design Archives | Page 2 of 2 | Jersey Ice Cream Co.

Bye Bye, STAINLESS

April 15, 2013 by Percy Bright 1 Comment

For some reason, at some point in the last few decades, some idiot decided that appliances should no longer be available in custom colors. And after seeing a bunch of grandma-house atrocities while house hunting in Philly yesterday, I can’t blame him (yeah, it was definitely a dude). But something tells me all the major appliance manufacturers just got together one day and decided over stiff cocktails, the fewer options the “better” (read: cheaper). And so began the reign of stainless, black, and white. Not a lot of fun for us designers!

Now you’re probably saying to yourself, “Smeg, Smeg, Smeg!” Yeah, we get it! They’re adorable. Just like a wittle kitten. Cute, but too small to get much done. The first time Tara and I saw one in real life (after gushing over a bunch of pictures), we couldn’t believe how tiny it was. Plus they only come as a fridge or a freezer, not both.

Enter Big Chill Fridge! Well, twelve years ago–I’m a little late on this one. But how awesome are those colors? Not only do they have normal-person-size and Smeg-size fridge-slash-freezers, they also have ranges and range hoods and dishwashers and microwaves. Check out Drew Barrymore’s kitchen below!

Now all we need is a big-budget kitchen job.

CUTTING a PERFECT CIRCLE

April 9, 2013 by Percy Bright Leave a Comment

We’re pumped to announce that yesterday we put the finishing touches on the second Bryn & Dane’s location! (For a few pictures from the facelift we gave the first location, click here.)

Oh, and you’re all invited to the big launch party this Thursday from 5-8pm at 400 Horsham Road! Get ready for some awesome local food, beer, and healthy cocktails. Plus you’ll get to see the finished sign and the rest of the new space, which we decked out with tons of beautiful reclaimed wood we literally pulled off the side of a barn up in Phillipsburg NJ. If you aren’t able to make it Thursday, keep checking back here for photos of the new space and the barn where we sourced all the beautiful wood.

On to the circle cutting!

You could obviously trace out a perfect circle in pencil, then do your best with a sure hand, a steady eye, and a jig or band saw. But it’ll never be perfect that way.

Cutting a perfect circle really isn’t as hard as it sounds. Especially if you have a Rockler circle cutting jig and a nice router. You don’t? Me neither. Lucky for us, even a scrap of wood, a single screw, and a crappy little palm router will do the trick, though you might find your router smoking and burnt out by the end if you’ve constantly pushed it too hard.

Here’s what you do: Find yourself a long enough scrap and notch out one end so your router fits snugly. At the other end, drill a hole a little wider than your screw. The distance between screw hole and router notch out (adding in the extra distance to the router bit, about 1.5 inches on a palm router) will be the radius of the final circle, so plan accordingly! Fire your screw in and go to town, increasing the depth of your cut just a little on each pass so your router doesn’t suffer the same fate as mine.

Voila! Now stay tuned for the finished sign. She’s a real beaut.

BRYN & DANE’S gets a MAKEOVER

March 18, 2013 by Tara Mangini 3 Comments

We’ve been so lucky to spend the past few weeks working with the Bryn & Dane‘s crew to spruce up their first (of many!) delicious & healthy fast food restaurants. It’s honestly a crime to even think of it as fast food, it’s like it’s healthy great food that just happens to be made quickly. Bryn Davis is the owner and mastermind behind the restaurant, and the love and care for what he does is completely infectious. There is almost a Disney-like vibe to the whole place. Workers with smiles so enormous you can hear them through the drive-through window, a gift shop to browse through while you wait for your Mo’ Green smoothie, children laughing, sun streaming in. The whole concept is so brilliant and wholesome it’s really no wonder that they are preparing to open up their second store in Plymouth Meeting this fall.

The lovely and talented Stefania Patrizio has been working with Bryn to create a new brand identity and logo, something that was much needed. (Sorry Bryn!) Her design work totally changed the feel of the place, which meant they needed an interior design revamp to match. Cue us! We were so happy to be able to come in and make the place perfect for Bryn and his entire gang, because really they’re all the sweetest people around. A bit of wood hunting, white washing, hand painting, cutting, drilling, nailing, and styling did the trick. The whole restaurant really feels like one big idea now, which is exactly what is. Enjoy a peek inside and don’t hesitate to make a trip to see it in person. If Mo’ Green doesn’t win you over Dark Lucy will.

A TURKEY was HERE.

December 7, 2012 by Tara Mangini 3 Comments

How shall we start this off. Perhaps, forgive me I’m a huge blogging failure?

