both, I suppose.

Check out the space saving furniture, as well as other “non-transforming” pieces at their website – Link

Although, technically, flipping a mattress is kind of like transforming.

I need to call in a price this “Ares” desk set they have.

At 9 feet high, and 15 feet wide, it just may need to be stretched across two walls as shown above.  At that size, you could park your car on it quite comfortably.  It’s 250 bucks from Urban Collector – Link, and who knows, maybe if they release the original trilogy in giant wall decals, you could potentially wallpaper your entire living/great room.  Your friends/spouses/loved ones may never let you live it down, but that’s the price you pay for awesomeness I suppose. ..at least it’s not star trek.

At First, I was ready to chalk this up to the most ridiculous item of the day.  The Eames Lounge chair, with accompanying ottoman…. for kids!?!  Kids won’t get it, they won’t understand that this piece of furniture is one of modern design’s greatest of all time.  Little Nest offers this up along with a fine assortment of children’s modern furniture.  This pint size re-creation sells for $900 – Link.

That’s crazy, right?  900 bucks for a kid’s chair?  They’ll likely spend more time building a fort out of the box it ships in.

Depends…  I don’t have any clue of what furniture I want to be surrounded by for the rest of my days.  I do know however, I would like the Eames Lounge chair to be in there somewhere.  Nowadays, a full size replica plus ottoman goes for about $3900 from Design Within Reach in an assortment of colors and finishes – Link.

When my budget allows for it, it’ll become part of the family.  Also, the most carefully wrapped piece of furniture I’ll ever move I suppose.  That is, unless the miniature Eames Lounge isn’t sufficiently bubble wrapped.

Ahh, yes, more desktop ornament than functional setpiece, the MoMA store has it for $670 – Link.  At six inches tall, it might be the most expensive cellphone stand you ever buy…

But back to the kids.

The good thing is, for a considerable price, their formative years can be spent coloring while sitting in their favorite chair.

The bad news is… each of the chairs shown above only come in white, so your children will also be coloring ON the chairs.

With memorial day come and gone, the prime season for lawn pride is in full swing.  The topic came about recently regarding the patterns that professional greenskeepers create on professional baseball fields.  How did they do it?  Did they lay down different types of grass in patterns that would grow in differing shades of green?  Perhaps some do, but the process of striping lawns is usually much more simple.

• A heavy roller is just attached to the lawnmower.
• As the grass is cut, the roller ‘bends’ the blades of grass in the direction of the mowing path
• Alternate mowing path against the previous path, and voila!

The above image was found at the website of the manufacturer of the Lawn Stryper, found here -  patternyourlawn.com

Of course, there’s other DIY alternatives to be found on instructables.com, as well as other roller-type striping attachments available, but for the price, I think I’ll just order the Lawn Stryper attachment from Amazon or Overstock, seems that it can be found in the mid-5o dollar range.

A cheaper alternative, given enough space would be to drive your car across the lawn a few times, your mileage will (literally) vary on this one.

Cheaper alternative yet?  Do like this lawn stylist…

Get a new flat screen TV lately?  Chances are, it’s mounted on the wall, or on a table or stand.  If you had a basic entertainment center before the high def upgrade, it no doubt held your old boxy low-def television, and its wiry mess of A/V equipment.  After the upgrade however, that 42 inch plus HD monster, either wouldn’t fit, or just didn’t look right, and if you haven’t tossed your old particle board based entertainment center, and if you have potential rugrat chefs in the making around, you may want to re-purpose this sturdy piece of furniture as a play kitchen, as these good folks did.

From Giggleberry Creations:

From this…

To this…

Visit their site for more of the how-to and in-progress pics.

Also,

the repurposed entertainment center from Sutton Grace.

From start…

To finish…

More pics and how-to at their site.  Sutton Grace

However, maybe you’ve got just enough ingenuity to make that flat screen work in your present setup…

- via Thereifixedit.com