Whatup Thursday!  I’m here for my SECOND longish post this week and will be waiting patiently at the end for my big, fat prize.  I get something grand for posting more than 2 pictures and typing, like, 5 funny sentences, right?

I know Erin already seduced you sectionally, but I just found a bunch of irregularly  shaped sectionals in my interiors folder so that’s what you’re getting today.  You can’t have too much of a good thing, right?

Guess what?!  I don’t know where this is from.  That’s what happens when I pull things at random from my inspiration folder.  BUT I heard your cries for documentation on Tuesday so I’ll be more careful from here on out.  Today is my last day (probably) of laziness.

Thanks, Elizabeth, for hooking me up with the source of this photo!!  Looks like it’s from m. design

My fantasy sofa.

I was really torn on whether or not to show you this sofa from The Selby (huh, huh, look at that, I know where it’s from), it’s not really irregular, but I figured there was enough curve and groovy pattern that we could let it fly.

This round beauty belongs to fellow blogger ModFruGal and was featured on our blog when she gave us her drool-worthy home tour.

Ok, where’s my prize?

Like sands through the hourglass, bitches! It wasn’t easy, but I have finally finally finally taken some new pictures of my house so you can watch the drama unfold. Now, this is primarily a tale of conflicting couches, but stay tuned for side plots involving angled walls, terrible tv and stereo equipment, annoying door situations, and the obligatory regrets, excuses and fantasies.

Exposition:

Today’s episode is set in a quirky 60s ranch house with issues — like a crazy angled rock fireplace, a weird recess in the back wall, a wall-way, and a ridiculous door that opens into the room. Click le pic for a larger image.

The Players:

Hailing from Ethan Allen via craigslist, navy blue chesterfield sofa is petite yet all enveloping, soft yet remarkably supportive. Sexy as though she may be, the vagaries of time have not been kind to her (in other words, my cat scratched the crap out of her backside), and she’s feeling abused, neglected, beaten down. Let’s just say her name is Krystle.

Lean, powerful, and expensive, tan couch set hails from Elite Leather via ebay. 100% aniline, he don’t mess around with frou frou binders or chemicals, preferring instead to flash his scars and wrinkles like the badges of patinaed wisdom they are. He may be a tough, no nonsense kind of a guy, but he also knows how to make sweet sweet love to your body. We will call him Blake.

The Interloper:

Blake and Krystle have always had an uneasy relationship. Who ever thought that navy and tan could be happy in a black and gray world, anyway? But through years of proximity (and counseling with a similarly hued rug), they’ve learned to make it work. Until she came along.

Could this skinny slut be anyone other than Alexis, the cougar of couches? 70s rosewood casing with (not so) virgin wool upholstery, Alexis is compact and calculating. Even though I knew Blake and Krystle — while not an eternal match — were at least reasonably happy together, I let Alexis sing her sweet siren craigslist song to me. Basically, she said, “I’m cheap! I’m easy! And I’m sexy as hell!”

And she was. All of these things. But she scraps like a hyena with both Blake and Krystle, plus she’s a rock hard bitch. So to the office she went. Well, at least the office is looking better.

The story should probably end here, with a tenuous but palpable equilibrium. But there is always conflict brewing on the backburner…

Side Plots:

Technology, with its innumerable wires and hideous shiny blackness, is the bane of my existence. Also, my inability to replace those chairs with small cabinets housing the speakers is driving me to distraction. This is an endless source of real life conflict between me and The Hunny, who is seemingly bound by a testosterone oath not to crapoflage his ugly stereo equipment.

Then there is the door of hell that prevents sofa seating against this wall — the wall that faces the tv. Good planning!

This is the best furniture configuration yet. We have tried every possible permutation, and here it is. I should be happy. There are starving children in China. Not happy. Never happy. Want new couch. Want new house with no weird floorplan issues. Want to stop wanting things. So, SOOL lovers — tell me what’s next. What happens in the next episode of the drama? Do Blake and Krystle get broken up or do they kiss and make up? Does Alexis the sexy 70s set get sold to a dealer for a buttload of cash? Do I reconfigure the seating yet again??? Nevermind, I am way too damn tired for that.

Do I buy this sofa off craigslist for 50% of the retail price, thereby turning my living room into a satellite of Karly’s house, since she has the exact same couch? I am 99.9% sure this is a bad idea for many many many reasons, but I like to hold craigslist bargains in my mind like a pebble and rub them constantly.

As if you didn’t already know that the real drama was me.

For, I do believe it may be nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune than to buy mismatched couches off craigslist. Because jigsawing a large impulse purchase into a decor scheme already undone by many many many previous impulse bargain buys is definitely taking up arms against a sea of troubles. And don’t forget that I must also bear the whips and scorns of yon Hunny’s pissed off countenance.

It’s a calamity, I tell you.

