DIY & Remodeling With Sarah Lonsdale
On a recent trip to London, I had breakfast at Nopi, star chef Yotam Ottolenghi's restaurant in Soho. He has three other cafe-delis dotted around the city, but this one, located north of Piccadilly (hence Nopi), is a proper restaurant. Designed by Israeli architect Alex Meitlis, the man responsible for all of Ottolenghi's projects, Nopi shares the pristine, all-white interiors of the other outposts, but is elevated by brass accents, including circles used as a recurring motif, from the restaurant's sign to its ingenious napkin holders. For the latter, Meitlis has taken a hardware store staple and transformed it into an elegant table accessory. Better still, the idea is easily—and cheaply—replicated at home.
Above: One of two dining rooms at Nopi. Meitlis is known for drilling down on details: Note the built-in brass hangers. Photograph via Lucy Will Show You.
Above L: The restaurant's brass napkin rings. Above R: Water bottles adorned with brass circles.
I found brass rings like the one shown here at my local hardware store. Trident makes a solid Brass Ring, two inches in diameter, available via Amazon for $3.95.
Above: The gleaming O's on the exterior.
Above: Nopi's streamlined, elegant table settings. Photograph via Architectural Digest.
Above L: The napkins are tidily rolled. Above R: Rings anchor the checks.
For more brass inspiration, check out:
And take a look at more of our Design Sleuth posts, including Wall-Mounted Stainless Steel Dish Racks and Vintage Cup Holders as Candle Sconces.
This post is an update; it originally appeared on January 8, 2014, as part of our New Start issue.
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Kitchens With Margot Guralnick
An unstocked summer house kitchen awaits. What would you bring to it? We've been happily picturing this scenario for weeks now and here are our answers.
For the Outdoor Table
Above: All of us would like a set of Enameled Plates and Bowls in summery pastels from Variopinte of Barcelona. They're available by the piece starting at €12 ($13.20) from the company's online shop; go to Variopinte for a global store locator.
Above: Alexa recently purchased a set of Pulled Napkins handmade in Ethiopia by Creative Women, a Vermont company that works with women's collectives around the world. The 20-by-20-inch napkins come in four colors and are $20 each at March.
Above: I have my eye on an old-fashioned Net and Iron Outdoor Food Cover; $18 from Connected Artisans. (For another bug deterrent, see Domestic Science: A Magic Glass Fly Repeller.)
Above: Julie's pick: a set of Cafeteria Trays; $24 each from Schoolhouse Electric.
Above: Our global shopper Izabella (who grew up in Sweden) selects Nel Lusso's Scandi-style Salad Servers from Father Rabbit in Auckland, New Zealand; $16 NZD ($10.91 USD) for the pair. Take a look around Father Rabbit in our Shopper's Diary post.
Above: My summer gift (from me to myself)? A Wind and Willow Home Dipped Cherry Wood Bowl for $85 ($101 with a beeswax finish) from Food52. For traditional wooden salad bowls, Christine stocks up on the Vermont Bowl Company's Colonial Hardwood Bowls, which start at $68.
Kitchen Prep
Above: This French Oyster Shucking Set, a leather hand shield and steel knife made in Thiers, France, is Julie's latest fixation. It's $98 from March in SF.
Above: Several of us grew up in New England, where grocery stores in the summer stock classic graniteware lobster pots for steaming shellfish and corn. This deluxe version has a spigot (for draining cooking liquid, which can be used to make chowder, among other things). The Granite Ware Lobster Pot with Faucet is $460 from Williams-Sonoma.
Above: We considered a slew of coffee makers, including Yield's fetching Ceramic French Press (currently back ordered). But for summer ease, the all-glass version of our trusty Chemex won out. We like the fact that it works equally well as a water (or wine) pitcher, and, as Alexa commented, "We've seen it in the kitchen of Dosa's Christina Kim and Donald Judd's restored kitchen at 101 Spring Street in SoHo. Enough said."