I meant to post pictures of how we left the house before Thanksgiving. Each room waiting anxiously to be seen. A new table preparing to hold its first turkey. Fresh paint drying all over and beds made and couches and everything! But instead I ate a lot of food and watched lots of movies and stayed far away from my computer. The moment for the grand tour seems to have passed, or at least been postponed until things are finished! Which is in a few weeks, which just gave me a heart attack. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have something beautiful to share with you. To be honest, there is SO much I want to show you. But we’ll get there, we’ll get there.

For now…the dining room! Or at least the front half. From start to (near) finish.

This is how the dining room looked when we walked in the door for the first time. We instantly knew we wanted to change every single thing about it. Green trim. Lace curtains. Hand stenciling. Those things could look beautiful if done right, but they sure didn’t look beautiful here.

One of the first things we decided was that this little dividing wall had to come down. It created two tiny unusable rooms instead of one grand dining room. Which is exactly what our food and company loving clients needed.

So with one swift blow of his mighty hammer…

…Percy knocked the wall down. At least that’s how he tells it.

With the wall down, we realized that under about 5 layers of cheap wood flooring, the original wide plank floors were still in tact. We couldn’t just leave them buried under there! Many many days of demo and sanding and sanding and staining and finishing followed.

We knew we wanted to plaster in the dining room, and loved the idea of having a blue sky like ceiling and slightly darker walls. I read somewhere that people used to paint their ceilings because it was cheaper than painting the entire room, and for some reason loved that thought. Even though we didn’t paint, and covered the walls as well, it still makes me feel like there’s a story hidden in there.

It’s no easy task, but plaster going up is a beautiful sight to see. The bottom half of the room was so rich in color we almost wanted it to stay that dark. But once the dry white clouds started forming we fell in love with the new color too.

Plus, some wood from an old barn door came together to make a perfect long dining room table.

This is what the dining room looked like around 7am the day before Thanksgiving.

And this is what it looked like when we walked out the door a few hours later. (We thought we’d give the green trim one final meal.)

A little lot of turkey and rest did us good, and we were so excited to get back up to the house after a much needed Thanksgiving weekend.

It was magical walking back into the house. The plaster had dried to the perfect colors. The sun was shining. The kitchen was incredible. Everything was simply dazzling to the eyes. Such a dramatic change from that first day, months ago, when we curiously opened the front door.

A little paint mixing and a few tedious trim painting hours later, voila. The oh-so-stunning dining room was officially born. There are still some final touches to be done, but we’re totally in love already. And hope you are too.

International PRESS!

November 1, 2012 by Tara Mangini 1 Comment

I have no idea how people find us for the most part (which absolutely sounds like a sign of a doomed/non-existant PR plan), but how exciting when they do!

After calling the post office and persuading them to honk in front of the house with our mail since we don’t yet have a mailbox and Brenda “doesn’t walk up to houses anymore,” look what the…post office truck? dragged in:

Our first international feature in Suddeneutshe Zeitung Magazin!

And if you happen to pick up the Nummber 39 | 28.September 2012 issue, you’ll see us on pages 14 and 15 for our lath wall and chalkboard bathroom.

We’re so excited to have somehow spread to Germany and so honored to be featured on a page with so many amazing design ideas. Check out one our favorites below. That ornate outline above the fireplace is a lamp cord!
Come on. That’s simply brilliant.

The Master Bedroom : Creepy Dollhouse Make-Over

October 23, 2012 by Tara Mangini 1 Comment

Even though we’ll probably end up leaving no surface left unaltered by the end of this project, the upstairs was definitely a place that we knew needed some work. We’ve been trying to figure out the house’s story as we pull up rugs and knock down walls, but it seems that it’s undergone many changes since it was originally built.

The upstairs in general was a little gloomy, but the master bedroom looked like a haunted dollhouse where they used to lock up little kids.

The dark floral wallpaper and small windows were bad, but the ceilings and miniature doorway were the major problem. I’m 5’2″ and I still felt like I had to duck when I walked in there. Percy could literally touch the ceiling with his head. It was creep-town, and something had to be done. (ps. i realize these pictures make it seem almost charming. But still, hope you’re getting that haunted dollhouse because TRUST ME it was in there.)

We did the only thing we could do, aside from lowering the floors, and knocked into the ceiling. Best decision ever. Well, for me especially. Percy was buried in blown-in insulation for a few hours which didn’t look very fun, but it was undoubtedly worth it. There were still a few days of moving stuff around, re-insulating, rocking, and mudding ahead, but it was an instant relief to have that ceiling bumped up.

Plus, once we started ripping the wallpaper down, there were layers of past wallpaper underneath. We’ve got some plaster plans in the works for the walls, but definitely plan on keeping some glimpses or even walls of the old floral prints.

Check out our snowstorm of insulation and vintage wallpaper works of art below.