After I finish craigslisting my lesser used possessions, I’m considering behaving like a grown up and buying a brand new couch — something I choose, and not something that is chosen for me by the whims of the craigslist marketplace. Honestly, the very thought is so foreign… I’m still trying to wrap my wee head around the idea. New? Who does that? Well, I guess I might.

The biggest biggest hugest problem is of course what to buy. You see, it seems that most perfectly normal living rooms have one lovely couch, flanked perhaps by a pair of chairs in a different shape or fabric to add visual interest, like so:

Such an easy formula: A+B=Awesome. Ok, the fancy art helps, too.

But the stupid formula won’t work for us since we are a two couch household. Does this mean I have to buy two new couches? Because one couch is fine — one couch is easy to decorate around. But when you buy another, unmatched couch, well then shit just breaks down. Add in a different couch, and I start gnashing my teeth and tearing out hair (not my own, of course) in big disgusting clumps. Trying to solve the 2 couch equation turns me into a deranged, indecisive idiot. Because unless you’re starting out with a hardcore plan, it is very hard to do the mismatched couch thing and do it well.

See, this is not working for me. I kind of see what they were going for, but nope.

And this room is very pretty, but I’m not sure I would like it in real life.

I guess keeping everything monochromatic would make it easier — but kind of boring. Although I am in sweet sweet love with the couch resting against the wall…

This is kind of what I had in mind, mostly because I already have a navy chesterfield. What do you think about pairing it with a fat white slipcovered sofa? I’m worried they will look unbalanced when placed next to each other.

On the other hand, I guess I could just save up to buy two matching couches…

But I really don’t want this to happen.

Enough with the typing. Look at these pictures of matching couches and try to guess what I’m thinking about them:

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Exhibit C

UPDATE!

I can’t believe I left this one out… obviously the drama is making me dizzy.

Exhibit D

Why do couches have to be so bleeping expensive, y’all? And so big and hard to switch out? It makes deciding what to buy incredibly nerve wracking. I need a decider. Oh, but I’m happy to decide which couch to put in YOUR house… funny how that works.

Stay tuned for the next installment of my couch saga on Friday, where I hope to post personal pictures of my actual seating drama. It’s like freaking Sofas Of Our Lives around here.

In the meantime, I’d like to know what you think.

To match, or not to match? That is the question.

Remember how last week I decided I wanted a new sofa? And remember how you all (especially one extra kind New Yorker) were nice enough to give me all sorts of feedback on the CB2 Bolla I was considering? Well, I decided that since I didn’t get 18 million comments screaming about the couch being the most comfortable thing known to mankind combined with the fact that I couldn’t test drive it in person, i just couldn’t bring myself to order a couch I haven’t sat on.

So, Erin and I went on a wee baby little trip to the haven otherwise known as furniture row in Austin. Ok, it’s 2 stores in a strip mall, but doesn’t it sound good when I call it furniture row?

First we fell in love with this $3,000 gem at Copenhagen Furniture (a decidedly 80s-esqu store specializing in leather sofas fit for Patrick Bateman’s condo). What can I say, sometimes white leather just works. Oh, and did I mention that it was like sitting on a cloud made from baby tears and angel kisses?

Apparently baby tears and angel kisses are expensive to manufacture, so I had to be responsible and just say no. Everyone, please give Erin a round of applause for her nearly successful attempts to convince me otherwise.

A couple stops later we found ourselves at crate and barrel. I originally stopped in for another look at the petrie but one glimpse of the Oasis washed the memories of the tufted trendsetter right outta my hair. Oh dear Oasis! J’adore!! You are the one for me. Please tell our dearest Design Crisis readers how you look so different in person than you do in this picture. Be sure to let them know that your narrow arms and your knife welts add just the right touch of bohemian mod to your most heavenly comfortable downy filled frame. Will you also tell them that your linen slip cover is machine washable and (le sigh!!) totally pet friendly? Oh will you?! Tell them of our love!

So, yeah, I’m totally buying it. Like any woman who wasn’t raised by wolves I knew it best to go home and sleep on a (ahem) $1999 purchase. But it’s been nearly a week and I’m still giving my old sofa the evil eye while visions of the Oasis dance in my mind.

I plan to make the final purchase next week, which should have it in my hot little hands by mid-May. I’ll send you pictures as soon as it arrives.

Oh, and one last final note: unless you have some god awful story about how this particular sofa literally ate your niece’s leg, I don’t want to hear any bad mouthing.

Also, a second last final note: AB Chao recommended this AMAZING LOOKING site for sofa purchasing. I highly recommend you look at every beautiful piece in detail. I almost went for it, but I just have to sit in it first.

I’ve decided to replace my sofa. The couch I have now is pretty cute but for every point it gets in style it looses 12 for comfort. I’m not in a huge rush (would love to have one sometime this summer) but don’t want to drag this out by looking at every couch on the planet.