Above: During her family's recent extended stay in Berlin, Sarah picked up a Zena Star Vegetable Peeler, having read about it in Gardenista's 10 Easy Pieces: Best Vegetable Peelers. It's available for $4.95 from Simply Good Stuff and is "super useful not just for peeling squash and cucumbers, et cetera, but for making them into slivers for summer salads," according to Sarah.
Above: Jessica, who manages the Remodelista and Gardenista Markets (so she knows her kitchenwares), says her summer kitchen would be nearly set with a pair of Limited-Edition Yew-Handled Knives from Million and Clark. A five-inch chef's knife and a four-inch paring knife, with extra-sharp blades of 01 high carbon steel, are $295 for the two.
Above: Several of us swear by our Oxo salad spinners, but are ready to upgrade to this version. Instead of the standard plastic, it has stainless steel bowl that can be used for serving (and the inset basket comes in handy as a colander for washing berries). The Salad Spinner is $49.99 from Oxo.
Above: Meredith reports, "I often rent a beach house or cabin in the woods with a big group of friends on summer weekends. We're all foodies, and since we design the days around our meals, I've learned about a few essentials that will make or break the party: An essential, bring a cheap wine key (or better yet several); you'd be surprised by how many rental homes lack one. I like the Pulltex Waiter's Corkscrew; it's inexpensive and made in Spain, and the red makes it easy to spot (and to find when it's time to take it home with you); $7.99 (reduced from $9.95) at Williams-Sonoma.
Above: "I keep a pair of these Mini Herb Snips on the windowsill by the kitchen sink," says Gardenista editor Michelle. "When I cook, I use them to snip leaves from the herbs I've already picked (which are in a jar of water next to the sink). They're also handy for running out to the garden for some parsley, chives, or thyme at the last minute." The palm-size shears are $4.95 from Gardener's Supply Company.
Above: Justine has the summer kitchen that's the Remodelista standard bearer—see The Soulful Side of Old Cape Cod. One of her favorite things in it: her wall-hung Shaker Onion Basket; $45 from the Cooper Hewitt Shop.
Call us tableware obsessed. For more ideas, take a look at:
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Home Inspiration With Margot Guralnick
Full-service remodelers Tara Mangini and Percy Bright of Jersey Ice Cream Co. are vagabonds who move where their work is—and live in their project until it's done. Not long ago, they holed up for eight months in an 18th-century Catskills farmhouse that had been done up in an incongruous mix of heavy wood furniture and disco-era purples and oranges. Its NYC-based owners, Gideon Friedman and Rachael Bedard (he's in real estate, she's a doctor), told Tara and Percy to turn it into the sort of place where Wes Anderson would go as a creative escape. They pointed to some Arts & Craft wallpaper of angels and devils and encouraged them to let loose: "think color and pattern and vintage." The results? Let's just say movie set design and decoration might well be the couple's next calling.
Photography by Beth Kirby of Local Milk (who has a Jersey Ice Cream Co. kitchen; see The One-Month Makeover.)
Above: Tara and Percy's first move? "We cleared out the forest of furniture—a very nice dealer came and took it all, even the things he didn't want"—and we primed all the walls, so we could finally see what we had." They then performed a complete makeover in every room, starting with the front parlor, shown here. It has two-toned pigmented plastered walls, a specialty of Percy's that took years to master, and a collection of artwork and vintage furnishing, all of it gathered by Tara for a song "online, at Brimfield, ReStores, I look everywhere." The floral sofa, she says, "turned up for $150 at a local estate sale a week before we were done."
Above: The room opens to one of the nicest spots in the house: a screened-in back porch that's today's Before & After project on Gardenista. The wide-plank wood floor is original, "a blessing," says Percy. The couple considered painting the dark beams, but are glad they stayed hands off. Tara painted all of the trim in the house in shades of gray—"that took an eternity because it's all slightly different: What looks one way in one room looks five shades darker in the next. And even knowing that, in several cases I repainted it when it wasn't quite right." Here, the trim is Rockport Gray from Benjamin Moore.
