I created men, women, and kids styles as well as a few other products. The brown and dark grey shirts look great. If you are interested, you can buy them here: http://www.zazzle.com/mperlson

I recommend googling “Zazzle Coupon” first, as you can usually find a good discount off the regular price.

And this is exactly what happened with teakpepper.com reader Kevin last week. He’s quite a thrifter, and came away with one of the rarest mills out there. It’s a clearly marked Dansk JHQ palisander rosewood mill with a silver band. I have two mills from this series, and there are perhaps 5 or 6 in total, each more rare than the next.

Enjoy the amazing photos his wife took, and picture yourself coming across this at Goodwill.

Right there on the cover of DWR – to follow up last month’s amazing station wagon – was a smooth flamestone coffee cup.  The same I drink out of each morning!

Then I open CB2 and am hit with a Dansk Quistgaard mill.  Then another one! A little later my 6 year old daughter is looking through the catalog and she spots a fluted flamestone coffee cup – great eyes on that kid.

The photos below are from their sites. The internet is great, but it’s so nice to thumb through the catalogs.

When I got it home and looked at it a bit more, I realized I had a pretty cool – but very dirty – chair. The notice said that the owners parents had purchased it in the late 50s or early 60s and that it had be re-covered in the 80s – thus the mauve, thus the dirt. But I’ve been looking for a comfortable chair to put in front of the TV, so we decided to take a chance on it, get it re-upholstered, and see what we had.

I found a nearby upholstery shop and chose a great orange fabric.  It had a period look, but being made out of polyester it will last forever and wasn’t too expensive (in case it didn’t work out). While the chair was in the shop, I refinished the legs and confirmed that they were indeed of high quality teak.

I really don’t know much about the chair, though. I know when it was made, and I’m 99.99% sure it’s made in Denmark. Anyone out there in the blogosphere know the designer?

Here’s a few photos of the finished product. It’s pretty cool for a free (well, free plus a not-at-all-free upholstery job) chair. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

But when I got the new DWR catalog, the cover photo jumped straight into my cerebral cortex’s vintage station wagon and mid-century architecture pleasure center. Wow, what an amazing shot. The Egg chair on top of the car is just brilliant. The rest of the catalog is filled with many other great photos as well.

From their blog posting, you learn that’s an Armonk, New York home designed by Arthur Witthoefft. I assume it’s somewhat close to the home JHQ designed in the same town.

I had a few Eames shells around so I started to wonder if they would work. If you look in the old Herman Miller catalogs, they were often shown outside. And boats and Corvettes are made of fiberglass, so they must survive outside, right? I asked the nice people at Modernica – who make amazing fiberglass shells – about it and they recommended against it. But, I figure that is the party line so they don’t get complaints if their fade or get rusted out from outdoor abuse.

So I didn’t want to take some nice (and expensive) old shells and risk putting them outdoors and ruining them. I also didn’t want to risk it with nice new Modernica shells. So, I figured I needed to find some vintage shells that were already messed up and not too expensive – so if they got ruined it was no big loss.

So I did just that! I found a two pairs of shells, 2 yellow and 2 orange, at a local dealer who gave me a great deal. I also found some good reproduction bases on eBay from JM Modern and ordered them.

Then, I did a bit of research on the internet and found some techniques on restoring old shells. They might as well look great. It didn’t sound too hard, so I undertook the process. I followed the instructions found on the excellent Plastolux blog almost exactly. I didn’t replace the mounts like they did, and used medium sandpaper, but otherwise I followed their instructions. The hardest thing besides the elbow grease was finding Penetrol – which I ended up getting through Amazon. Rather than repeating their instructions, I encourage you to check out their blog – great advice!!

Once the restoration was done I had an additional quandary – the chairs almost looked too good to put outside. Well, I got over that quickly.

A few other things. In the photos you will see those planters. They are vintage Gainey planters that I had around the house and it’s a total coincidence that they match so well. It’s kinda weird – I actually didn’t make the connection at first. But then I noticed the yellow one was the same color. A few days later I realized the orange one matched, too, and was pretty floored. The bamboo was just sitting in my side yard waiting for a good home.

Also, because my patio is rough tile, I didn’t want the powder coated bases getting all scratched up and rusting out. I found some clear plastic tubing at Home Depot that fit over the wire base exactly and cut a slit in it so I could slip it over the wire on the base. It seems to have worked so far – no scratching.

I hope you enjoy the photos and the story. Oh, and I’ve got some plans for a table to match. Come back soon to read about that…

I thought readers of the blog might be interested in the house. It is a 1957 Eichler home. For those unfamiliar with Eichler, he was a prominent mid-century developer in California. His homes featured post and beam construction, walls of glass, minimal design, atriums, and other architectural touches that came to define “California living”. The homes are not particularly fancy, but for those wanting clean lines and a connection to the outdoors, they can’t be beat. My house doesn’t have an atrium, but it does have walls of glass which lead to the backyard. I’ll post a few photos today and add info as time goes on.

You can read more about Eichler and his homes on the web.  There’s a also several books about Eichler and California Modern architecture, which I’ll add to my Amazon Danish Modern store.

The post and beam construction is the highlight of the entry.

Like most Eichler homes, the back is much more inviting than the austere front. Mine has two walls of glass opening to the yard which extends the space to the outside.

Polished concrete floors give the interior a very clean and modern look.

From the excellent photos you can see the details, such as the metal screw and the lip of silver along the bottom. It is a very small mill as you can see from its scale against the others in his collection. Usually when I hold a new mill for the first time I’m surprised at how big it is compared to what I though – but this one seems like it is smaller than usual. I get a lot of questions as to the exact date of the JHQ mills with the silver bands but I have no specific information of exactly when they were released. They were not part of the initial early 60s line of Rare Woods mills, so I assume late 60s or early 70s.

Since he sent so many great photos, I’ve created a gallery for everyone to enjoy.  The last photo shows his collection – as well as his good taste in books. Those mills are all in excellent condition. Note that he doesn’t keep them all out, but rotates them out from time to time. Thanks B.B.!