We got the space for our new design agency, Twenty Three, a month ago. It was an empty room. What we loved about it was the full glass faced window {and of course that it was fitting our budget}. We decided to design it from scratch, and we scoured Mumbai streets and annoyed carpenters and builders alike while doing it.
Here’s the cheat sheet to our low-budget ‘vintage but modern’ look that was inspired by some Pinterest posts we liked.
We hired a local carpenter in Goregaon and sat with him everyday – drawing sketches, taking Pinterest photographs and so on. He’s our go-to guy for how adaptive and understanding he was, building everything from the sofa to the stools and work desk. The stools in particular, were a tough design he pulled off really well.
Shakeel Bhai is based in Goregaon but takes projects from across the city.
Give him a call on +91 9930881158.
We wanted a vintage-style wallpaper, for which we went to Crawford Market, Bungur Market in Malad and also few shops in Mulund and Goregaon. Everyone had the same old pattern which won’t suit our taste at all. It was a tedious process.
We wanted a simple polka dot design, and finally decided to get it custom-made. It was costing a bomb everywhere, until we found IPrint in Ghatkopar who gave us a great deal.
I made the wall and art prints personally. We didn’t want to take motivational quote images from internet. We wanted each print to define us. Hence you see the posters of David Bowie, Beatles, Indian Ocean in our office.
We got them printed on sunboards instead of framing them. It gives much more of a canvas feel.
Fun fact: I’ll make these prints for you if you like them. Give me a shout out on karan@twentythree.in
We got the bright yellow sofa covers from a local market in Goregaon for a really good deal. Highly recommended.
We never thought getting a old school cycle will be such a struggle. We wanted this just cause we saw it in The Intern movie. It was so cool right? We checked OLX, went to local scrap guys, couldn’t find any cycle like this. But then on our way back home once, we came across a cycle which was in such a bad condition somewhere in Aarey road, We just went there, enquired whose is it and paid that man INR 500 and bought it. Got it here, colored it yellow and boom, it was looking great.
So we came across many types of office lights on Pinterest. But there was this one studio in Mexico, which used only bulbs in their office. That looked so beautiful. So went to Lohar Chawl in CST and looked for something similar — and we found it.
#LBBTip: You can walk into any store in Lohar Chawl, you’ll find them in some corner {mostly because nobody buys them}.
To add a little vintage magic, we got a gramophone, an easel, an old-timey clock and a retro phone. We got all of this from Koradia furnitures on SV Road in Jogeshwari. It’s a shop which sells antique items and that too at a reasonable rate. The gramophone was for INR 2,500, the easel for INR 1,000, the clock for INR 1,600 and the telephone for INR 1,600.