Paint Swatches & Things Hidden Under Carpets

October 22, 2012 by Tara Mangini 3 Comments

Things I hate:
Dingy wall-to-wall carpeting.

Things I love:
Paint swatches. (even though they drive me insane)
Finding out that original wide-plank flooring is hiding under said dingy carpeting.

(Above, the floors before a little sanding and varathane.)

And voila! After! (Note the shoe color change. Sanding perk.)

Our First Dream Job : Part II

October 22, 2012 by Tara Mangini 1 Comment

It’s funny, looking back now at Debby’s initial email, to wonder what she really had in mind when she hired us to work on her upstate home.

She wrote, “I have a fantasy of the family arriving upstate to a home without boxes and comfy places to sit. I don’t think anyone could face another set of boxes to unpack.” Somehow in that sentence we saw, “I have a fantasy of you completely renovating, designing and furnishing our new house into the perfect home.” If you can’t dress for it, dream for the job you want, right?

Shortly after we finished up in Brooklyn, we hopped in our fancy white van and headed upstate for Brimfield shopping and of course, to see the little house that would become our lives for the next few months. It felt like we were going to see our new baby for the first time. Not that I have any idea what that’s like but, that’s the best way I can put it.

We’ve been at our official post up there since late September, though the past week we’ve been back in NYC on another job, and can I tell you, I truly miss being up at that house.

Life up there is like a creative retreat. Wall after wall to experiment with. Hidden wood floors. Years of flowered wallpaper to uncover. Endless possibilities. Cookbooks and a fireplace. Leaves changing all around us.

I worried that I would go crazy with all the silence around me, and miss New York and all its spirit, but to be honest, I’ve never felt more content.

We work from sunrise to sunset, and still the days pass all too quickly. We make dinner as the deer tiptoe in the yard. We snuggle up to relax with an episode of Downton Abbey. It might not be for everyone. But for us, for now, it’s perfect.

Debby is an amazing client, and completely trusts us to create a home for her. She has shared her vision for each room, but aside from that, she has left us to our own devices. As any designer can tell you, this

is a gift in itself.

We have our own visions for the house, but living where you work creates an intimacy that is invaluable. The house was build in the 1800’s and it has a spirit of it’s own. We don’t hesitate to take our cues from the walls, the floors, the way the light hits, and the energy of each room.

This is where we spend our days. This is our dream job.

Our First Dream Job : Part I

October 22, 2012 by Tara Mangini Leave a Comment

I’ve been meaning to tell this story for awhile now. It’s one that has only gotten longer the more I’ve put it off, so at this point, to cover all of the twists and turns seems almost impossible.

But I think that a bit of distance and perspective has done me the favor of editing out the headaches that no one needs to hear about anyway. Because all that rises to the top is the good. And in this story, that still leaves a lot to be told.

Still, it’s a bit of a struggle for me to make this coherent when all I want to do is show you a thousand pictures of what’s happening now and say LOOK! But everyone likes stories. So here goes.

Over the summer, which is now light years away, our little Brooklyn sublet was featured on Design Sponge. Transforming that place into a home of our own was a mental challenge, knowing that as soon as we finished we were going to have to pack everything up and move back out. There were many afternoons when I wondered what on earth I was doing, but one email that came our way after that post changed everything.

This is literally how the message began.

“Hi Tara and Percy,

I saw your homes on Design Sponge.

I possibly have your dream job as you describe it.”

I had just left the house to go on a run and Percy texted me something along the lines of, “EMAIL!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Debby, a wonderful woman, wife and mother of three was writing to us because she has just sold a house in Park Slope, rented an apartment in Clinton Hill, closed on a house in upstate New York, and broken her hip in the span of a week.

She had seen our post, admired and related to our frequent moves, and was hoping we could work our magic (quickly) on her new apartment and if the fit was right, their upstate home. Being in the state she was, she needed some help to make this happen. And the sooner their current apartment could go from feeling like a whirlwind to a place they could actually live, the better.

We met with her the next day, fell in love with her family instantly, and were on the job. Debby’s husband was away for business, and she was hoping to surprise him with a TV-worthy reveal, which meant we had a week to design, source, and build everything needed to overhaul their Brooklyn apartment. And so the madness began.

I’ll spare you the gory details (and there are quite a few) but over the next seven days we completely transformed Debby’s home, packed up and moved out of our Brooklyn apartment, attempted to move into a new apartment, decided not to take the new apartment, moved everything into storage, racked up five parking tickets and even managed to get a car towed.

But every single bit of agony we went through that week was 900% worth it.

After days of planning and building, we were finally working in the apartment around day #5. As we walked out that day, Debby stopped us and said “By the way, you’re on for the upstate house.”

I still get giddy when I think about it.

– – – – – – – –

Check out the pictures below of some of the magic we worked on their Brooklyn apartment.