Mercedes Kraus

How an $1,100 milking stool inspired a DIY paint job
I know I?m not the only one who loves artists? homes, and in that spirit, I found (invented"") a way to watercolorize my walls. I did it in a couple hours and for under $20?and you can, too! That small DIY is perhaps one way I?m trying to participate in the great experiment that is Los Angeles?a place that probably should not exist (no water! fire!) but does, that is making it up as it goes along. This city would put Jane Jacobs on her head, and I?ve been thinking about who among us is clever enough to show us the way from the inside. I have some ideas. ?Mercedes

Wash this way
When we decided on our first Los Angeles house, I was disappointed. Not because it?s a duplex or because the exterior trim is painted a not-for-me Tiffany blue, but because?in a city of great homes?it?s not much of a charmer. Not a Spanish-style with enchanting arches, nor a darling bungalow with built-ins, nor a midcentury treasure with exposed beams. It?s just a very plain home, a box of white boxes built in 1954. But we had run out of time to house-hunt, and the place was in dreamy Atwater Village, so we took it. I set out to make it work by painting some walls.
In retrospect, I can see that I?d been building references: Primarily, this $1,100 ceramic milking stool that I?d seen at Coming Soon before we left New York. I loved it immediately, in part because the color is precisely that of a cerule...