Gothic Ikea?

If you've been following this blog for a while, you know that I was pleasantly surprised by the Liljestad cabinets at Ikea that I chose for my kitchen renovation. Amber just alerted me to another option that will be arriving at Ikea stores in the near future -- a black traditional style door.

Here's some pictures from the Toronto 2011 Design Show:


Above from Cherish Toronto.



Above from Core77.

What do you think?

Iron and Glass

This iron and crystal decanter struck me with it's juxtaposition of an elegant glass vessel and the pitted iron stopper. That tension is what lies at the heart of steampunk style -- pretty, but rough around the edges.

By Jan Barboglio

Tin BackSplashes

One idea I considered for my kitchen was a backsplash made of tin ceiling tiles. Kevin Ritter of Timeless Kitchens pointed out Valley Tin Works makes new tin ceiling tiles that he uses in his kitchen designs.




The first image is by Timeless Kitchens so I'm guessing that Valley Tin Works did the backsplash as well.

A black and gold kitchen

I had torn this kitchen out of Elle Decor a few years back -- it seems to be from September 2008(!) -- because I was going through a "paint the kitchen cabinets black" phase. I like how the cabinets are glossy black, with gold molding. I was surprised at how well mixing the gold and stainless steel worked, too. The pink backsplash (Benjamin Moore Pink Mix) was surprisingly but warms up a room that could otherwise be cold and stark.

Kitchens at Home Depot -- by Martha Stewart!

This has potential: Home Depot is now working with Martha Stewart on a kitchen line -- cabinets, countertops, and hardware. I know, Martha isn't steampunk, but her style is much more co-optable than most other affordable kitchen options, and Home Depot is a lot easier to find and order at than Ikea for most parts of the country.

Here's my favorites from the collection:

This "Turkey Hill" cabinet is very similar to the Ikea Liljestad I ended up chosing for my kitchen -- however the glass door options are much cooler with the Martha Steware line. (There's one called webwork that looks like leaded glass!) Also notice how this kitchen combines two different cabinet colors -- one for the perimeter and another for the island. I think this is a great way to create an eclectic look (consider one color for the upper cabinets and another for the lower ones).

This style -- Dunemere -- is a bit too "arts and crafts" for me, but check out the backsplash and countertops. They are a Martha branded Corian in a color called "Bedford Marble." Corian has a lot going for it, but I was never able to find it in a style that looked enough like marble (not granite!). (I ended up with real marble, and am loving it.)

This is my favorite of the three. Instead of wood, it's a laminate (read: probably cheaper). The color here is just perfect for a vintage farmhouse, and I think the slightly legged kickplates under the cabinets pull the look together.

As someone whose managed to redo two kitchens in the last year, a part of me wishes these had come out 6 months earlier.

What do you think? Could you use these in a steampunk kitchen?

Clockwork Cupcakes

In my steampunk home, baking is a favorite pursuit (I consider one of the most accessible ways of "making", especially for steampunklets...) So, a bit off topic, but if your baking endeavors need some steampunking let me share geekinesis' clockwork cupcake wrapper.

Vote for the ModVic Kitchen

Rejuvenation Lighting and Hardware catalog is doing a Kitchen Design Competition -- and the Rosenbaum's ModVic Steampunk Kitchen is an entry:

http://www.rejuvenation.com/advice_ideas/contest/entrant.html?rid=109

The deadline to vote is today at 3:00PM.

The ModVic House

Bruce and Melanie Rosenbaum -- also known as ModVic -- have not only created the most steampunked house ever, they are also opening it up for tours as part of the Sharon, Massachusetts Old House Tour on May 2nd.

Here's a sneak peak of the house -- there are many more images, projects, and how-tos at the online property showcase and the ModVic site.

The Kitchen

The Stove -- but wait!

The stove is modernized with a drop-in Miele stovetop!

The office

The Media Room -- I love the stained glass windows as wall art and the muted browns and greens.

The workroom (yes, there's a workroom & an office!)

ModVic is also sponsoring a Steapunk Form and Function Design Competition, with entrants exhibited at the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation in Waltham MA from October 22, 2010 to May 10, 2011. Pretty neat!

