Category Archives: Den

The Endearing: My favorite part of our house

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Sometimes it seems as though we always talk about the improvements we’re making to our house without thinking much about the parts that we actually like as they are. I’m sure many people are the same way–it’s always easier to point out weak points than recognize strong points. So today I want to talk a little about the part of our house I like best the way it is and later this week I’ll spend some time on the part I can’t wait to change.

The Endearing: Pine Paneling in the Den

We’ve mentioned it plenty of times by now and you’ve seen parts of it in pictures, but we’ve never fully addressed the pine paneling in our den, I don’t think. So our den is covered with pine paneling (which we think originally came from the pine trees they cut down to build the house–we’re the only house in the neighborhood to mysteriously have zero pine trees), and when we first moved in it seemed like something we’d want to change. To call it dated would be like calling my dog, Ripley, excitable (she’s basically wired when she’s not asleep).

But it didn’t take long for me to move in the vintage stereo system and record collection. If anything fits with vintage electronics, I think, it’s pine paneling walls. I like the paneling so much because it makes the room seem warm in the way that used bookstores or cabins seem warm. Or like a really old British-style pub that’s full of real wood and leather. Which all this seems to boil down to the fact that it’s old. You won’t find real wood as the walls in many new houses, I don’t imagine, and I like that this room makes records and 60′s style couches look appropriate.

Kristen seems to have come around on the walls as she’s gotten furniture that matches the vintage (accidental) style in the room.

As long as I can keep Kristen happy with the old-timey pine paneling walls, I’ll be happy with this room just the way it is.

Are there parts of your house that you haven’t changed and you’re nuts about? *Stainless steel appliances don’t count.

 

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And up in the nursery an absurd little bird…

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…is popping out to say… Oh wait, we’re not there quite yet. First, a quick back history. For my birthday a few months ago, Ed’s parents gave me a gift certificate to Crate and Barrel (cue choir singing the “Hallelujiah Chorus”). Yipee!

Oh, how I’ve hoarded this little gem in my e-mail inbox. I’ve perused catalogs that come in the mail, browsed for way too long on the website, and generally thought about this wonderful gift no less than once a day for the last few months. Okay, so maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I was pretty excited about what it might afford me.

Then I read the fine print. In addition to Crate and Barrel, I could also use it at CB2. Holy cow, my head nearly exploded (in a good way). I heart CB2 like crazy.

So I got on CB2′s website and started looking. My first inclination was to look through the sale items, so I could try to get as many things as possible. But then I remembered this wonderful little guy I saw in a catalog one day. Back then, Ed had dismissed it with a sarcastic little laugh, and I couldn’t justify such a frivolous purchase, so I forgot about it. But birthday money is meant for frivolity. “Buy something special!” “Get yourself something you’ve been wanting!” “Use this to get something you wouldn’t buy yourself!” These are statements people always say when they give you money or a gift certificate.

So I did.

And it’s here.

And I did the happy dance when I got home from work yesterday and found this on the counter.

 

I scrambled for the scissors and got to this.

I removed all the bubble wrap and pulled out a smaller box and opened it.

Do you know what it is? No? Well, I suppose I didn’t give you much to work with. I’ll give you a hint.

Still no? Okay, I’ll give you another hint (from The Sound of Music).”And up in the nursery an absurd little bird is popping out to say ‘cuckoo’ ‘cuckoo’”

 

Agh! I’m so excited I can hardly stand it. I realize this post is a bit too excited, a bit too ecstatic, a bit too loud, but is that not the most amazing clock? I have a thing for birds in a big way, which I think I’ve failed to mention before, so it’s yet another way I get to incorporate birds into the decor. It also will be a perfect addition to our midcentury modern-styled den. In fact, I have big plans for it to go on a custom cabinet we’d like to build to house the stereo equipment.

But for now, I will just enjoy its cuteness. And once I get some C batteries, that bad boy is going to be cuckooing all over the place. Or actually, once an hour between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

Happy birthday to me!

