My radical radiator transformation

About a year ago, I put this radiator on eBay for sale. 

It had been in the kitchen (it looks old, but I think it's an Acova column design, which you can find in B&Q). Anyway, it took up too much space and got replaced with a tall, skinny one.

At the time, I wrote briefly about a man who'd come to buy it, because I'd been fascinated to discover he was planning to turn it into a chair.

And now, he has! Last week, I got an email with a photo of this beautiful looking thing. I can hardly believe it used to be fixed to the wall in the kitchen. What a wondrous piece of recycling.

The clever man behind this impressive transformation is Kent-based Mark Casswell, otherwise known as the Barefoot Welder. Look him up. www.thebarefootwelder.com

I heart Maria Westerberg

It's a couple of years since Swedish designer, Maria Westerberg, launched her brilliantly clever T-shirt chair – where recycled textiles are woven onto the frame, rag-rug style, that she designed especially for that purpose.

But this colourful version of it just popped up in the spring round-up from E-Side (an excellently stylish shop with impeccable green credentials, if you don't know it already): and it's a good excuse to revisit a brilliantly simple, beautiful design.

Maria's chair won the Green Furniture Award back in 2011, after she made her prototype using the old T-shirts donated by 40 of her friends, along with textiles including grandma's curtains and favourite old jeans.

Now you can buy the chair ready-woven, as seen above in the E-Side version, made by the manufacturer, Berhin Studios. It sticks to the same eco ethos, by using left-over fabric pieces from textile manufacturer Trevira. It will, however, set you back £850-£1200 (more expensive if you customise the colour).

But, rather brilliantly, you can also buy just the frame for £370 – which is still a lot of money, but not in the realm of large, slouchy chairs. And doing it that way, the chair becomes even more – personally – valuable too, as you get to create the upholstery by using your own well-loved old T-shirts, grandma's curtains, jeans and so on. Daunted? Don't be, the whole process looks pretty easy, you need to make sure you have at least 40 pieces of fabric, measuring around 40cm x 100cm, and then just follow Maria's popular YouTube instruction video...



The T-shirt Chair Rag Edition is available at E-Side.

It's lovely in the same way that the T-shirt lampshades I wrote about a few months back. And seeing the chair again also got me nosing around Maria's website, to see what other clever things she's been designing. I love her style – and the fact it's all created by re-using things just makes it even more brilliant.

Her Puffy, Tied and Tired giant floor cushion, above, is made from a large tyre and old silk ties. Genius.

I also love her wallpaper, top, made from the seven symbols of the Swedish political parties, and also the design she created for  a company who commissioned her to decorate their acoustic wall panels, bottom image above. It is called Old School, and if you look at the things making up this bright, graphic pattern, you can see why.

Find out more at Maria Westerberg's website.

A professional's guide to junk hunting part II

I posted up some pictures on Sunday to illustrate that day's Insider column in the Independent on Sunday magazine, which I write each week.

The theme was how to collect good junk and do interesting stuff with it. I interviewed Sarah Brunner, the co-presenter of a new Sky Arts 2 show, Design Dealers. She's a pro. She had some good tips. Now, to go with the images from last week, here is the extended version of what she talked about with bonus tips and images...

"Old toast racks (above) are also something you always see in nearly every charity shop – which, especially he 1930s ones, make great letter racks. Anything that looks nice and has a good form is worth picking up if it appeals to you. It’s just about thinking how you could get it into your home."

 “Lots of things can be made into lighting – including taxidermy. I love Alex Randall's work, especially this sparrow [swallow] light (above), which looks as it if has flown away and is trailing the lightbulb behind it."

Light by Dale Chihuly

"You also see people doing lots with old bottles and mason jars – it is quite a trend. And I like the work of Dale Chihuly, who has done hanging clusters of coke bottles and made chandeliers from them (above). Although neither of these projects are something the average person could or probably would try to do, nor afford to buy from the artists, they are still inspiring because it's about realising that you can take the ordinary and do extraordinary things with it."

Light by Alex Randall

"Brass instruments make great lights, too. People are doing some really beautiful stuff with them – and brass is set to be one of 2013’s biggest interiors trends, so worth taking a second look if you see a collection of old brass anything for sale on your travels. I have a euphonium in my own home as a light fitting: it took 15 minutes to do – you just buy a light holder and thread it through." (See the previous post on this topic for more details on this). Alex Randall also does interesting things with brass – check out her organ pipes and gramaphone trumpets, above).

