apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

If you're familiar with safety spoons (spoons with heat sensitivity properties that turn white if the temperature is too high), you might be intrigued by Hansacanyon -- a line of color-altering, heat sensing faucets that do what the safety spoon does, albeit via an entirely different technology.

Wallpaper for renters? That's one way of thinking about Inhabit's bamboo wall flats. It's a great solution to the "no-painting" restriction so many renters are faced with, or for walls with a bumpy texture.

Renters are often frustrated by the oppressive ugliness of a landlord's taste in light fixtures. So, we've come up with some good resources on how to take matters into your own hands... without electrocuting them.

We were blown away by the impact of this flowering quince tree mural when we accidentally ran across it in Robert Lachman's article for the LA Times on the revival of wall murals. We love the way it anchors this room without overwhelming the other elements, an effect accomplished through its well-chosen scale and silhouette.

Battery-powered white paper lanterns saved our wedding reception. It was held outdoors in a Point Reyes Station garden patio and, being city folk, we hadn't anticipated just how dark it would be after nightfall. The night before the wedding we tested out the existing garden lights and atmospheric table candles and realized that together they would provide just enough light to keep our guests from falling asleep.

Can a store be coveted and admired? Can it be an idol of design and good taste to be worshipped?

If so, Russian Hill's Swallowtail is definitely our latest idol.

We have loved this shop from the day we walked in, and have often contemplated moving into Swallowtail and living there permanently. It's quirky, eclectic and full of beautiful objects that we love to dawdle over when visiting. It's a bit like an art museum of the odd, classical and collectible. Where else would you find a life-size geisha living alongside antique anatomy charts, vintage chandeliers, contemporary Noguchi lamps and Lucite chairs?

Got an all-white bedroom that's crying out for a lick of color? Dress up your bed with colorful sheets. Here's a list of good sources. Comment away, or add to the list if you know of others!

• Amenity
• Area Bedding
• The Company Store
• Designers Guild
• Dwell
• Garnet Hill

We stumbled on this cheerful quilt-of-a-carpet while reading Hatch.

It was created by a St Louis ceramicist who calls herself "idahostudios" on flickr and has an amazing sense of color. And because she did it on the cheap we thought it would be a great idea for SF readers struggling with the epic long hallways so common in our Victorian flats. So we asked her how she made it and she said...

Wall writing doesn't have to be cheesy.

You can go the Barbara Kruger route and make a statement -- political, humorous, or sentimental. Or you can revel in the beauty of typography, and use text almost as a pattern, as Alexander Girard did with his famous alphabet wallpaper pattern, or as Garnet Hill did with their (less famous) travel journal bedding.

Here are some photos of wall writing culled from around the web. These are here for inspiration, but you can make many of these ideas your own with vinyl letters, words, and text elements from Wallwords or Wonderful Graffiti.

(Above: letters float to the sky like smoke in an unidentified locale. Image: Pagoto.)

Walking down Fillmore Street a couple of years ago, we stumbled on a shop window that was showcasing several spare and beautiful pieces of handcrafted furniture. With classic mid-century proportions they felt oddly familiar, but they were also refreshingly new.

They turned out to be the work of David Pierce of OHIO Design. Pierce is a Bay Area furniture maker with a streamlined style that evokes the organic modernism and fine craftsmanship of George Nakashima.

We love the fact that these guys do nothing but reupholster mid-century furniture. With the slogan "We can do anything to your mid-century chair," RetroRedo.com is an eBay or craigslist buyer's dream resource.

Here's how we'd work it: spot a great chair on eBay or craigslist. Buy it for a rock bottom price and ship it straight to RetroRedo.com for a makeover. Select a fabric from one of the terrific, contemporary and atomic-age upholstery lines they stock (these include Maharam and Angela Adams), and leave the rest to this Oklahoma-based specialty workshop. In 7 days you get your newly-upholstered chair via mail.

That's not of course how RetroRedo.com expects it to go -- they expect you to send it yourself -- but we like the idea of never laying eyes on the chair in its ugly phase. It would feel like receiving a brand-new, custom-made chair instead of something musty and dusty out of a stranger's basement.

I'm fascinated by other peoples' clutter management strategies. It's handy that I've lived in apartment buildings for most of my life. I've had ample opportunity to see other people's clutter -- and to pick up on the occasional great decluttering technique.

For instance: the lobby/mailroom of my old building was graced with a recycling bin. It was a neighbor's idea, and this industrious woman had not only convinced the Super to accept its presence there but had persuaded him to empty the bin for us on a regular basis. Because of this wonderful, well-placed bin, junk mail never even passed the threshold of my apartment.