 

Do you have a favorite Crate and Barrel or CB2 item that you’re just ga-ga over? Are you swooning for this guy like I was a few months ago?

PS. You can get your very own here.

PPS. Disregard the poor photo quality. It was dark, and I was excited.

 

We weren’t paid or perked to talk about CB2 or this clock, Kristen is just that excited about it.

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Door Knobs and Broomsticks (Sans Broomsticks)

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A while back, Kristen picked up some little ceramic closet doorknobs to replace the plain door knobs we have on some of our closets. (These are non-magical knobs by the way, unlike those in Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Angela Lansbury reference. Pow.)

In our den, we have a sizable coat closet with two shutter doors. The knob on the left door fell off and got lost some tie ago, and the remaining knob was pretty plain looking, so we figured we’d put some fancier knobs on this closet since we spend so much time in the den.

Here’s the closet before:

Taking off the remaining door knob and the screw left in the other door was just a matter of taking out screws. This involved almost getting into the closet to get to the screw heads.

After I got both the old screws out. I had to screw in the new knobs. The threads on the new door knobs were a little larger than the holes in the doors, and the new knob screws didn’t have slots for screwdrivers, so I had to screw them in by holding onto the heads with pliers. This took some time.

After the screws were all the way in, I threaded nuts on the back side to keep them in place.

It’s not a huge difference, but it’s definitely an improvement. Next, we’ll get a few more knobs and put them in some closets we have in the back addition of our house.

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Thresholdin’ It Up

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We’ve recently made some small-to-large improvements in our house’s flooring by putting down FLOR carpet squares and then pulling up old carpet in another room. After we made these changes, we were left with weird carpet-to-hardwood and hardwood-to-linoleum doorway transitions. Or non-transitions. So until now, we had carpet squares that just kind of hung over the hardwood in our hallway and a bare spot that shows three (!) levels of linoleum on top of the hardwood flooring in our kitchen to dining room doorway. Instead of continuing to look at these poor transitions, I figured we could put down some simple thresholds to make the rooms seem a little more finished.

The thresholds are the ribbed metal sort that, to be honest, aren’t the best things to look at, but they’re at least a step in the right direction. Today, I got a gold metal threshold to transition between the carpet squares and the hardwood hallway and installed that bad boy.

Now, the metal thresholds come in two lengths: 36″ and something much longer (I didn’t look because I knew it wouldn’t fit). So I also had to pick up a metal hacksaw blade so I could cut the threshold to fit our doorway. Cutting almost always means measuring, so I had to do some measurements to make sure I cut the threshold to the right length. This particular doorway also has a little doorjamb piece that meant the threshold had to be one length over the carpet and a shorter length over the hardwood.

I needed the carpet side to be 30″ and the hardwood side to be just a little over 29″, so I took off a little less than 0.5″ in the middle–this is turning out not to be as clear as I want, but I think the pictures will make it easy to see what I mean.

you can see my marks for where to cut the bottom right corner off

After I measured the doorway and made some pencil marks on the underside of the threshold, I went at it with the hacksaw. A few minutes of awkward holding the threshold over a work bench to keep it steady enough to cut, I had the threshold sawed up so it’d fit in the doorway.

and here it is cut. turned out to be a little more than 0.5"

Then it was as easy as nailing it down to the floor. Ain’t nothing to it.

It might not look super fancy, but at least it’ll keep the edge of the carpet from getting pulled/messed up. There’s been talk of painting the thresholds so they aren’t so bright gold. We’ll see how bad it is to live with the gold first, I guess.

We’re thinking of using a hardwood threshold for the doorway between the kitchen and dining room. Maybe a weekend project.