"I keep finding lots of broken old glass beaded jewellery: I’m collecting it and using the beads to make Victorian-style glass bead flowers by threading them onto wire. These glass bead flowers (above, top) made from broken jewellery are heading over to Arrietty in Exeter, Devon, a lovely shop full of handmade and haberdashery. I'm giving hands-on upholstery courses there in March if anyone is interested." (See end of this post for how to contact Sarah direct.)

For sale on the Mint List, designed by Lilly's Lightbox

"Another thing to look out for is lightboxes – they can be fantastic for the gloomy corner that every home has: use them as they are [I know someone who has a little one as his bedside table – it casts a lovely glow] or you can have anything fixed to them – old photos, pictures of your children, vintage advertising signs… just take the lot to a sign-writer who will apply it to plexiglass and do the job for you if your craft skills don’t extend that far. It's not very expensive – I had some really big ones done and they only cost £100ish, so smaller ones would be much cheaper. I had an old 50s toothpaste ad with Marilyn Monroe in it that I really loved – and I took that to the sign-maker. The combination of light and colour really brightened a dark corner at my place."

The image above is in a brilliant new book, Teeny Tiny Gardening, which I will be writing about in full over the next few weeks. It is by Emma Hardy and published by Cico, and gives step-by-step instructions for this and other excellent plant-based projects. It is available to pre-order on Amazon

"I learned a lot from having to do retail window displays at my old junk shop Otto Retro in Devon (now under new and very good management – do check it out!): you have five seconds to grab people’s attention – one time, for spring window, I had loads of lovely 20s and 30s wooden dining chairs I’d collected, but broken and had no seats. So I made seed trays the right size for where the seats would have been and filled them with compost and grew grass where the seats would have been." (See photo above for a similar idea).

"Another great one for gardens is old filing cabinets – and you see LOADS of those at junk fairs or second hand shops, not even beautiful ones. Simply turn them onto their backs, remove the drawers and fill the cavities with soil and you have a perfect divided herb garden – and usually in great colours for gardens."

And here, in case you missed the original piece in the paper, are Sarah's original tips that go with the above-mentioned images I posted last week...

“Recognise what fills you with ‘object lust’ – then think how to get it into your home. For example, I LOVE 1970s glitter drum sets: wall-mounted, they’re shelves for rolled-up blankets; on the floor, a side-table. Approach junk-hunting by thinking: ‘what do I want to look at?"

“Teapots have many lovely uses. I like them as outdoor planters hung at intervals with wire.”

 “You can do LOADS with gorgeously old, paint-spattered ladders – like wall mounting one horizontally (with l-shaped hangers) and using it as a book shelf.”

“Find sources of inspiration before you go junk hunting: I particularly love James Plumb – they bridge the gap between art and utility with their repurposing.”

"Wooden skis are just beautiful. I like fixing them on walls – minus the foot holders – to hang fabric from. People are also making beautiful coat stands using three of them lashed together upright.” 

Does all that sound daunting? If you aren’t crafty – just source a good maker. Chances are, you’ll still have found a bargain, and a unique one that tells a story. You can also hire Sarah Brunner’s skills via the Design Dealers’ Facebook page. 

Parker Knoll gets pimped

Regular readers may know that I am a big fan of the social enterprise, Out of the Dark, who work with kids who might otherwise be not be doing great things, to pimp mid-century furniture into stunning, contemporary and colourful designs.

You can read more about them here. Meanwhile, check out what they have most kindly done to this tired but distinguished Parker Knoll chair for me. Here is the before and after...

It is designed, says Out of the Dark's chief restorer and mentor, for writing in. And so here it shall live. It is also possibly the most comfortable chair I've ever sat in. 

Thank you Jay, Jade and the hard-working, highly skilled team at Out of the Dark.

East London Furniture exhibition

If you are in London a week too late for the Design Festival (it's just finished), and you don't mind a bit of hipster, you might enjoy combining a coffee or a cocktail with the East London Furniture exhibition at the oh-so-east-London bar, DreamBagsJaguarShoes.

The installation, which launched in time for the Design Festival, remains in situ until November. East London Furniture have re-fitted out JaguarShoesthey entirely, using only recycled materials, found objects or waste.

The exhibition will also feature new illustrations from graphic designer, Alessandro Mistrulli, who designs their hand-drawn wrapping paper (£3.50 a sheet). It comes in owl, moustache or dinosaur and is printed on textured paper. It is nice.

I really like that they photograph every piece of found wood that gets turned into something new; the idea is that every piece of furniture sold has a record of its back-story – so you get to track where each bit of it was found and what it used to be. There will be an auction at the end of the exhibition in November.