I had originally thought I would get the Petrie from crate and barrel, but with a $1600 price tag I’m a bit gun shy. Erin and I went to Macy’s yesterday where we test drove the $699(!!!!) Corona sofa but I found it was only $699 worth of comfort and I left with my back cracking. Literally.

As soon as we got back to Erin’s she forced the laptop on me and pointed me directly to CB2 (You remember Erin’s documented shopping problem, yes?) It was then that I remembered this beauty:

At $999 the Bolla is $1 under my dream budget and thus, totally fair game. The only problem? The closest CB2 is eight million and sixty four miles away. This is where YOU come in.

Ok, who has seen this sofa in person? Or, dare I ask, sat on it? My husband and I are both tall. Like serious tall not like pretend tall (I’m 6′ he’s 6’4″). I get that we won’t be able to lay across it, that’s fine, I have this daybed in the same room for lounging. I want a nice, deep, comfy seat that’s not too hard and not too soft. TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU KNOW.

Also, if you own this, how does it wear? I want to know all the practical details

Or, if you work for CB2, tell me about shipping returns if I get it and it makes me want to puke.

xoxo forever!
K

Welcome to the flip side of our decadent, 10-day vacay.  I missed you all dearly, but I have to admit that I did quite enjoy an extra hour to sit on my ass every evening during my sabbatical.  In honor of my recent episode of R & R, I’m bringing you several chairs that I would have loved to park my fanny on over the last two weeks.

Artist Dejana Kabilo covers chairs in hair for her Pretty Pretty Heads series.

While this may not be most ideal for holidays by the fire, and there’s a reasonable chance that I would end up in the kitty emergency room after Laser decided to make these locks her Christmas Dinner, I still wouldn’t shy away from placing one of Dejana’s creepy seats in my home.  Here are a few more:

Only slightly more practical are these chairs from design powerhouse, Lucy and Bart:

Prey-tell, do you suppose that is foam insulation spray wrapped around the legs of that otherwise sad chair?  How do you suppose they create the wonderful shades of turquoise?  I’m guessing airbrush.  What do you think the probability is of me recreating this dapper look for my house?

And on the opposite end of the design spectrum from L & B’s voluptuous seats:

The slim and sexy seating of Vladimir Tselser.  I see these as the counter-part to the perspective chair by Pharrell Williams.

The Troll Chair by lop furniture is possibly the most holiday-fire-side-chat friendly of the bunch, and the exposed structure on the underbelly is lovely, but those legs seem like a cop-out.  Of course, the day this baby lands on Craigslist is the same day I get slapped with the world’s largest traffic fine for racing across town to grab it.  Afterall, legs are replacable.

So, there you have it, my first post of 2010.  I still have family in town so I’m still on a bit of a mental vaycay, but we here at DC headquarters have big plans for the year, so pick your poison from the above and scoot on up to the screen:  it’s going to be a life-changing year to remember.  Probably.

Do you dudes remember the awesome contest we did with G Select last week?  Well guess what, we have a winner.  Random Generator picked #9  (I use this site) so, congratulations Garrick, you just won yourself a tam tam stool!  Time for the happy dance

If you didn’t win but are still interested in your very own Tam Tam Stool you can get one here, psst, it’s only $48!!  

As for me, I just got back in to town from a long weekend visiting my Mom’s newly renovated (and stunningly beautiful) house so I have lots of catching up to do today.  Tune in tomorrow for an awesome guest post from DC fave, Double Takes

This weekend I will be climbing every mountain and forging every stream until I reach the rainbow that is the complete office of my dreams.  Did that work?  Did you get that I will be gutting the pile of boxes that is my office space this weekend to make it look like a real life room.  In honor of my mountainous task, I give you the waterfall sofa by Gaetano Pesce 

image via the world’s best ever

See you dudes Monday

We here at the DC headquarters are so busy painting the last happy duck stencils along our borders, rehearsing with the marching band, and doing final fittings for the majorettes in prep for Erin’s baby’s homecoming that we can barely find the time to remember our names.  So, we’ve decided to do things a little differently for the next couple of months:  we’re rockin long weekends for the rest of the summer.  Yep, from now until the school bell rings we’re taking the easy way out on Fridays.  Here’s how it’s gonna go down:  we’re going to show you ONE pretty picture like this:

A quick description like this:

The Cloud Sofa by D.K. Wei:  a concept couch supported by nothing more than a magnet

And maybe we’ll even throw in a link to a new blog we’ve found like this:

Hey, check out this new blog we love: me melodia

Happy Summer, homies!  See you on Monday!

After a flurry of frivolous posts, it’s time to get back to what we do best sometimes here at Design Crisis: bring you the most exciting happenings in design and home furnishings. And also show you some crazy stuff and things.

