Tag Archives: cabin

Before & After: Dry Bar

Here’s another part of our dining room redesign (that I shared a couple months ago). This time, I thought I’d show you how much a pint of paint and some new hardware can do to completely transform a piece of furniture (and even help you designate a new use for it).

The dresser below was a piece of midcentury furniture I bought at a garage sale in college for $40. I haven’t liked it for a long time, but our apartment has so little closet space/built in storage (and I have too much stuff) to have been able to do without it.

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So, for a $10 custom pint of paint and $12 for Anthropologie hardware on super-clearance: antler handles $1.98/ea. and knobs $.98/ea. we have a modern rustic dry bar with great storage for linens and bar supplies.

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Come on over for a drink!

Christmas Wishlist

With shopping and the holidays well underway, I’ve seen some really great items that I’m pretty sure I just can’t make it to spring without:

1. Estwing Camping Hatchet, $43, 2. Stanley Flask, $15, 3. Riedell 117 Red Ribbon Ice Skates, $102, 4. Mackinaw Cap, $50, 5. Bulleit Frontier Bourbon, $32, 6. Anonymous Ism Deer Socks, $28, 7. Staghorn Steak Knives, $198.

Living in TOAST

TOAST is a British-based company that purveys clothing and goods for the home that have a distinctively rustic-bohemian spirit. Their lookbooks are filled with landscapes, details, buildings, and textures that engulf the senses and evoke a strong desire to adopt the environment and lifestyle of its pages. It makes you actually yearn for cabin fever.

Here are a few of my favorite images from their Autumn and Winter catalogues. Sadly, they do not ship to the US, but you can download the lookbooks and check out their Christmas book here. All I can say is baggy sweaters and pajamas never looked so good!

Now, if they’d only ship to the US…

The Red Clover Cabin

All I want for Christmas this year is a tiny little cabin in the woods. Its ALL I want pretty much every year, and this time I’m getting one (at least for a few days). If you’re looking for a Wisconsin cabin getaway, I think Anne’s Red Clover Cabin is going to melt your heart! I can’t wait to see that meadow filled with snow and cozy up inside for a quiet holiday celebration. Did I mention you can bring your dog?

Anne’s cabin is available to rent via airbnb.com.

The Cabinologist is now on Facebook!

I hope you all had a Happy Summer Weekend. This post is a shameless self-promotion: please “like” The Cabinologist on Facebook!

It will get you regular access to all things cozy and cabin as well as facilitate the sharing of your ideas and discoveries. Please post requests for what you want to see more of and the cool stuff you find while searching for ‘your someplace cozy’.

Such as this beautiful homestead in Montana, the perfect, poetically spare writer’s retreat. The beauty of the contrast between newly milled honey-colored lumber and the gently weathered grey of the trim is an adornment that is thoroughly rustic and sensual in its simplicity. It makes you want to give it all away for this idealized spartan dream.

All things cabin, outdoors, cozy and generally awesome are welcome!

Essentials: Kaufmann Mercantile

Exceptional sundries of the kind they just don’t make anymore, that’s what you’ll find at Kaufmann Mercantile – More of What Matters. A few minutes on this website and who cares if I don’t have an heirloom tree from which to hang that beautiful carved oak swing or a branch to prune with my Japanese fox pruning saw, the visual-emotional pleasure derived from the idea of it is therapy enough for now!

I especially love that they have a category devoted to Tools & Outdoors.

I’d take one of everything, especially:

The Camping Hatchet

The Stronghold Apron

The Canvas Tool Bag

The Japanese Pruning Saw

The Carved Oak Swing

Unbelievably rich and floodlit photographs displayed in a minimalist ‘only what matters’ approach really gets The Cabinologist in me dreaming of the life I would live heading to Kaufmann Mercantile for my bi-annual supply run before retreating into the woods again.

I’m hoping to find that Camping Hatchet in my stocking come Christmas!

