I spy something cold, green and yellow

We use radiant heating at the store, well sort of. Our front windows are large plate glass and face south east so in the winter on a sunny day the store heats up nicely without the need to run the heater. However on days like tomorrow, a high of 40 and overcast.. well, lets just say it'll be a little chilly at the store tomorrow. Why? Because I've been dragging my feet on getting the gas turned on this year.
We don't have a hot water heater and so even though we use absolutely NO gas 350 days out of the year, Texas Gas still charges us 30.00 a month for misc service charges. Lame, right? 300 a year for something that isn't being used....

Why? Because we're a business. We pay double for trash removal because we're a business. I've asked if we could have a residential garbage can because we rarely fill our current one, the city thinks this is the dumbest request ever. This would be a stupid request on my part if we weren't located in a residential part of town and if half the other businesses in said part of town were not operating under residential accounts.

My friend Carolyn just gave me a ginormous vintage flat file! I love dual duty objects, we can store all of our prints, vintage posters and unframed water colors in the files and use the top for display! Totally bitchen!

We re-use and double purpose a lot at the store, if we paint anything we wash and save the brushes instead of tossing them, we use cotton towels instead of paper towels, sort of simple logic. Our planters are recycled irrigation culverts, the cactus and agave out front are xeriscapes. We also try to operate in as green a manner as possible. Compact florescent bulbs for everything, organic cleaning products, recycled eco-friendly plastic bags (though we don't go so far as to use leftover grocery bags, that is so GROSS!), the whole shebang.

1stdibs new tagline is "Do yourself and the planet a favor, buy vintage and antique furnishings"
which is totally brilliant. My second favorite tagline is Howl's "Decorate like you give a damn".
We sometimes forget that the whole point in collecting is because it's unique and looks great compared to cookie cutter garbage destined for the landfill in 6 months. It's about the quality of design.
So while some (not all) vintage dealers bag on designers, designers play a vital role in determining the collecting market. Though, I have to admit there is the whole chicken egg thing. There is a definite shift towards looking at vintage and antiques not solely from a collecting standpoint, but from the viewpoint of saving the planet (in a small way).
*Vintage and antique items are usually made of higher quality materials than the newer particleboard/mdf nightmare creations made today. Higher quality = longer lifespan, Longer lifespan = less landfill filler.

Worked on re-lacquering a pair of campaign chests today. A gorgeous "Banana Yellow", the original yellow lacquer was having issues and few things are sadder than a chipped to hell campaign chest.... Maybe a silver spray painted ANYTHING.. If you must silver something at least silverleaf it, it's not hard.

So I left the house for an appointment and was checking my lipstick in the mirror at a light....
(I had been lacquering without a mask on & I'm sure Ronn can guess where this is going...) BRIGHT primer white nose hair.
Aw crap.

It happens. Everyone has nose hair and for the most part, outside of a few comical old men, most people have nose hair that you never notice. Now imagine that each and every one of your nose hairs has been individually lacquered bright electric white. And you're on your way to an appointment. With a client. And it looks like you've just packed both nostrils with Marie Antoinette's wig collection.
Jeez.

Went and saw Charlie Wilson's War last night, loved the sets! This is a sickness that some people have, they don't watch the movie, they look at the sets. Whoever did the decorating for Firefly and Serenity has got a serious thing for danish mod. Rya rugs and Harp chairs galore.

So there were several set decor items in Charlie Wilson's War that we either currently have or have had in the past. No they did not film it here, and no, nothing that was used in that movie came from our store. I did notice that though CWW was mostly set in the 80s, the majority of the set props were 60s and 70s pieces.

Though our store has been raided for set decor for a large number of tv shows, commercials and movies filmed in Austin, I haven't actually seen any of those tv shows or movies! We don't get out much.

When they film movies in Austin, depending on the budget, the crew of set decorators can literally siphon every piece of 70s 60s 50s etc items off the market for the duration of the shoot. At the end of the shoot they sell off some or all of the props. It's really funny because I almost never buy back items that I've already sold.

Usually because props get a LOT of hard use, pieces are not pampered and cared for. Props can be any or all of the following: spray painted, twisted, nailed, oiled, sanded, rained on, set on fire, banged around, dissassembled, reassembled, made to wobble, made to fall over, made to spark, burned, exploded (yes), beat on and generally worked over.
Which is why we don't like to rent items out. We have and will, but only to one particular set/prop designer because she does go out of her way to make sure that these things don't happen to our rentals.

If I had to do something other than the store I'd like to work with Fab-G sourcing props, or I'd like to work for "that warehouse in ny/la".
"warehouse in ny/la" to be explained in the next post.