Swamplot Archives by Tag: Furniture

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Openings and Closings: Galleria Gallery, Paulie’s Retreat, Not Mulch More

So what’s new?

  • Opening: There’s a big new Gallery Furniture taking over the old Pier One space in the Post Oak Shopping Center, across from the Galleria. Isiah Carey notes that there’s a (much smaller) “coming soon” sign out front. Also coming to the strip from Mattress Mack: a new and more upscale Kreiss Furniture store, where Pier One Kids used to be.
  • Closed: Paulie’s restaurant reports receiving an undisclosed “offer we couldn’t refuse” to close its Holcombe at Kirby location, and dutifully complied on Monday. The original Paulie’s, on Westheimer at Driscoll, will remain open.
  • Hoping to Spread: And Katharine Shilcutt reports that Otilia’s Mexican restaurant, the longtime Long Point standout, now “a bastion of the upper class yuppies who reside quietly in the nearby Memorial Villages and wash down their rice and beans with bottles of Merlot,” isn’t closing, despite rumors she had heard. But:

    it turns out instead that Otilia’s is actively seeking to franchise their restaurant. A bright sign by the register blinked this advertisement every five seconds as we ate, while the waitresses sullenly confirmed this fact.

Then there’s that Main St. mulch . . .

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Monday, February 16, 2009

Musical Chaises: Ligne Roset Moves the Furniture Around

Annie Sitton documents Ligne Roset’s surprise weekend move from that fancy strip mall on Kirby to . . . the River Oaks Shopping Center? Uh . . . wasn’t the mod French furniture store supposed to be moving this April . . . to West Ave?

And what does this move mean for Design Source, West Ave’s prize showroom of showrooms, that Ligne Roset was supposed to headline?

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Thursday, January 22, 2009

Designed To Move: Ginger Barber in Southgate



Itinerant Interior
Designer Ginger Barber is moving yet again: Her latest redo is on the market, reports Cote de Texas’s Joni Webb. This time it’s a 3-bedroom, 2 1/2 bath 2-story near the corner of Greenbriar and Holcombe in Southgate — but Webb spots furniture in the photos she’s seen in earlier Barber homes:

Her wonderful assortment of pine and dark wood furniture, down-filled upholstered pieces covered in linen slips, and all her textural wicker, seagrass, and stone moves from house to house almost seamlessly. . . . With no wallpaper, colored walls or patterned fabrics to contend it, the nomadic Barber can reuse her possessions, over and over again – which is a wonderful lesson to take from her.

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Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Animal Attraction: Mecox Gardens Opens in Highland Village

“Our primary emphasis is a dedication to achieving an overall balance between the interior and outdoor living environment,” reads the copy on the home page of the Mecox Gardens website.

A tour of the new Mecox Gardens store that just opened in the Highland Village Shopping Center reveals part of the magic Mecox formula for achieving that inside-outside balance: Bring in the prints of animals. And bring in the animal prints!

Paloma Contreras, who runs Houston’s La Dolce Vita blog, took these photos on a recent visit. Mecox Gardens features “vintage and reedition” home and garden furnishings.

So here’s a reader challenge:

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Monday, January 5, 2009

The Sensabaugh Sensibility: A Dolled Up Duplex

He’s the display coordinator for Anthropologie in Highland Village. He has a degree in mortuary science, but his art makes frequent use of old doll parts and other objects he finds in flea markets and dumpsters. What does Brian Neal Sensabaugh’s home look like?

In(side) the Loop blogger Courtney gives us a tour of his “downtown” duplex. Sensabaugh, who’s from rural Arkansas, calls himself a “Ouijist”:

Found objects play a very important role in my work. Things cross my path for a reason. I am fortunate to be able to listen and bring these objects together in a harmonious balance that is agreed upon between the objects themselves and me, the artist.

A few scenes from Courtney’s photo tour, displaying some of Sensabaugh’s unique interior touches.

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Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Extremely Well Furnished in Katy

Entry to Living Space, 2006 Fry Rd., Katy, Texas

Dining Room, 2006 Fry Rd., Katy, TexasThis place is huge! 6000 sq. ft. of living space, reads the listing:

Includes 4 Big Bedrooms, 2 full baths, Large Formal Dining, Huge kitchen w/gas cooking, Granite Counters, Porcelain sink, walk-in pantry, breakfast bar, serving bar and tile floor. Living/Family area w/gas fireplace, wood laminate floors. large inviting entry. Study or 5th bedroom.

That’s a lot of home! How could anyone furnish it all?

Not a problem!

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Wednesday, September 10, 2008

A Cheaper Way To a Desk

   

A tip on furnishing that home office, from the desk table of Joni Webb: “For a desk I went to Pier I and bought a 6′ dining table with an X base, stained dark brown. The table has proved to be a wonderful desk: with its large surface, I can spread out floor plans and fabric samples and still have room to work. Perhaps the best advantage to buying a dining room table instead of a desk is price. For some unknown reason, put the label of ‘desk’ on a product and the price goes up.” [Cote de Texas]

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Wednesday, July 16, 2008

The Furniture Bank’s Upscale Neighbor

   

The home-furniture-for-the-furnitureless nonprofit has opened a new store called the Bargain Bazaar — on the north side of I-45 near Scott, down the street from its new warehouse on Hussion Street — to sell “slightly used” furniture to the public. If all goes well, the Furniture Bank will buy the building someday. [Greater Houston Weekly]

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Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Going National: Lose the Dead Animal

Joni Webb’s Guest Room As Seen in Houston House and Home Magazine

Having survived the ordeal of a home photo shoot for a local shelter magazine, Houston blogger and interior designer Joni Webb graduates to the big leagues. A “national magazine” liked what they saw of Webb’s West U home in Houston House & Home, and asked her if they could photograph her Family Room and Guest Room for two separate upcoming issues. Webb’s response?

