Here is a great little table lamp that is currently on sale at Flax Art and Design. It is a round, natural cotton shade, that sits atop a square dark wood base. The cotton shade casts a warm natural light when turned on. Its a nice simple lamp, that looks a lot more expensive than it really is. The normal price is $34, which is not to shabby really. It is currently on sale for $21, which makes it a total steal.

Get yours at Flax Art and Design for $21.

Here is a quick post via the lovely ladies at BLTD. It is a honey comb lamp that folds up flat to ship. The concept is great, and the price is too, only $30 plus shipping. Just think, even if you got it and hated it, you are still out less than if you would have went out for a dinner for two.
Available from Kyouei Design for $30

Now that we had the floor all ripped out and put back in, we could finally start working on the radiant heat. We decided before we went to all that trouble we would go ahead and rip out the dropped ceiling that was over the bedroom. Of course the demo only took a good day, but dust would last for weeks. We were hanging new 2 x 10’s on Halloween night. At one point I literally left my wife holding one end of a beam while I went to answer the door. Hanging the insulation took another couple of days, and unfortunately the drywall is still pending. Getting the radiant up and going quickly became the main focus as the temperatures started dropping.

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I admit the fact that I have been practically obsessed with walnut lately may have played into the attraction to these frames. These hive inspired frames make a retro classy holder for some of your best memories. Priced at $20 they are not super expensive. Unfortunately it seems that $20 will only get you one frame, not three like shown in the picture. Who knows maybe you could buy one a month for three months, the it wouldn’t feel like your were blowing $60 on a picture frame. Designed by Boom Design. Make sure you check out booms other goods.

Available onine at Wexner Center Bookshop for $20.

Yep, as awful as it sounds, my wife’s birthday is actually the day after our anniversary. To those guys out there, you’re thinking, wow, hooked up. One gift, and you’re covered. No such luck. My wife is smarter than that. Before we got married she made me sign in ink, a statement saying I would never ever combine the two.
This year I splurged a little. My wife has always wanted an arco lamp. I obviously couldn’t afford the original made by Flos (ylighting has it for a mere $2,300). I had seen several knock offs around town (discussed here in the forums) but really didn’t like how far most of them strayed from the original design. I called a local store, By Design, to check prices and they told me they had a new model in that was almost exactly the same as the original. It sported a large square marble base and the square arch tubing. I went to look at it, and it was spot on. It is made in China, but the craftsmanship seems very quality. The original manufacture is italstudio mfg ltd. (no sign of them on the web) and it was apparently imported through Chair Tech out of Canada. The price was $400. While not exactly affordable for a floor lamp, compared to $2,300 it was a total steal.

Available from By Design for $400.

Today is my 3 year Anniversary. If you have read some of our remodeling stories, you already know that my wife is the most patient in the whole world. It just so happens that she is the most beautiful as well. I count myself the luckiest man in the wold.

Card designed by Mingo Design, for Artichokes and Company.

I admit that when it comes to nesting bowls, I’m a complete sucker. The best deals can usually be found by going with something melamine like the Sunami bowls. If you are not a big fan of melamine, there are some decent deals out there for porcelain nesting bowls. The MoMA Store currently has a lovely set of bowls designed by Ditte Fischer in 2000. Part of a limited run exclusively for MoMA this set of four bowls normally sells for $124, but is on sale for $92. It comes in blue, green, or orange (pictured).
Available from the MoMA Store for $92.

If you have been following the story of our house, you know what a mess I got myself into. Yesterday I explained how I started the demo for our radiant heat. Before I continue, I wanted to explain a little just how I planned on doing the radiant so you don’t think I was totally crazy. Where access from beneath is possible the most efficient way to add radiant heat to a wood subfloor is to run the tubing between the floor joists and staple it up with metal heat transfer plates. This is a fairly painless experience for those with full basements. My house had a 10′ by 10′ basement with 6 foot ceilings, about another 50% was crawl space ranging between 1′ and 3′ of clearance from floor joist to dirt. The remaining 40% above which I was currently doing the demo work mentioned previously had almost no clearance from below, making a staple up install impossible. There are plenty of above subfloor systems out there for the application I was planning on doing in the front of the house, most of which were quite costly. I opted for the DIY approach. It consists of ripping 9″ wide strips of plywood and attaching those to the subfloor 1″ apart

from eachother. This creates a groove which you can safely lay your tubing and heat transfer plates before putting your finished floor in. The obvious downside to this is the extra thickness of the floor. Because I didn’t want to have 3″ thick floors and 5′ door ways I decided I had to demo all the way down to the floor joists and level them out, install a new subfloor, the layer of radiant, and then the finished floor.

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We had always planned on tearing out our carpet in our house. The short neutral grey/brown pile just wasn’t doing it for us. We found our excuse to finally get rid of it last fall. After our first colder fall day I started thinking about getting our furnace ready for the winter. I pulled up a grate to see how clean our ducts were, they were a complete terror! Each one had at least a couple inches of dust, dirt and grime. Just the thought of all that filth blowing around was enough to make me shudder. Since moving in we had wanted to do an addition, and heat it all with radiant heat. I figured this was the perfect time to switch out systems, and save us from having to turn on our old heater. Half of our house had decent access to the floor from underneath, which presumably would make installing radiant easy on that section. Unfortunately we couldn’t access the front half of our house from underneath, so we would have to lay the tubing on top of the floor. More details on that later.
The first step…

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Chiasso has always been a great source for affordable modern design for the home. If you don’t already, make sure you check out their website on a regular basis. The study desk and chair is currently on sale for just under $150 for the set. Thats a great price on a nice simple modern desk and chair. The high gloss laminate wood and chome legs are a nice clean look. It doesn’t appear to have any drawers, so clutter may be a problem if you need to store stuff in your desk.

Available from Chiasso for $146