Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Little Boxes, Little Boxes...

And they're not made of ticky tacky, they're made of maple plywood and FinnForm. This feature was inspired by an article on the Google headquarters that we saw in Metropolis magazine. Turns out our friends (we hope they're our friends, because they probably know more about us than we know about ourselves, right?) at Google use stacked plywood boxes as bookshelves and general storage cubbies in their "office" spaces, and we thought it looked very cool and practical. Enter the amazing John DeForest, who designed these boxes to hang on that slatted wall that separates bedroom from living room, for bedroom storage. These boxes (with the exception of the 2 with red FinnForm) can be moved around to suit our needs (or whims). Remember that our house features a walk in closet/dressing room off of the laundry room, so we won't be keeping our wardrobes in the bedroom, and this arrangement allows for storage of things like books, alarms, and the nifty new windup emergency weather radio--necessary in our area as we may be out of the audible range of tornado sirens. Speaking of Google, if you don't recognize the reference in the title of this post, Google Malvina Reynolds.

This Little Light of Mine...

Or should I say: "these little lights of ours"? Tonight was the first time we were able to flip switches and turn on the permanent lights, in their permanent locations. It was also the first time we were able to turn on anything in the upstairs. Some temporary fixtures have been lighting our way in the basement for several weeks now, but we won't get into that. This lovely little fixture will help us find our way down the stairs to the basement. Note Dan's custom closet just to the right, which is immediately inside the front door, and will house coats, hats, gloves, keys, expensive jewels, large amounts of...oh, wait a minute, this is on the Internet, isn't it. Nevermind. Just kidding.
This shot makes it appear as if we're preparing for a major rock concert in our living room. That would be cool. This is taken from the loft, looking to the east, and featuring 2 of the 3 tracks that are positioned on the ceiling, and the ceiling fan. The rock star lights don't have their bulbs in yet, but we did try out the fan, which is quite quiet (I love those 2 words together) and effective. The Modern fan is more than just a pretty face. It will play a big role in controlling the interior climate, pushing warm air from the wood stove throughout the house in the winter, and disposing of warm air through the upper windows in the summer. It kind of looks like the prop from a WWII-era plane, don't ya think? The track in the foreground is just above the desk on the loft, and will illuminate that space, and the west side of the living room, and, I suppose, anything else we want to point the lights toward. You look mahvelous! These lovely lights above the lovely bathroom sink with the lovely Chicago faucets will help build our self esteem by making us look better than we really look. These are Prudential "Snap" lights, which is a new style this year. The mirror should be in place tomorrow, so then we'll really know how well these lights work. Other details out of the range of the viewfinder include the toilet, installed today, which works! This is one of those things we don't like to talk about on a rural property, so we won't. We're just glad it's there now, after all this time without it!