Birds & Coffee
Funny story. Cathy was scraping Craigslist for lighting fixtures, specifically a chandelier for our stairwell. She happened across a guy in the Haight/Ashbury section of San Francisco selling a very interesting chandelier described as "probably a designer fixture". For $150. So Cathy immediately recognizes it as a famous $5000 Ingo Maurer design, emails the guy and asks "is this Birds, Birds, Birds by Ingo Maurer?"
Item is then relisted at $2900 soon after. To make a long story short, we still got a deal on it, but it cost us $1500 instead of $150. He was happy, we were happy. But not as happy as we would have been at $150. But we still got a very unique fixture and good story out of it.
Getting it back from San Francisco turned out to be a challenge (picture 24 "bulb birds" flapping in the back of the van), but it survived the trip.
We had to rig up a suspension system from the grab bars on the ceiling as there's no way to lay this thing down without damaging the (real) goose feathers.
We love it and think it will look awesome in the stairwell (we expect the shadows to be very cool). It's definitely a unique piece - some will love it, some will hate it, but it definitely won't go unnoticed.
We also spent some time (this was 2 weekends ago now, see next post for why) mocking up our espresso bar area of the kitchen. We wanted to get the outlet in exactly the right place so the cords and timer fit between Silvia and Rocky. I think this fits in the "anal retentive" file, but hey, we won't get a second chance at it so we might as well get it right.
Note the use of the contractors table saw for our countertop, and the paper mockup showing the location of the small bar sink. The combination square sticking up is modeling the articulated faucet we plan to use - a nifty new item from Kohler called the "Karbon".
We're actually going to be using 2 of these, one for the main sink as well. By using the Karbon, we'll be able to fill the espresso tank under the cabinet without having to move the machine, and without having to install a second "pot filler" faucet on the wall. We've got the CAD model to prove it too:
Item is then relisted at $2900 soon after. To make a long story short, we still got a deal on it, but it cost us $1500 instead of $150. He was happy, we were happy. But not as happy as we would have been at $150. But we still got a very unique fixture and good story out of it.
Getting it back from San Francisco turned out to be a challenge (picture 24 "bulb birds" flapping in the back of the van), but it survived the trip.
We had to rig up a suspension system from the grab bars on the ceiling as there's no way to lay this thing down without damaging the (real) goose feathers.
We love it and think it will look awesome in the stairwell (we expect the shadows to be very cool). It's definitely a unique piece - some will love it, some will hate it, but it definitely won't go unnoticed.
We also spent some time (this was 2 weekends ago now, see next post for why) mocking up our espresso bar area of the kitchen. We wanted to get the outlet in exactly the right place so the cords and timer fit between Silvia and Rocky. I think this fits in the "anal retentive" file, but hey, we won't get a second chance at it so we might as well get it right.
Note the use of the contractors table saw for our countertop, and the paper mockup showing the location of the small bar sink. The combination square sticking up is modeling the articulated faucet we plan to use - a nifty new item from Kohler called the "Karbon".
We're actually going to be using 2 of these, one for the main sink as well. By using the Karbon, we'll be able to fill the espresso tank under the cabinet without having to move the machine, and without having to install a second "pot filler" faucet on the wall. We've got the CAD model to prove it too:
posted by contraption at
1:47 PM
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