Decisions, decisions!

We should have permits to start work very soon (would've been yesterday, but we just discovered that my building is in a district recently calendared by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which adds another level of red tape). My cabinets are being ordered, my bathtub is already on its way.

And today I settled the last few major details. (I went to Hardware Designs in Fairfield, NJ near Route 46 - about which I cannot say enough; it was like walking into the three-dimensional reality of all my internet searches. They have everything,  go there if you can.) I saw my toilet in person and liked it. I picked cabinet hardware:

And I found the perfect bathroom floor.  It's called "Alba Chiaro" (and may also be called "Persian Green" - depending where you buy it) -

Getting a handle ...

I've decided that the curlicue cabinet handles just won't do. The appliance-sized handle is lovely, but the drawer pulls are stupidly designed, without enough space for your fingers.

Here are the finalists for kitchen cabinet pulls (click to make bigger):

1. Alno "Fiore" - pull and knob

2. Siro "Nuevo Classico" - two pull variations and a knob:



3. RKI pulls and knobs:

 

Cup pulls (for the small drawers) are an option in all of these patterns. 

What do you think?

Oh woe!

Remember the gorgeous Cuban tile from a few posts back? Well, the boxes we packed up in the Miami post office arrived, and we opened them to check the tile.

14 out of 40 are unbroken. Waaah.

Fortunately, they were insured through the USPS, so I should be able to get my money back eventually after filling out many forms. (The Post Office has thought of everything; there are special rules for insuring Airline Tickets, Gift Cards, and Adult Fowl -

Adult fowl: If the number of birds per parcel follows the container manufacturer limits and each bird weighs more than 6 ounces, eligible birds are mailable via Express Mail in biologically secure containers approved by the manager of Mailing Standards. Under the applicable standards, indemnity claims may only be paid for loss, damage, or rifling (not for death of the birds in transit if there is no visible damage to the mailing container). Eligible Adult Fowl include:

o Adult turkeys

o Guinea fowl

o Doves

o Pigeons

o Pheasants

o Partridges

o Quail

o Ducks

o Geese

o Swans

So, do you know anyone who will be driving up from Miami anytime over the next couple of months, to bring me more tile? I no longer trust any shipping method (even the box we checked in our luggage on the plane had a couple of broken tiles). They're smaller than a breadbox but they're 100+ pounds. I think they'd be happiest traveling by car.

Board approval at last!! And I bought the bathtub!

Late yesterday afternoon, the architect's assistant emailed me to say that the Board had finally signed off on my Schedule B permit application - which the architect will file and get approved at DOB on Tuesday or Wednesday - which means that work can begin early next week! By early June it should be done.

Fortunately Sanijet is in Texas, which closes later than we do; at 6 pm I ordered my bathtub.

I bought more tile!

I went to Miami Beach for the weekend (because I'll be in Buffalo for most of the next month, and I'm so sick of the cold). While I was there, I went to Cuban Tropical Tile and bought encaustic tile for the little hallway outside my bathroom.

The hallway is 32" x 76", and five doorways open into it, from the bathroom, the bedroom, the dining balcony, the linen closet, and the clothes closet. You can see it in the distance from the living room, and I want it to catch the eye with a little glimpse of something special. It's the one place where the original wood floor cannot be saved, so since I have to replace it anyway, I'm replacing it with tile.

This is the tile I bought:

The picture shows four 8x8 tiles. Here's (roughly) what they'll look like in my hall:

Buying them was a real adventure. We navigated our way out to a little concrete building in the industrial outskirts of Miami - next door to a junkyard. The "showroom" was a little office carved out of the dusty warehouse. Once I picked out my tile, the guy brought out boxes and opened them, and allowed me to go through them tile by tile to pick out 40 perfect tiles. Because they ordinarily only ship by freight carrier (which is incredibly expensive - about 3x the cost of the tiles themselves for such a small order) we decided to carry some home in our luggage, and send the rest via USPS. (The tile guy believed - in error, as it turned out - that the boxes of tile would fit in the USPS $10.75 flat rate boxes, which would have been a real bargain, but alas, they were 1/4 inch too big). Hopefully they'll get here intact next week.

Fantasy sofa

If a totally spare $5000 wandered into my life (and it won't, quite the opposite) this is the sofa I would buy -

It's called "Ondo", made by Artifort, designed by Rene Holten.

I love how it floats - how it looks so comfortable for stretching out and reading - and how it's so ethereally blue.

Oh well. Other things are blue. The sky is blue, when it's not snowing or about to snow.

This sofa, at Macy's for a smidgen of the price, comes in a lovely blue and other colors too, in velvet or leather.

("Chloe" in velvet; "Claudia" in leather.)

I'm thinking (escapism really since I'm nowhere near furnishing) that the living room should have two sofas, or two loveseats, or a sofa and a loveseat. I need a comfy guest bed of some sort, but I'm thinking of a convertible ottoman (maybe from Castro Convertibles, which is back from the dead) rather than a big kludgy sleeper couch.

My Turkish rug has blue and orange and tan in it.