Meneghini Macro Fridges

To go with your Maggi Massimo cabinet, try a Meneghini refrigerator.

It's louvred doors and portholes would fit in quite nicely, don't you think? It's actually more than a fridge -- the cabinet can fit an oven and coffee maker in addition to the freezer, fridge, and ice maker. (Those porthole doors hinge up to reveal your appliances!)



via Apartment Therapy.

Maggi Massimo is Magnifico!

Maggi Massimo is an Italian maker of kitchen cabinets and other furniture...

A "hold everything" with brass bin pulls.

Love the round port hole style vents in this cabinet.

Wooden louvered doors in the upper right and left cabinets add character.

A safe! In the middle of your cabinet! I think it's just waiting for the bank robbers to show up.

Found via kbculture.

A Well Travelled Kitchen

I have to admit, we have a burgeoning globe collection. (We're at 3 or 4 -- Christmas introduced a tiny new vintage tin globe from 1926.) I have to admit, though, I never considered using them as kitchen decor.

Obviously I'm not creative enough, because they look incredible in this kitchen tour from AT's The Kitchn. (More pictures, including more globes, here.)



And more vintage style geekery -- the backsplash is made of yardsticks. (Doesn't it work well with the butcher block cabinets?) Here's the how-to.


The kitchen (& great ideas) belong to Ashley Ann. And if you're not envious enough, she did the whole kitchen facelift for $500.

Sneak Peek -- My New Kitchen

For some reason I get all self conscious and procrastinate when it comes to sharing pictures of my own house. (Other people's homes, sure, no problem. Mine -- yikes!) But I'm really pleased with how my kitchen is coming along, and wanted to share it with all of you.

I want the feel of a Parisian bistro-- it's not there yet, but I think once the lighting and hardware is in, we may get close.


This is very much "in progress" -- the view into the kitchen would show some gaping holes under the cooktop and where the oven goes, and there is an obvious cover panel missing at the end of the upper cabinets.

Formerly there was a row of cabinets blocking this view -- getting rid of them has done amazing things to open up my living room as well as the kitchen. The cabinets are all Ikea Liljestad. I repurposed some glass front upper cabinets to make the breakfront cabinet on the penisula -- I'm hoping it hides a lot of the potential mess on the countertop.

I've been angsting over what to do with the replaceable panel refrigerator for over a year. After getting the cabinets in, Ben says it needs to move up on our list. I agree.

This pretty half moon over the sink is the "complicated" part of the kitchen. It was cut from some broken tabletops my dad had bought over 30 years ago that had been sitting out in the weather since then. My countertop guy said it would never match the carrerra marble I used for the countertops. It did. Perfectly. :)

The sink is the Ikea Domsjo sink. The fixture is Kohler Fairfax, off of eBay. You can pull the whole faucet part out -- a requirement so Ben can get his homebrew pots filled up.


The horrible yellow is the glue left over from the linoleum backsplash. I'm covering it with a black and cream vinyl wallpaper. I'm shopping for a small art deco light fixture on eBay for over the sink, and I may try to cram a mirror in that area, too. We'll see.

I'll post more pictures when we're all done.

Maeve's Apartment

Remember Maeve? She was looking for advice on decorating her apartment about a year ago. She sent me some pictures of how her mainly-elbow-grease-fueled project turned out, although I'm very late in getting to them.


Here are a few pictures a month in to trying to decorate my apartment. Most of the pictures are of the kitchen, since that's the room we've made the most progress on. One of the biggest, simplest, cheapest changes was the kitchen cabinets--we simply taped a few inches from the edges with electrical tape and it looks like an entirely different kitchen. One of the other cheap, simple projects I'm proud of is the kitchen hutch, which started life as a terribly ugly mid-nineties light wood finished thing, and a couple of coats of high gloss spray paint and white spray paint on the knobs totally turned it around (not to mention it adds a lot of storage in my teeny tiny kitchen). The hutch was $30 at the thrift store and the spray paint was five dollars.

