Couchgate 2010: The Winner.

So. After further deliberation, and a telling seating test with some close friends, we have a winner in the couch choice saga. And it a circle of life, triumph of decision making by committee moment, it's the same bloody couch we were looking at months ago.

That's right, the winner is the Club Grand 2 by 3 seater from Bay Leather Republic, pretty much exactly as pictured above.

We've mapped it out in the lounge room of the new place. We've sat on them both in the same day. We've argued about colour options. This is it. We're going to order it this weekend. I'm feeling very comfortable with the purchase, and now only a little bit frustrated that it will take a further 10 weeks approx before it is made.

Now we can turn our wearied decision making powers to other issues. Dana is choosing to focus on curtains, and has lots of ideas about it. I'm actually fairly happy for her to do whatever the hell she wants on that front, but I will retain a power of veto, just in case.

Instead, I've been inspired to look at other furniture for the house, like "occasional" tables (which I think means little tables to put your drinks on pretty much), lamps, coffee tables, and other cool odds and ends. I blame a recent coffee table acquisition some friends of ours made that I saw for the first time on the weekend.

This is a replica Isamu Noguchi coffee table, (available from all sorts of places online, like Matt Blatt, ClickOn Furniture and Milan Direct), which looks even more gorgeous in real life than it does here. If my friends hadn't just bought one, I would seriously consider buying one for our lounge room - not in the least because they're cheaper online than a lot of the horrible generic crap that you see in furniture shops and they look soooo much better!

I'd never even looked into the world of replica designer furniture before, but I think I'm in love now. There's so much stuff that I like on those three sites linked above, but one of my quick favourites has been the work of Sean Dix (a selection of which can be seen here). So much more to discover and enjoy!

I'm not sure if it's some sort of huge artistic faux pas to buy replicas, but I'm pretty sure that originals would be far out of reach anyway.

I'm going to keep looking at the beautiful design to distract myself from the horrendous restructure that's currently going down in my workplace.

Speaking of distractions, its time for pub trivia - the mighty Dugongs ride again tonight!

Of house interiors

Over the last couple of months, Dana and I have been thinking more and more of what we'd like to do with the inside of the house. This is coming home even more now that it's already completed. For example, we've started looking for curtains, we have a couch pretty much picked out, etc.

In light of this, I'm going to try and post a bit more about the thoughts we have and the decisions we make regarding the interior. Hopefully this will mean that I'm chronicling excellent choices that we will love forever, and not a whinge about not being able to find good things in Canberra or the exorbitant price of having things shipped here. I'm upbeat about the former, but there may well be some of the latter.

Anyway, to kick it off, we decided on the weekend we want to get a Chad Floor Lamp, available from Aero Designs. 

It's also available in black, which I think we'd probably go for. We saw it in an Inside Out magazine - I got Dana a subscription to it for our anniversary last year. While a lot of the stuff in it is totally not my thing, there's an occasional gem in there, and its quite good to get ideas and see what's available. 

Anyway, the lamp is supposed to cost around $340, which doesn't seem that bad after having a look at some nicer ones in the shops recently. I reckon it looks ace.

To end things off, here's a track I really enjoyed listening to at work today - "Angels and Fly" by High Contrast (feat. Nolay). It didn't help me concentrate at all, but it did bring a smile to my face and get stuck in my head all afternoon.

Are really sure you want to make that an election issue?

I've pretty much had enough of work today. Since I'll still be here a while longer, I thought I'd take a moment out before my brain explodes and do some reading and a quick post. I've been loving Google reader's "recommended" fucntion at the moment. Sure it's not all relevent, but it seems to be doing a fairly good job of finding stuff that I'm interested in. On the flip side, it probably says alot about how much Google knows about me, which is a little creepy.

Now that I think about it, they really DO know a lot about me, so I shouldn't be surprised at all that they can profile my likes an interests. They even know where I spend my days! They even know where I am right now!

Thankfully I don't really care. And it has led me to a few cool things, like Glennz Tees. I found Glennz Tees via an interview on Vector tutes+ (that Google reader recommended) with Kiwi designer and illustrator call Glenn Jones, who makes up half of Glennz Tees. I would never have come near it if it hadn't been recommended.

I really like his work, the style and the humor of it resonates well with me.

The store is full of more awesome designs that make me wish that threadless's hive mind didn't vote up so much shit that it's hard to find t-shirts I like on there. If I wasn't trying to save so much (and failing) I'd totally order a bunch of tees, starting with the one below, Living Room Legend:

The prices are pretty reasonable, looks like around US$20 for most shirts, which is comparable to threadless, and probably still cheaper than what you'd find in an Australian shop.

Anyway, I'd better get back to work. Too much to do and too little time.

PS: I really miss the spellchecker function in the blogger.com post editor!

Ed Roth of Stencil 1 (via Design*Sponge)

Design*Sponge have an excellent feature on Ed Roth's apartment. Ed Roth has released a couple of books on stencil art, which I'm a big fan of. You can find out more about his art/books/blog et at the Stencil 1 website.

I like the exposed wood/bricks and a lot of the colour palette used, as well as the furniture.

Delays and more delays

This site is looking decidedly neglected. The reason for the neglect is that the ACT Department of Planning (and whatever else it is that they do) has still not approved the development application. We have confirmation from our real estate agent that this is the hold up and that it should be resolved "soon".

In the meantime, I think I'm going to change the focus a little bit and look at some other bits and pieces. The first is to start re-posting some design blogs that I've been enjoying, and also probably some game reviews.

Time to get into it! Firstly, here's some interesting post on desiretoinspire.net on a house by Whiting Architects. The house skirts a very fine line of being a little too severely modernist for my tastes, but some bits of it look supremely livable.




These two pictures are my favourite from the lot. The rest is all a bit white and stark edges, which is nice to look at, but I can't imagine living in.

Tune in next time, when I'll talk about my new PS3 slim!