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Old Turntables New Folks

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We’re pretty big into music around here, and we’re pretty old-school-type audiophiles. We have an iPod (one of the old iPod minis that Kristen got when she bought a Mac about 6-7 years ago) that we don’t really use and we occasionally hook up the computer to our stereo. Most of our music is on CDs, tapes (me mostly), and vinyl. We have lots of vinyl (courtesy of various former grad school teachers who wanted to unload their collections. I’d say a good half of the records we have are in closets because we just don’t have enough shelving for them all (which we’ll hopefully fix in the near future when I build a stereo cabinet). You can see our somewhat sad stereo table here. The point being, we listen to lots of vinyl, some old and some new. We’ve had a USB turntable for a couple of years that works pretty well considering how inexpensive it was and how ugly it is.

Pretty much since we got the USB TT, I’ve been planning on getting a good quality, vintage TT. Since we don’t live in a big city, or really near one, most of my vintage audio shopping happens on eBay. You can imagine the problems involved, but you won’t have to, I’m going to tell you all about them.

My search for a vintage TT has so far been pretty sad. As of this writing, I have 4 TTs here at the house, only one of which gets used. (This is where you start to think I’m a little off. Maybe I am. Actually, I am a little off, partly foolish, and completely impatient. And so I now have 4 TTs) The problem has been that the TTs I’ve gotten on eBay have arrived with various degrees of problems that either weren’t explained in the listings or I didn’t know to look for them before I won the auctions.

Here’s the rundown on the TTs I’ve bought, what’s keeping me from using them, and what I know now to look out for when I (obviously) buy the next one.

1. Sansui SR 212

This TT I bought about a year ago and is, according to audiophile forums, a pretty decent 70′s Japanese TT. It has a suspended platform for the platter that is supposed to help keep the records from skipping if the TT is jostled. It’s a belt driven TT, and it has a counterweight on a string substituting for the little anti-skate dial usually found next to the tonearm (although the TT I got didn’t come with this counterweight). Plus it looks bitchin’ with its fake wood base.

The Problem: When I set this TT up and tried out a record, the speed was off. The record played noticeably slower than it should have (I figured out that it spun at about 31-32 rpms instead of 33, which turns out to make a big difference). The belt was supposedly new, and I oiled the parts that needed oiling, and still 31 rpms. Something on the inside just isn’t getting the speed right. Trying to find someone locally who understands this problem and can actually fix it has been impossible so far.

2. Sanyo TP 727

I picked this TT up about a month or so ago, and when it came in, everything seemed great. It played at the right speed and it sounded good. Until it got a couple of tracks in and the needle and cartridge (the part the needle is attached to) started to drag on the record.

The Problem: I realized that the tonearm was missing its counterweight. Clear as day and I didn’t even notice. Trying to find a counterweight for this particular model has also, so far, been impossible. So I strung up the counterweight from the USB TT and it seems to play fine (even though I know this is not very good for my records).

3. Yamaha YP D6

The most recent TT I bought I just knew would be the one that worked. The listing seemed pretty sound, it clearly had the counterweight, and it was reported to play great. Also, it has the nice fake wood base I like so much.Then I got it set up and Kristen noticed that as the records played, the platter (where the record actually sits) kind of wobbled.

The Problem: Come to find out, the platter is warped slightly, and the spool that the platter sits on is crooked. So technically it plays the records, but there’s a bump every revolution that messes with the sound and probably puts more pressure on the needle than it should have. Bad things.

Here’s what I’ll be looking for the next time I buy a vintage TT. First, I’ll make sure that it has all the parts (e.g., counterweights) that is should have. Then, I’ll make sure to ask the seller questions about the playing speed, if the belt is new, and if the platter spins level. Also, and I learned this after the first TT, I’ll make sure to only buy a TT that can be returned. The Sansui was sold as-is, the Sanyo I could have returned, but apparently it cost more to ship it than I payed for it, so the seller just told me to get rid of it and gave me my money back. The Yamaha is due to be shipped back this week.

If you’re looking to get an old TT, and are looking on eBay, that’s awesome. But you should be a much more inquisitive and patient to make sure you get one that’s worth the money and actually works. (Remember that I’m basically Veruca Salt when it comes to buying these things. That’s right, I’m not above dropping a Willy Wonka reference.)

I’ll let you know how the next TT works out–it shouldn’t be too long now.

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