the indistinct hum

Oops!

laurazeck — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 01:24:25 +0000

Sometimes my train is hard to stop. I love efficiency and making things happen – the project has been clicking along and … Uh oh we made a big design mistake – not like a broken rule – just not enough consideration when placing the window order and now we will be fixing that! Anybody need a window?

Progress Part Deux

laurazeck — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 02:25:58 +0000

In Progress

laurazeck — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 00:24:59 +0000

National Geographic

laurazeck — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 16:43:23 +0000

I used to love going through these magazines as a kid and would get them for my kid now if we didn’t already have so much crap – but look what I just found – and ordered for Christmas! The database is searchable with over 200,000 photos – plus there is an interactive mapping feature that pulls up the whole history of articles for that place etc. So Cool! I didn’t think I was such a geek – but I think that this might be very educational for the wee 6 year old and way better than Barbie.com!

Final Decisions.

laurazeck — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 18:44:58 +0000

A fine couple, we shall call them Mary and Steve, are in the final rounds of their project. Having moved from San Diego to the Great Northwest they have taken on a Ballard craftsman-ish style house and we have been working to make it their own. I have loved working with them every step of the way, as they are interesting as people, have a great sense of humor, and aren’t afraid to take some risks to make their home – theirs. We have done some fun things and will finish with a few more before it is all over. That said some final decisions are being made and I wanted to share with you some of the options as they are all quite fun!

The Hole:

Where once a giant furnace aptly named Hercules ruled, a man-cave deluxe will take it’s place. The 30×30″ iron grid cover that was it’s gateway is inconveniently located in the center of the living and dining room. Rather than patch the fir floors and cover the hole we are going to insert one of the following light transmitting covers:

A custom piece from Think Glass such as this:

A resin piece layered with something textural like this (I especially like the popped bubble wrap, and then the x rays are quite interesting considering they were Public Defenders in their last lives)
from Fossil Faux Studios:

Or just a lightly colored resin like this:

Painted Floors. Part 2.

laurazeck — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 04:13:44 +0000

A reader recently asked me about where to get the stencils for this look:

The answer: I have no idea.

I too wanted to use this look in a client’s kitchen, and so I made them myself using Photoshop.

First I pulled the two separate shapes out of the photo above and then distorted, stretched, and re-drew them in order to get them flat and 2 dimensional. Then I resized them to work with the scale of the kitchen. Printed them out on a large format printer at Kinkos, and then transferred them onto YUPO and cut out the shapes with an Xacto blade (quite a few actually) . YUPO is a fantastic plastic like paper that I like to make paintings on, and is also fabulous for using as a stencil. I only painted one and then my super fabulous and daring client painted the rest herself! Here are some quick pics -more when the rest of the kitchen is in – which will feature a beautiful orange Blue Star Range by the way…

Shopping.

laurazeck — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 17:30:16 +0000

From my inbox today:

Flash Acres.

laurazeck — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 22:20:23 +0000

This is Flash.

And these are her acres.

This is the caretaker (and owner) of both:

The other day, Ben Benschneider came out to take photos of the place for the Seattle Times Pacific Northwest Magazine. As the interior designer, I went to help set the place up for photos as best I could. You see much of the project is still unfinished. But here are a couple of my photos to show you what we have so far:

This one is the main room in the bunkhouse.

Painted Floors.

laurazeck — Wed, 25 May 2011 23:02:16 +0000

Crazy Shit.

laurazeck — Tue, 03 May 2011 21:36:02 +0000

I love a good hunt. Give me a flea market, a random warehouse district, an hour on craigslist, or just send me to Cline’s Antiques. Just outside of Charlotte is this crazy man’s land. Acres of buildings, semi-truck trailers, and random piles of stuff. Signs, metal, salvaged doors, more chairs than you can imagine and in one corner a rocket launcher and a trailer full of amo. Seriously that was weird.

A little overwhelming to say the least. And if you plan on going, I recommend knee high rubber boots (snakes), work gloves and a headlamp.