A successful day

A quick note to say that we had a successful day shopping yesterday - we bought the couch and a buffet (which we're going to re-purpose as a TV unit). Contrary to the advice we'd had previously, the store said it will be ready in three weeks, but they're going to store it for us until we're ready to move in. Exciting! I was going to take a picture of the buffet, but I completely forgot when we were at the shop - I'll try and remember to take one again some time.

In addition, we checked out a few curtain places, and had some productive discussions around curtains. We found a couple of places that would be happy to make curtains with the fabric Dana found on duckcloth.com.au (blogged about previously), which was promising. We actually found a few swatches of cloth in the shops that were quite good as well, and would probably be a fair bit cheaper.

Dana's been looking for alternatives to side tables, because we won't really be able to fit any in around the couch. She's come up with the idea to use small stools that can be moved around, or used for additional seating as needed instead. A leading choice at the moment is the replica Xavier Pauchard Tolix stool pictured in several colours below.

These have the advantage of being stackable and well sealed against the weather, so they could be used outside without too much worry. However, they are quite expensive.

I'm feeling really upbeat about the whole thing at the moment, good times. Now time to finish watching season one of Mad Men and argue with Dana about what sort of home theater setup to go with - she prefers the more streamlined home theater in a box type setups, where as I prefer a more chunky (and slightly higher end) dedicated receiver and speakers. I have a suspicion that her point of view will probably win out in the end - it usually seems to. 

 

Edit: I should clarify the reference to the home theater setup above - Dana would prefer that they were invisible, or in fact, were not purchased at all, where as I would prefer some sort of ridiculously expensive and ugly home theater room instead. The discussion at the moment is about where we compromise between them all, based on budget at the available options. And also that we don't have a home theater room.

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!

Marketing works

I'm so very looking forward to the Tron Legacy movie, their slick advertising and flashy special effects have me salivating already!

I'm waiting until December with baited breath! In the mean time, I think I'm going to try and find a copy of Tron - I wonder if it's available on blu ray...

Colouring in the lines

I realised it's been a little while since I last posted on here. There's a few reasons for that, but the leading contenders are work (busy!) and also no successful site visits. We did do a drive by the other day, and it doesn't look like there's been too much progress on our house, but there's been some serious digging going on in preparation for the rest of the internal roads.

We also ordered a lamp for the living room (mentioned previously) from Aero Designs. I'd hoped to have it by now, but they tell me they're having issues with their suppliers.

Anywho, what I can say, is that we've been thinking a lot about couches. There are currently pictures of them spread all over the living room floor, and their pros and cons come up at least once a night. Will the one we're keen on be too big? Does it look too big in the new place? Would it fit in our current apartment? What about the colour? Will we have enough seating? Could we actually fit any other seating in anyway? Leather of fabric? Which colour?

Sometimes we think we've resolved a lot of these questions, or at least have answers for them, and they come round again to haunt us. I guess the biggest one that was a problem for us early on and continues to be is whether the couches we're interested in will fit. Actually, I was just reading an earlier blog post, and it really looks like we've been going round in circles for a while now.

The funny thing is, since I first wrote about it, I think we've almost come full circle. We decided that the couch that we were keen on at the time was too big for the space, at 3.1m by 2.5m in an L shape. This led us to look at all sorts of other options, but the one we've just about settled on now is 3.3m by 2.475 - really not that much different at all, and in fact, bigger in one dimension!

However, I've convinced myself that this will actually work, for a couple reasons. First, I've bought some grid paper, and have spent a good half hour of my lunch break sketching out the the proportions of the room and the couch, and I think it will be all good. I may have copped a bit of flak from my work mates for my diligent ruler and pencil work, but I still think it's worthwhile.

Second, we've revised how much room we need for the dining area - we're going to have quite a lot less crap in there in the end. Third, the couch we're thinking about now is quite low, and the ends of it can double as side tables. The short end of the L, facing towards the TV also will not have an arm rest, but a low cushion instead, thus not cutting the end of the couch off.

Finally, the couch we're looking at is modular, and can be converted into a different configuration if we have a large dinner party and need more room in the dining area. It can also be converted into a decent size bed for overnight visitors.

For those that have talked to me recently, you may well be aware that I'm talking about the Kato from King Furniture.

The version pictured here is not exactly what we're thinking of getting - we're more keen on the 'deluxe' line that has slightly deeper seats. There are a lot of different packages that you can get, but the one that we're leaning towards at the moment is pictured below.

There's still scope for us to change our mind a bunch more times, but we're actually considering ordering it in the next couple of weeks. King Furniture have a sale on at the moment, and manufacturing time is about 2 months. If we order now, it should be ready around when we get the keys.

Until we do get the keys, I'm going to keep playing around with the grid paper - it's good to see what we can actually do with the space. It's so big and empty at the moment in there, imagining anything in there is quite difficult.

And now on to netball. Fonzy and the Shark Jumpers have actually had a fairly good run since we dropped down a league (we were previously far above our skill level and were consistently thrashed). We're still not regular winners, but we're actually contesting more games now. May even get round to writing up a game at some stage...

Entertainment, art and clothing

Having just handed over an exorbitant amount of money for stamp duty (that I wouldn't have to pay if I'd bought a house any where else in Australia), my mind has already turned to things that I want, but cannot afford to purchase at this juncture. Some of them may well still be mine in the future, some less so.

The first would be in the "probably not" category - the artwork of Shawn Smith - which was featured on Engadget Alt recently.

The two pieces pictured above are "Gemsbock" and "Re-kindling". I encourage you to check out some more of his work at his website. Shawn created these three dimensional versions of pixel art, which I've always rather enjoyed. I may even have blogged about it at some stage. Anyway, they look excellent. They seem to be mostly made of small painted wooden blocks.

The second item I was lusting after this morning is an AV receiver and some decent speakers. This are firmly on the list of things to buy when we move into the new place. I haven't really made a choice yet, and there are ongoing discussions with Dana about the aesthetic nature of such a purchase (she thinks they're ugly, whereas I think they're beautiful), but we'll get there in the end. Speaking of Dana, she's discovered the magic of RSS feeds and is now subscribed to this blog. Hi Dana!

Anyway, at the moment, I really like the options from Yamaha.

Pictured here is the YHT-694AU, which retails at around a grand. I'm hoping that discussions with Dana can be progressed by the smaller "bookshelf" style rear speaker, and the knowledge that the receiver and central speaker will probably be hidden by a TV unit. It remains to be seen if that will be a successful angle. Wish me luck.

The last is a very groovy t-shirt from Etsy store Happy Family featured on gizmodoAU (if memory serves me correctly, anyway) called "Robot and Triceratops.

Two mortal enemies, together at last. Not really much more to say on that one.

To round what has been a thoroughly nerdy post out, here's a rendition of the Tetris theme on bottles....

PS: I totally forgot to mention, the Fonzy and the Shark Jumpers, my netball team, had an epic victory last night. We are also pioneering a special move I like to call "the Shark Jump" where you do a cross between a star jump and an epileptic fit in front of the opposition if they get the ball. Go the Jumpers!