To wit, I think we’ve all seen and lusted after this sofa by Lila Jang:

Just when the baroque trend started breathing its last gasps of pain and suffering, being as it was in the throes of certain death, this came along with its fresh and weirdness and revived a nostalgic yearning for our baroque buzz. When I saw the amazing work of Sebastian Brajkovic, I suddenly realized that the pump of love for fancy pomp had already been primed, and it has exploded in a gush of oozing adulation for this:

I imagine that Hunny Bunny and I would sit here, facing each other with domestic bliss brimming from our eyes, cups of tea perched on our laps, “How was your day, darling dearest?” “Oh my day is complete only now that we are together!”

Together! Our buttocks cushioned by a veritable menagerie of animals, we could feel the earth spinning on an axis of love as we gazed upon the endless movement of a hoooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrssssssssssse. Oh, those Italian futurists, they are so wry! Quelle inspiration!

Together! Pulling against gravity, our collective weight supported by the strength of beauteous bronze!

And if this were the only creation borne by dear Sebastian, he would still be a godlike hero for eternally uniting me with Hunny Bunny. Alas, alack, anon, Sebastian is a tireless worker for romancephiles everywhere. Share in the love:

Might there be room for three here…?

I shall call this one, “Lap Dance.”

And this shall be titled, “Courtship.”

Yep, them Campana brothers teamed up with the devil’s cartoonist to make the most magical chair on earth:

not only do I still like them, I would actually consider owning this chair (if I found it for cheep on craigslist, of course), it’s just ironic enough to survive in my home without making me look like some die-hard Disney fanatic.

A couple of weeks ago (back in the good old days when Erin was in town) we had Erin and Ben over for dinner, a couple several drinks into the night Erin and I started waxing poetic about how much we each really really want a Navajo rug.  My husband, who grew up on an Indian Reservation, gave us a grossly overstated argument as to why we could never ever have one in our house.  I don’t really remember the slurred whirlwind of his verbal manifesto but I know it had something to do with the smell of mutton. Not only were Erin and I totally talked out of that which we had previously coveted, we were also inspired to start an entirely new column for our blog:  Trendstoppers!  (Currently accepting name suggestions) 

We all see it every day, be it pirate ship lamps (which I’m still not totally adverse to), hypercolor furniture, or X-rated decor, it’s out there building momentum and, well, sometimes it just needs to be stopped before it starts.  We need to lift the wool from atop the eyes of the greater populace and just say, hey, dudes, this shit ain’t cool.  Par example:

rendez-vous wallpaper by Atelier Blink

Maybe it’s just that I’m bored of Damask, and even more bored of variations on Damask.  Maybe I would like it better if the people were interacting with each other more, right now it’s just a bunch of people doing (gasp) sexual acts floating independently on the canvas.  While it’s reaching for edgy and shocking, I’ve really only got one response: yawn.

Liquorice Cherry Wallpaper from the  Paper Voyeur Line by DED

I do like this version of dirty wallpaper a bit better, I really appreciate that you have to look closely to even notice the erotic ladies.  It’s more thought out and less contrived than the Atelier Bank version.  With Atelier Bank, you get the feeling that they expect to sell tickets to the show based on how many people stand outside the theater protesting.  All shock, no design. Paper Voyeur brings a bit of style to the table but, well, I can’t shake this as anything more than just a novelty that I’ll want to rip down within six months days.  Besides, the fact that 2 companies are making dirty wallpaper just makes the whole thing tired before it even has a chance to really get going.

The trend continues with this acrylic abomination:

‘her’ chairs, produced by casamania by frezza, 2008 via designboom

I really can’t begin to express how much I hate this chair.  I can just hear the designer now, giving the obligatory argument about the female form.  Just thinking about it makes me want to barf all over his entire collection of sketchbooks (which I’m sure are filled to the brink with poetry and torn out pictures of water collecting in gutters and plastic bags gently tumbling across the street)  Now I need to barf all over this blog post.  I have no problem with the female form, but I do have a problem with the sappy term female form.  And with bad design.  These chairs are literally butt ugly and remind me of what Maxx Headroom would have made if he had a sketchbook and a Chinese manufacturing plant.  

Just to contradict myself (but also to prove the point that dirty minds are running rampant through our living rooms) I’ll show you a  sexy chair that I wouldn’t mind sitting in:

The Perspective Chair by Pharrell Williams

Don’t you just see how much sexier (and sooo much dirtier) this chair is than that woman-butt chair above? It’s so much more clever as well.  It’s not all ass in your face, it’s more like, hey, have a seat, woah, shocker!  

I guess there has to be an exception to every rule.  

At the end of the night, after we’ve all had too many drinks, it’s probably best not to go home with the slutty decor, it’s just a cheap thrill that you’ll most certainly regret once the sun comes up in the morning.  And it just might smell like mutton.