Money…what a disdainful word. I sometimes love it, sometimes hate it, and often live in fear I won’t have enough of it. This is all normal. Everyone must make choices, decisions, look longingly at an item, or a destination that must wait for another time. This longing is a good thing. It forces you to ask why you want something (in my case it’s typically because it’s beautifully designed), and it keeps me up at night, devising ways in which I might obtain said object, or falling into a fitful sleep where I dream I own it. That about sums up my obsessiveness in a nutshell.
Amir Khamneipur’s . Gold Table
Unrequited love got me thinking about this. A few months back I read House Beautiful’s edition about small spaces. They featured an interior designer’s home in Manhattan. Just 700SF. Amir Khamneipur’s home is exactly the home I would craft if I had that kind of money. It’s so clever, it’s a grey goddess of color beauty, and it’s accented by mirrors, and metallics. I am a big fan of all. It features a gold dining table with a powder coated base in off white. It’s heaven, and I have been like a lovesick teenager doodling images of it on the pages of my notebooks, expressing my adoration at every turn, and finding a way to bring it up, casually in conversation. Ugh, a fool for love.
www.thechroniclesofhome.com – Jen’s DIY Grasscloth coffee table.
This table is in fact, one of Mr. Khamneipur’s own designs. You can buy it. This tiny little bit of a table, just 2 feet wide by 44 inches long, runs at a cool $7900. Well that price made my love go stone cold. The table is too small for even my little dining nook. If I am completely honest I had a moment of total insanity when I contemplated getting two to fill the space. Please! It clearly was not meant to be. Fate has a plan for me, and it’s not Amir’s table.
Left: Grasscloth Wallpaper . Wallpaper Direct Right: Benjamin Moore’s Peach Cloud
I got to thinking about customizing a piece that will appropriately fit the space. I do want that gold top, but the logistics and timing, not to mention the cost, had me considering another option altogether. What about grasscloth? How hard could it be to do make one on your own? Surely, there must be someone out there that does just this thing. Well in fact there is. I found a gal who has a blog called The Chronicles of Home. Jen even lives locally. Now she is a DIY’er, and I am not. I like to say – “You Can Do it….I can help”! Jen made her own custom grasscloth covered coffee table. Quite lovely. She riffed on a World’s Away Design, covering the base in grasscloth as well. Me, I plan to have my Dad construct the table, and my wall covering expert paper it. Once it’s papered I plan to run two fat gold metallic stripes down the center with a peach stripe crisply inserted between the two before I varnish the whole thing. I may paint the legs gold too instead of covering them in the grass cloth.
Left: Ralph Lauren’s Metallic Gold Paint Right: Farrow and Ball’s Lotus Wallpaper.
Love should be willing to meet you at least half way, don’t you think? Happy Home Adventures.