Website of Jason Lopes

It usually takes me a long time to make a decision on purchasing things for our home.  I’ve been looking at a lot of different types of rugs and was pretty close, a couple of times, on pulling the trigger on a Popcows cowhide rug.  I ended up stumbling across Picked by Hand.  Their prices seemed very reasonable and, while their selection was small, I found something I liked. 

I ended up ordering a 6’x8’ Rayas Rug to go in between our sofa and armchairs.  So far I’ve managed to keep everything in the house very muted in color since I had planned to  be very selective about how I introduced color into the decor.  I really hope this works out the way I planned it.  Only time will tell… we’ve got to wait about 4 weeks before getting the rug delivered.  Now if only I could decide on which houseplants to get….

….ICFF 2008

Hot damn, these cabinets look good!

The Ona MW series cabinets are chock full of powder coated, steel goodness with wooden fronts.  Nice combination of industrial and organic elements.  They’re also reasonably priced started at under $500 for the smaller version with a single drawer.  Once you move up into the double drawer, larger version you’ll end up paying over $1000 per unit.

I think I need to pick up a new digital camera.  While my Casio Exilim S880 performs adequately in well lit spaces, I’m ashamed at the amount of noise it introduces into pictures taken in dimly lit areas.

This first picture is of our new stairway, railing and offers a partial glimpse of our new front door.

This is another shot of the stairway/hallway, taken from the living room.

Here is a picture of our kitchen with the upper cabinet lights turned on.  I still need to finish the last row of tile on the backsplash but haven’t had a chance.  It looks ok without it but I wanted to clean up the edge with a trim kit from Schluter Systems.

Here is a picture taken of our living room.  Right now it’s sparsely furnished with a Reed sofa and two Blox armchairs from Cassina.  If time permits I’ll build some coffee tables.  If not, I’ll  just pick something up as a temporary solution.  These things are built like tanks with a solid steel frame; I’m sure we’ll get years of use out of them.  The fabric is also of a very high quality.

This picture was taken from the living room and shows our dining room and the door into our backyard.  Next spring I’m going to attempt to build a deck back there.  The solid walnut dining table is made by an Australian company called X-Pand.  It’s a clever design that can grow to accommodate more guests without  requiring the use of leaves; Instead, it uses an accordion-like center structure made from thin strips of wood.

Recently, Apartment Therapy posted, on  their weekly sales calendar, that Cassina was having its yearly warehouse sale.  Fortunately for me, it was at the Huntington warehouse which is only about 30 minutes from my home.  I left work early on Friday and Christine and I were off to do some furniture shopping.  Despite the fact that we didn’t buy anything I ended up leaving a happy camper; they had tons of great stuff in immaculate condition and I knew if I returned for the final two days I would find a hidden gem.  This was pretty much the polar opposite of the Ligne & Roset warehouse sale that Christine and I attended several months back; most of the furniture there looked as if it had been horribly abused and the prices were unreasonably high.

On Saturday we returned, after a good night’s sleep, determined to find a good deal.  Surely enough, we spotted a, deeply discounted, Reef Sofa, in new condition, that we hadn’t see on Friday.  The sales assistant there confirmed that they had unboxed the sofa Friday before closing.  We haggled our way into a better discount and purchased the sofa.  Our goal mission was successful, but we weren’t yet done with our shopping.  We spent a good deal more time looking for arm chairs.  We saw two, beautiful Blox chairs for sale, but their price hadn’t been steeply reduced and the sales person didn’t seem too keen on dropping the price further.  That didn’t deter us; we knew we had to return Sunday to pick up the sofa, since we didn’t want to pay the outrageous $300 delivery fee, so we figured we could haggle him down on their last sale day.

Sunday rolled around and we rented our U-Haul truck and drove back to Huntington.  We spoke with the same salesperson again regarding the Blox chairs and, after more haggling,  he agreed to drop their price and give us a whopping 70% off! 

Finally, many moons after our first floor renovation is complete, we have furniture in our living room.  Sometime in the coming weeks I’ll take some pictures of our home and post them.  I’m pretty happy with the way things have turned out.