Design
July 19, 2012
By Amy Feezor
He’s based in Orange County, California, but Jonathan Lo, founder of J3 Productions and the mastermind behind the blog Happy Mundane, spends his weekends at a getaway in the San Diego area. And although the rented beach house is a place to take a break from the busy week, the space still acts as Jonathan’s official “second office.” (After all, who doesn’t have to sneak in some work on a Sunday every once in a while?) Appropriately decorated with pops of aquamarine, the temporary office offers everything a guy on the go needs: just enough room to work, a designated place for a printer, bits of art for inspiration, and easy access to the ocean when break time comes around. Read more
Balance, Design, Products
May 26, 2010
By Heather John
What was the most challenging aspect to the remodel? Hands down, the garage doors. We live in one of the most historically intact neighborhoods in the country, and so when selecting doors, it was crucial to preserve the visual integrity of our 1920s cottage (yes, 1920s qualifies as “historic” in Los Angeles). But try finding a good-looking carriage door that doesn’t cost the moon and stars for your garage. It’s harder than you think!
So our contractor, Billy Hartman, built it. He had a welder make a metal frame, which he then covered with wood. I ordered some cast-iron straps and pulls from House of Antique hardware. And for paint, the color idea came to me while I was sitting on our front steps getting ready to go for a long run to clear my head. Slate blue! The color is Benjamin Moore Affinity #495 Azores. The dreamy cream trim around the door is a custom color and we will be repainting all the wood trim on the house this gorgeous hue next month. Also, the dingy Navajo White currently on the exterior stucco will also be repainted next month in a heavenly warm gray. And so the love affair with paint continues…
Design
April 26, 2010
By Heather John
It’s no secret that I’m obsessed with paint. There were a million things on my to-do list this past weekend, but the moment our toddler went down for his daily nap, I jumped at the chance to spend an hour or two playing with paint instead. Currently our house and garage are painted with a depressingly dingy Navajo White and dark brown trim. I can’t wait to paint the exterior stucco of the garage and our house in a custom Benjamin Moore color called Meadowood Gray, and the trim in Meadowood Cream, based on the color scheme of Meadowood Napa Valley where my husband and I got married. The guys at Paint Works in St Helena shared the paint formulas. For the accent color, which will be featured on the garage door and the shutters on our house, I’m playing around with a few Farrow & Ball colors. The end result will be a surprise, but here is sneak peek at possible contenders…
Balance, Design, Products, Technology
February 15, 2010
By Cerentha Harris
Photo: Jim Franco: www.jimfranco.com
Talking to Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, co-founder and New York editor of Apartment Therapy, is fascinating. You start to understand why this online community, with its 4 million monthly visitors, is so popular. During the course of the interview Maxwell manages to move seamlessly from a discussion about blogs versus newspapers and his time as a Waldorf teacher to European home offices and what color works best in a living room. Every topic, big or small, is given serious consideration. There is an underlying kindness to Maxwell that permeates the site. As he says “Apartment Therapy isn’t snarky, or edgy or even fast, it’s not the newest latest thing we are covering. The whole goal was to help people with their homes, to get them over the finishing line, most would love help from an interior designer or architect but don’t know where to start.” Apartment Therapy has become a very good place to start.
But, enough from me, here is Maxwell:
On blogs: “My wife is a real magazine reader and there’s so much discussion around the demise of magazines and whether blogs are undermining them. Blogs don’t compete with magazines – we compete with newspapers. You post on a blog and then move onto the next thing, it’s very forward looking, fast. And much closer then to a newspaper model than a magazine model.”
On his years as a Waldorf teacher: “[Those years] very much inform my work – now it’s just a much bigger classroom! After teaching for 5 years at a Waldorf school I could have gone on and taken a new class. But I wanted something else. I wanted to live on a larger plane, schools can be small parochial places. I wanted to be rid of the politics.”
“And I had studied design, my first job out of college was as a designer. And I was still very much interested in design. Waldorf is connected to design right down to the chairs and desk and furniture and the color of the walls through all the grades. Design is central and there is a strong belief that the right design can have a very positive effect.”
“I did home visits and the children who had ‘good’ homes – neat, clean and well organized, did better in my classroom. Not necessarily the smartest – it was the ones with a good home foundation. And I thought a lot about that. I was fascinated with that. Being a teacher you need to live the model life. You have to start where you are.”
On starting Apartment Therapy: “At this time I found myself reading the business section of the newspaper more than any other section. It was that time in America before Bush where there was a real optimism in this country around business – business was creative and practical and honest. I craved that opportunity.”
“So in 2001 I started what turned out to be an early version of Apartment Therapy in the summer and gave myself a year to try it out. If it didn’t work I would go back to teaching.”
Read more