The other big, cheap, (relatively) easy DIY we did was reupholstering two chairs and an ottoman (second ottoman to follow soon). The chairs were $20 each and the ottomans $5 at the thrift store, plus fabric for everything came to about $60. My boyfriend and I weren't sure that we were going to be able to do this properly, because neither of us had any experience with reupholstery at all, but it really wasn't that bad.

211 Elizabeth Condos

Roman and Williams (previously featured in the post on the Practical Magic House) are so incredible I may have to do a series of posts of them. Here's some shots from a project called 211 Elizabeth -- a built from the ground up set of brownstone condos in Nolita.


A dramatic wall of 9 foot high glass doors—with true divided lights and transoms—intersects the living room and dining room. Every living room has a large wood-burning fireplace. The floors are walnut herringbone parquet, and the baseboards, casings, windows and doors are trimmed in Roman & Williams’ favorite high gloss black oil paint by Fine Paints of Europe.

Although transom lights and herringbone parquet may be more than you can swing for your house, high gloss black paint on the trim is an easy update. (I'm using this approach in my addition -- we'll see how it looks....)


...vanities are painted a high gloss cream and feature double mirrors, double sinks and patinated brass fixtures. Walls, floors, and vanity tops are fashioned from slabs of Calacatta Gold marble detailed by acorn topped brass headbolts.

This is a lot of marble, but white vanities topped with marble are easily found. Antiqued brass fixtures aren't common yet, but I found a couple of options through the big box retailer's special order programs for my bathrooms.


...all shelves with glass fronts are framed in walnut and painted by hand with high gloss black oil paint. Counters are rendered in Danish oiled wood.

I don't actually like these cabinets, but check out the floors. Walnut herringbone! Gorgeous. And the squared off lighting adds another geometric touch.

These are just renderings, but I'd love to see some real life pictures of these homes.

What do you think?

Practical Magic's Victorian Apothecary

Did the phrase "Victorian Apothecary" get your attention? (Or maybe just the fact that I'm posting after so long a hiatus while working on the renovations to my house?)


This is the kitchen from the 1998 witchy-fun movie, designed by the duo of Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch, who went on to create wonderful real houses under the umbrella of their design firm Roman and Williams.

From the Practical Magic website: The New England-style home also features a roomy kitchen -- the heart of the house -- which centers around a British aga-gas stove.

"The aga is almost like a shrine," elaborates Standefer. "This is the place where they do their work; it's where they place the caldron."

The pantry features shelves of home-canned foods -- the kind of thing past generations of women used to spend their days filling which now fell to members of the prop department, who had to fill hundreds of jars.

Standefer sees the house as being a very real character in the story. "The house itself has a certain magic to it. There is a whole world in this house and garden. These women are outcasts and this place is their sanctuary; it almost feels as though all the emotion of the generations is caught up in its walls."

Although the wonderful transom windows above the doors would be challenging, approximating this look wouldn't be hard. Stick to a palette of whites and woods, use a mixture of dark and white glass fronted cabinets (Ikea's LIDINGÖ and LILJESTAD would work) and accessorize with glass cloches and apothecary jars.


Hat tip to Barefoot in the Orchard and Endless Inspiration.

And now for something complete different... a steampunk contraption cake!

Knob and Tube

Here's some interesting kitchen lighting by Parisian designer Columbe Stevens. It reminds me a bit of knob and tube wiring.

via Desire to Inspire.

Copper Kitchen

I ran across this kitchen at a Home Depot Expo in Fairfax County, Virginia a while back and was taken by all the shiny bright copper.

The copper really stands out against a black granite backsplash and counters.

The sink might be a bit much -- I think it would be impossible to keep this shiny. You can find some quite reasonably priced antiqued copper bathroom sinks, however.

The $6,000 copper hood by Abbaka Trading Company.

Closeup of the copper tile border.

The border and accent tiles featured old fashioned botanicals.

The entire kitchen might be a bit more than you would do in a "real" kitchen, but I think the idea of warm wood, copper accent tiles (You can find a variety of copper tiles with a quick Google search.), and black counters is really striking. A more "country" look would be to combine copper with white counters and backsplash.