Above: The eat-in farm kitchen was completely reconfigured. It has custom cabinets and a 36-inch Kohler Whitehaven Apron-Front Sink ("we've used it for several projects; it's really deep and it's available on Amazon"). The brass faucet is from Cifial—"we found it when we were working on Beth Kirby's kitchen, but it had a 12-week lead time, so we ordered it and it worked well here," says Tara. The ceiling lights are School House Electric's Otis design in matte bronze. Tara bought the vintage brass pulls on eBay—"they came in their original amazing packaging from the 1940s."
Above: The counters are butcher block from Lumber Liquidators. The inset shelves are original. "I knew I wanted to fill the kitchen with white ceramics," says Tara. "I collected it piece by piece, some for $1, as we worked on the house."
Above: Percy paneled the back walls with barn board purchased in the Berkshires from "a nice dude named Dave; for once, it was clean and sanded and we didn't even have to remove any nails," says Tara. They created an ingenious backsplash out of copper flashing purchased inexpensively online and nailed in place with copper tacks. The Wolf range came with the kitchen.
The floor was one of the trickiest jobs in the house—noting its rotting understructure, Percy initially planned to lay down barn wood, but after ripping out several layers of linoleum, he discovered a surprise section of gray-painted wood flooring. It felt sacrilegious to remove, so he painstakingly restored and rebuilt the floor as a patchwork.
Above: A distressed but solid folding table from the Brimfield flea market felt just right for the room. "It can be carried outside," says Tara, "and like the barn wood, everything looks good against it." The perforated ceramic pendant light is the Claylight, $129, from Etsy seller Lightexture.
Above: A breakfast nook off the kitchen overlooks the barn. They sourced all of the house's potted plants from Ikea and Home Depot.
Above: On the stair landing, Percy built a surprise perch out of barn wood with inset bookshelves underneath. The swing-out windows are original.
Above: The house has four bedrooms; our favorite, shown here, is papered in a CFA Voysey design called Apothecary's Garden; a reproduction of a 1926 pattern, it's from English Arts and Crafts wallpaper specialist Trustworth Studios of Plymouth, Massachusetts.
The iron bed frames came from Brimfield. The couple's buying strategy? "We often find one or two dealers who have good things and are looking to unload them for very little at the end of the day." The bedding is a mix from Target, West Elm, and Restoration Hardware.
Above: The couple paneled the powder room and painted it Benjamin Moore Seaworthy. The sink was in the room, and its brass taps came from Wayfair. The sconces were also found in the house and given new glass shades from School House Electric. The lion's head towel holder is from eBay.
Above: "Wallpapering is the one thing we don't do ourselves," says Tara. "Pros do it so well and so quickly." Shown here, Temptation, an eccentric 1889 CFA Voysey pattern from Trustworth Studios that the owners picked out at the start of the project ("Along the way, they visited a few times, but really let us do our thing," says Tara. "The house came together so much in the last weeks that there was a big reveal at the end"). Percy built the headboard from barn wood. The brass lamp is a $10 Brimfield find.
Above: The lofty master bedroom—formerly "painted red, blue, and yellow with a huge black pillar bed and cascading seventies chandelier"—was quieted down with tinted plaster walls and barn paneling (built-in ledge headboard included). Tara spotted the Twigs Pendant Light on Wayfair: "When I first saw it, I thought it was weird. Then I ordered something else, and seeing it made me long for the weird bird's nest." The built-in bookshelf is original. The bedding is from House of Baltic Linen on Etsy.
Above: The master bath—also custom plastered and here sealed with polyurethane—features a metal-topped rustic sink, likely from a potting shed, that a friend's mother spotted at a Massachusetts flea market. Percy and Tara replaced a "nasty little glass shower stall" with an open design patterned with marble hex tiles from Home Depot. The globe sconces came from a favorite local source, Zaborski Emporium, architectural salvage specialists in Kingston, New York.
Above: The house sits nestled on a hillside surrounded by woods. Percy and Tara left the exterior as is, but introduced an antique front door inset with circular glass for a bright entry, a nice detail should Wes Anderson happen to come calling.
See the back porch's transformation on Gardenista.
We've been avidly following the
Jersey Ice Cream Co.'s work:
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