After last year’s physically tiring and mentally exhausting photo shoot, I swore I would never do it again. But, somehow, here I was, less than a year later, again welcoming strange photographers into my house. Of course, nothing is ever easy.

Exactly one week before the big photoshoot, I received news from the local scout. She had a list of things the editor wanted changed for the shoot. Oh? Really? The editor and art director wanted a new window seat cushion (made out of the Bennison fabric, no less!) The zebra rug HAD to go - apparently their readers object to zebra rugs, the suzani on the chair also had to go (suzanis are too bright) and the neon orange pillows must also go to be replaced by other pillows (like what other pillows, I wondered?) Now understand, I had known this shoot was going to happen for about three months - three months that I could have gotten all these changes done with no problem. Instead, the editor gave me one week to get the new cushions and pillows made.

More details of Webb’s quick-change artistry, after the jump!

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Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Putting the Bed in Bedroom Communities

   

Mattress Firm celebrates the opening of its 500th store. You keep building those strip centers, they’ll take care of the rest! [Houston Business Journal]

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Thursday, May 22, 2008

Set, Reuse, Rinse, Repeat: Pecan Park Salvage Decor

Detail of Shower-Door Table Built by Dan Axton

What can you do with those long, old-growth pine floorboards you’ve managed to rescue from . . . say, an old farmhouse being torn down in Pecan Park? And what if you’ve got an extra shower door laying around?

Answer after the jump:

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Friday, April 25, 2008

West U Home Stalker Reveals All

Wheat Residence, West University, Texas

Cote de Texas author Joni Webb comes clean about her obsession with a recently constructed home in West U.

. . . whenever I drove by the house, I would slow my car to a crawl, craning my neck to try to see inside the white stuccoed home that had so captured my imagination. Through their windows, I could make out some of their furnishings - first, there was a screen in the living room, and then I could see an oversized mirror. Next - I noticed the dining room’s antique light fixture which furthered my suspicions that this was a house I would love - inside and out. By the time the sheer, linen curtains were hung - the deal was sealed - I was an official stalker and somehow, I had to finagle my way into the home to see it first hand.

This must have been tough for Houston’s highest profile design blogger, because Webb is usually obsessed with French design, and the design in this particular home was clearly more . . . Belgian.

After the jump: The stalker gets in!!!

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Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Dunlavy and West Alabama: The Fiesta Antiques District

Dunlavy at W. Alabama, Houston

Design blogger Joni Webb identifies Houston’s latest “hot pocket of stores selling reasonably priced, yet very chic antiques.”

Where is it? At the Fiesta Mart!

Or more accurately, in and around the shopping strip that includes the Fiesta — on the southeast corner of Dunlavy and West Alabama. Webb’s Cote de Texas blog runs through items available at Antiques and Interiors on Dunlavy, the Country Gentleman, plus the latest shop to open: Boxwood Interiors, a second store by the same people who run Foxglove Interiors on Alabama, a few blocks to the east. Boxwood

. . . immediately called to me when, through the window, I glimpsed freshly laid seagrass matting stretching from the front door to the back. It’s amazing what spending a few extra dollars on seagrass will do to an old and ugly mall space.

After the jump: seagrass magic! Plus a few of Webb’s Fiesta-area finds.

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Friday, February 15, 2008

River Oaks International: Out with the Old English, In with the Old Swedish

Avalon Place House, Old English Version, Family Room, River Oaks, Houston

Avalon Place House, Old Swedish Version, Family Room, River Oaks, Houston

Houston interior designer Joni Webb takes time out from her usual focus on French design to tell the story of a home in Avalon Place that was done up first in an English country style (top photo), and then — some years later — completely redone by the same owners to something more . . . 18th century Swedish (second from top).

The English incarnation, which was captured in a Country Living magazine feature in the 1990s, had taken years to perfect, Webb reports:

. . . the finished project was perfect: a cozy English, country-style home, filled with authentic antiques, Italian oil paintings, wall to wall seagrass, faux painted yellow and red walls, toile wallpapers, Bennison fabrics and Kenneth Turner candles. It was an open, fun house - the site of many parties where people gathered around a roaring fire and lounged in the deep George Smith sofa, all the while remarking on how warm and inviting the home was.

So, it was a great surprise to many, including [Houston interior designer Carol] Glasser herself, when the wife declared she had changed. She no longer loved her home’s decor, she wanted a new look - a Swedish look - and not just a Swedish antique here and there, but a total, complete Swedish home. And so, for the second time, everything in the house was either sold or was stored and they started the process of decorating their home, completely from scratch, again.

Who best to complete this European migration? Carol Glasser, the same designer who had created the house’s first look. (This time, she enlisted help from Swedish Style expert Katrin Cargill.) After the jump, more before-and-after photos, plus nitty-gritty details of international style-travel.

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Monday, January 21, 2008

Free Eighties Furniture at Colonial House!

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

The brave work of Southwest Houston and Houston Apartment Renaissance scholars has been rewarded — a second mid-1980s Colonial House TV commercial is now available on YouTube!

No it’s not quite as iconic and over-the-top as the one with the VCR in the pool, but look at that fabulous indoor-outdoor furniture! Almost a quarter century later, we know Michael Pollack is alive and well, but does anyone know where that living-room mandala and dining-room set ended up?

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