Cabin Getaway: St. Veit, Carinthia, Austria

Anyone up for a rustic vacation in Carinthia? I could really use a getaway…

This Austrian mountain-lakeside abode features wonderful, whimsically rustic interiors, grand mountain vistas, adult books (yes), bicycles, a hot tub, vegetable garden, llamas, and much more (as if there was more to be desired). Rent all this for just $728/week!

See you in Carinthia.

Those shutters! that over-sized roof hat! (and llamas!!)

Ridiculously cute fortune cookie pillows!

A private alpine lake for skinny dipping!

The closest nod to civilization is three kilometers away–a pub called Gurk.

The next closest amenity is a ski slope, Flattnitz Hochrindl, at a distance of 15k.

Sounds like paradise.

Cabin Style: L.L. Bean Signature

I received the spring L.L. Bean Signature catalog in the mail a couple of weeks ago, and fell head over heels for their cotton madras dress ($79, free shipping and L.L. Bean’s no questions lifetime guarantee). Signature is a relatively new label that features vintage- and L.L. Bean archive-inspired designs that embrace an outdoor leisure lifestyle. Generally, I have always loved the men’s line (I have bought many things for my husband here) but have found the women’s line less appealing/more difficult to wear–until now!

A fantastic colorway in a comfortable, cute and somewhat sporty style, wearing it would without a doubt get you in the cabin-state-of-mind no matter where you are. This dress is at the top of my list for this season, and I’ve put together a couple sets featuring some other L.L. Bean items to transition it from early spring (its currently snowing in Chicago) to summer at the cabin.

1. commuter trench, LL Bean; 2. l’autre chose moccasins in brown, Yoox; 3. navy modal wool rib tights, TopShop; 4. vintage metal field watch, L.L. Bean Signature; 5. selima sophia sunglasses in bronzed beige, J.Crew; 6. niagara falls beaded belt, Knus

7. linen/modal cardigan in coastal dune, L.L. Bean Signature; 8. wide braided belt, J.Crew; 9. keaton sunglasses, Rag & Bone; 10. twist wooden bangle, Cocoheishe.com; natural wood bangle in cedar, thewoodlot.etsy.com; 12. thin braid hurache in green, urban outfitters; 13. canvas/leather hobo bag, L.L. Bean Signature

A Conceptual Cabin in the City

Manifest Destiny! is an artwork installation created by Mark Reigelman in collaboration with artist/architect Jenny Chapman and structural engineer Paul Endres.

The work, a rustic cabin shell fabricated from reclaimed Ohio barn wood and aluminum supports, is temporarily installed on the exterior wall of the Hotel des Arts in San Francisco through October 2012.  Suspended 40 feet above the street, it invades unclaimed space like a parasite or aberration imposed on the urban landscape; at night, it is lit from within, a haunting, incongruous beacon in the contemporary streetscape. In this context, the artists seek to simultaneously engage the romanticized Western Myth of American individualism and the inherent arrogance of Westward expansion. Manifest Destiny! is indeed a work that is at once plaintive and comforting, immutable and ephemeral.

From Reigelman:

Manifest Destiny! was commissioned by Southern Exposure and funded by the Graue Family Foundation.

Watch it happening:

See a gallery of more installation images here.

More Cabin Porn

Its Friday, and for me, that always means time for a well-earned respite at week’s end.

Queue the Cabin Porn.

I’ll leave you with this beauty of a property, 51 rolling acres just below Bald Knob with views all the way to Virginia’s Peaks of Otter is currently available to the lucky reader in possession of 1.1. The property includes a turn-key reconstructed cabin dating from 1790 and a modern addition that is really very well done, even if a little too new. Complete with an outdoor shower and wrap-around porches, items on my future-cabin essentials list!

Located in the Allegheny Highlands of Bath County, Virginia, (where we were married last summer) I’m planning on making an appointment as a ‘prospective buyer’ in October if it’s still available when we’re in the area for Washington & Lee’s Homecoming…

Want to make an appointment?

You can view the property at Virginia Hot Springs Realty or Clarkson & Wallace.