Tag Archives: Kochi

Living Room Furnishings Found in Chennai

Posted on December 30, 2011 by | Leave a comment

We’re about a year away from fully furnishing the India apartment. Meanwhile we have fun looking for ideas! While in Chennai last month, we visited Good Earth, Kian, Lifestyle Homecentre and other stores, and we visited Crafters in Cochin. Here are snapshots of things we saw (and some we purchased) and where they could go:

It all looks very brown and beige right now, and yes neutrals will be the foundation of the open living/dining area. But there will be color, yes, there will be color! Soon, I’ll show you some of our colorful finds from Good Earth in Chennai.

Regarding the room layout, the TV location poses a challenge. The electrician provided everything needed for a TV on a smaller wall that’s right next to a large window. This set-up would have made more sense on the opposite larger wall. I think our electrician set it up so we could see the TV from the kitchen and dining area. But this also makes for an awkward living room furniture layout, plus awkward viewing with light streaming through the window only two feet away.

You may think, just change the location. Well, as I have learned now seeing construction in a concrete/brick structure in India, when you want to change any electrical, this is what happens:

In person, this looked worse – like the dust cloud coming after Tom Cruise in Dubai in Mission: Impossible 4! And yes we ran away from this dust cloud, right out the main door and down the stairs. I went shopping after seeing this, just to see something nice again. Literally, retail therapy. You can see more photos in a previous post where I tried to find beauty in the dust and crumble.

So regarding the TV location, either we could mess up walls (and the entire apartment, really) yet again before more things move in, or we could leave it as-is. The mission is ours if we choose to accept it. We may walk away. Instead we’ll look for black-out blinds for the big window next to the TV, and a smaller rather than bigger living room sectional.

You might also like:

Cochin: The Ones That Got Away

Cochin: Furnishings Found

 Cochin: Crafters, Filled to the Rafters
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Posted in India pied-à-terre Decorating, Shopping in India

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Antiques in Kochi

Posted on April 3, 2011 by | 2 Comments

I am bursting with anticipation for our next trip to India, as we’ll revisit the antiques warehouses in Kochi that we first saw a decade ago. On our shopping list:

  • Small cabinets to repurpose as bathroom vanities
  • Old windows or other “frames” to use for bathroom mirrors
  • Lazy lounging chairs
  • Tables (side, coffee, possible dining)
  • A few old tall columns
  • Bookcases
  • Blue chippy painted wardrobe to achieve my guest room vision

We did not take any warehouse photos on our previous Kochi trip, but here’s photos from others who visited and shared their photos online …

Visit this link to see a photo very similar to the warehouse we visited from Flickr user eenar_6, a photo of an enormous urn and a photo of a “chair hospital.” There’s a place in Chennai with hundreds of chairs hanging like this. We’ll revisit there too, possibly for dining chairs.

Check this out from Flickr user thovie333 — piles and piles of stuff to wade through:

 

From Sri Lankan Airlines website:

From Wikimedia, Old Kochi:

From Virtual Tourist:

Most of the antique warehouses and shops are in Jew Town. Wandering through them is a real trip. Sometimes you see the most fantastic visual feasts, like this is a whole boat on display, photo via Travelpod:

From Metro Spiritual blog:

From Elizabeth in India blog:

From the away we go blog, more travelers to India:

These photos give you a sense of what it feels like to be there. Shopping success depends on not getting visually overwhelmed by all the stuff, and being able to zero in on a few special things. Survival of the visual fittest?

While in Kochi, we stayed at Bolgatty Palace.

Lovely place, quiet with beautiful gardens and expansive grounds to make you feel like you really got away. It’s on it’s own island and you take the boat jetty to get to it. However with all the time required to get to Old Town via the boat jetty, taxi, walking to Old Town ferry, taking the Old Town ferry … if you plan to spend most time in Old Town, it might be best to stay in Old Town.

We did not ship any purchases home from this trip. We purchased only what we could carry on the flight home. In Cochin, I got an urli with Lakshmi on one side and a gecko on the other side. Love it! But what I was really seeking was a lounging chair like this found at The Lockhart Collection:

And I found one, for US$100. We lived in Minneapolis at the time, and when the warehouse owner heard that, he mentioned a buyer for a shop in the Minneapolis area (which of course we were familiar with as it carried India goods) had visited the previous day, looking at the same chair. We did not purchase the chair immediately, but returned a few days later. By then, the Minneapolis shop had already purchased the chair. I found it on their website a few months later, of course at US retail price, and it was painful to see. We’ve had several businesses so we fully understand the need to cover costs and make a profit, absolutely no problem with that, it was just knowing it could have been mine for much less including the shipping. This time, I will get my lounging chair …

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Posted in Shopping

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