Failing that, you could always just look at their online shop. They have NICE stuff. It's not cheap, but it's free to look...

I think the milk stool made from a single pallet (top right) is beautiful. The coffee table, £180 (bottom left) is reclaimed plywood and the feet are coated in industrial rubber, and I just love the large cube floor-light, £220 (top left). The wrapping paper (bottom right) is the stuff mentioned above. I'd love it more if I could knock these things up myself. Maybe I should invest, instead, in one of the Furniture Magpies short courses at West Dean College in Chichester.

Be a memorable host for all the right reasons

Yesterday, I said I'd post a bit about hosting guests, a topic I wrote about last week in in the Independent on Sunday and something I'm trying to do well right now myself.

Even if you only have a sofa, little details can really make a person feel welcome. And happy guests make for more relaxed hosts (and may even reciprocate in the future)…In the paper, space was limited, so here's the piece with added tips... (And I'd love to hear other people's tips too – best and worst guest/host experiences or ideas?)

In the tricky, open-plan living room, sofa bed situation, a room divider can create privacy (and the right one will look lovely propped against a wall when not in use too).

AA inspector Simon Numphud knows just the details that matter: “The two things most important things are a welcoming, comfortable bed and cleanliness – particularly the less obvious areas; shower curtains, pillows, plug-holes.” 

Numphud also advises “not presuming your guests’ tastes”. From number of pillows to breakfast, lack of say can feel overbearing even when kindly meant.

On which: know that thinking “it’s fine – it’s only been slept in once” is a niche attitude. Also pillow protectors (and clean pillows), plus the scent of fabric softener are more welcoming than the faint whiff of someone else’s unwashed hair, even if you're really close.

On the bed front, even if it’s a front-room fold-away, make it feel luxurious with – suggests Numphud – guest-only, high thread-count, crisp white linen, rather than the threadbare, weird coloured spare sheets gathering must in the cupboard. And have somewhere to stash bedding when not in use so you're not all sitting on the sofa looking at your guest's crumpled linen: those giant laundry bags are good (and you don't need to do Pound Shop check, they come in different designs like these).

Still on the front room bed: it doesn’t need to feel like a student sleep-over. As in a bedroom, have a lamp reachable from bed, and surface for a glass of water and a book (and ideally not just the coffee table). A chair will do, or the very portable (and beautiful) Hay DLM side table (above, left), from Nest, £140, or Ikea’s cleverly-shaped Stockholm side table (above right), £72. Clip on an Ikea Fas clamp light (above, bottom) £12.99 and you’re set. 

Room dividers, which can be folded away when not in use, are good for boosted privacy with living room sleeping – but can cost a bomb. Amazon has a decent, affordable range (or adapt an ugly one with nice wallpaper). I love the one above, made from old pallets, via Modified Originals. A decent carpenter, or enthusiastic DIY-er could knock one up easily. Find them by turing on your pallet radar, they really are everywhere. Or try eBay – here are some in Kent, UK, for example, for free.

Spare keys make a huge difference to how free even a weekend guest may feel, allowing them to nip to the shop go for a walk while you’re sleeping/showering/faffing. And, sounds obvious but it's easy to forget to mention the key for the window locks, or the knack for shifting a stiff frame – sleeping in a room without windows that open can feel very claustrophobic.

Beach lilos make excellent, cheap, emergency beds. Especially for children.

With older guests, offer a choice of blankets and sheets. A certain generation (yes, Dad, you) are very touchy about the former for their “lack of temperature control”. 

Atomic stove-top coffee maker, £259 (photo via Tim Blair)

Missing the right morning drink can make guests feel at your mercy. I prefer tea over coffee so never have the latter in stock, just hardly touched, stale packs languishing in the fridge, opened when the last coffee drinker came over – until a (frustrated) friend bought me some single serve filter coffee sachets. Meaning good fresh coffee. And in reverse, espresso heads – buy milk. I forgot I had one of these beautiful Atomic coffee makers, above, gathering dust on a shelf – acquired from my parents, who said they never used it (I just liked its curves as, sadly it doesn't seem to make Yorkshire tea). Then my brother spotted it and got it down to use... and reminded me he'd given it to the parents as a present. Oops.

Roberts Rambler radio, around £100

Bookish types will bring their own; for others – so they feel comfortable to retreat for an hour or two – new magazines, a TV, radio or wi-fi laptop are good things for mutual sanity, especially with longer-staying guests.

Nothing says pleased-to-see-you more than flowers. Or, in the case of my visiting family right now, a fridge full of beers...