Andrew C., a reader from Crofton, Md., needs our advice on whether to add a bathroom to some extra space on his ground floor, or to enlarge his cramped laundry room. (See the miserable laundry room here and here.)
A little background: Andrew bought his three-story townhouse a year ago and plans to live there another five years. The second story has an eat-in kitchen, living room, dining room and half bath. The top floor has the master bedroom, two more bedrooms and two full baths. So far, so good.
But Andrew feels the space on the ground floor could be better used. There are two rooms down there that Andrew uses as a media room and an office. There is also a utility room with the washer and dryer and all the home’s mechanicals, and an adjacent storage room. Both spaces together are 6 feet by 12 feet.
Andrew wants a larger laundry room, but he also would like a bathroom on that floor. He considered a half bath, but it would require a walk through the laundry room to get to it. And he wonders: Is that too weird? A real estate agent told him that a full bath would bring most resale value in case the two existing rooms are used as bedrooms.
But it makes me sick to think of Andrew doing his laundry in that pitiful space for the next five years. That can't be right. I wonder if there is some compromise or another idea we're not considering.
Isn't this a lovely garden room? The owner calls it a teahouse and may not visit for months on end because of a busy schedule.
The garden was designed by Dan Bifano, who has also designed gardens for such high-profile clients as Barbra Streisand. The garden is filled with roses, wisteria, hydrangeas and plants like that. In fact, this little building was at first destined to be a flower-cutting space. But the owner decided it needed to be a sitting room.
"I chose the color of the grout," the owner is quoted saying in a magazine, "and I chose the particular kind of gravel that was right for the rose garden, and another kind for the pathways. Grout color and gravel size would drive most people nuts. But it's all part of the process for me."
Hint: Does this sound like a control freak to you?
Take your best guess then click here for the answer.
Did I not watch "Sex and the City" reruns for the past four years?
Did I not come to feel in some TV-induced mania that I knew Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte? Did I not notice who they were and how they would decorate their homes?
So how in the world did attorney Miranda Hobbes' home come to look like this in the new movie? Miranda is tightly wound, a control freak and quite sophisticated. How could she live in a place like this?
An article in the San Francisco Chronicle says this decor is a window into Miranda's personality, a personality which, I suppose, is really confused.
However, the Miranda I "know" would use her decor to hide such a personality, or to influence her personality toward a more put-together state of mind.
What do you think? Does this room look like the Miranda you know?
The nice thing about remodeling an older home in a neighborhood of such homes is that you need simply walk around the area with your eyes open to find ideas for exterior architectural details.
That's what Aaron Raymond did when he remodeled his 1942 French Normandy home in the Windsor Hills area of Los Angeles. While previous owners had taken off the decorative corbels on the front porch, Aaron noticed them on other homes in the neighborhood that had similar architecture. So he asked his carpenters to re-create them.
He used a similar tactic when thinking about his second-story addition. In other homes of likewise vintage, he noticed the second story hung over the first by several feet, with decorative corbels visually tying the two together. See that here.
We're not all lucky enough to live in neighborhoods with older homes, but if we are so fortunate, the homes themselves can be a great inspiration.
Hadn't realized what I was missing until I saw it -- a website showing an art-glass pendant lamp both lighted and unlighted. Think about it: While most lamps look best lighted, half the time, in daylight hours, the lamp will not be switched on, unless you're selling your house and showing it to potential buyers, in which case, of course, all lights are blaring! Other than that, though, what will an unlighted lamp look like? Who's to know until you get it home?
So it was with a teeny jolt that I came across the Red Oak Glass website, out of Oregon, and found that the pendant lamps made of arty glass are shown both lighted and unlighted. And you can click to see it both ways, which gives you a little of that energy-saving, money-saving, carbon-reducing, turn-off-that-darned-light satisfaction. Check it out.
Here's an unusual design in a Los Feliz kitchen. Instead of a massive stainless-steel or stucco-looking stove hood over the gigantic range and built-in grill, these homeowners opted for a fan hidden behind faux cabinets. Plus, there are some pot hangers tucked in there as well.
I'm not sure I would do this, but I can see the logic. The home is a 1920s Spanish Revival, just half a block from Griffith Park, and perhaps it was thought that a great big hood would look out of sync? Or maybe someone had bad memories of hitting his or her head on a big stove hood and thus wanted to prevent that from happening again?
Whatever the reason, the next owner could change it. With a price tag of just under $3.4 million, this featured Home of the Week in today's Real Estate section will surely be bought by people with a lot of options in life.
After the flooring is laid, the walls are painted and the furniture is repositioned at the end of a remodel, what's left? Accessorizing.
For those of us with original artwork taste but poster budgets, here's an idea: fragments of larger works, printed, numbered and signed by the artist, costing $63 each plus $9 shipping, from a gallery in Ireland.
The fragments, like the one shown above right, are typically 8 by 10 inches or 9 by 11 inches, and are printed on archival paper. (The larger piece, on the left, is 11 by 19 inches and costs $900.)
The creator of these particular pieces, Susan Kaprov, lives in New York City. Her works are in the permanent collections of such museums as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Yale University Art Gallery and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, among others.
Kaprov and other artists have taken part in this unique initiative by the Haydn Shaughnessy Gallery in Cork.
According to Shaughnessy, "It's a great way to start a collection, to remodel or redecorate the home or to give to younger people to help them start a collection and enrich their appreciation of art."
And, Shaughnessy adds: "We are adding work all the time, two or three pieces a week."
If you want to stretch your design vocabulary, you might consider attending the Dwell on Design conference this week at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
Put on by the San Francisco-based Dwell magazine folks, the seminar descriptions include sentences like this:
"Not all designers set out to achieve the Platonic ideal in a concept for a chair, but few would argue that the promise of synonymy with a beloved design object does not motivate their process."
Go ahead. Look up "Platonic ideal" and "synonymy." I did, and I learned a lot.
You can also see a panel on prefabs that includes prefab guru Michelle Kauffmann. See her speak about her own delicious home:
Interview with Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti Los Angeles LEEDs the way? Nature meets the metropolis L.A. grows up: dealing with density The face of gardens in a densifying city Design developers The inventive spirit Single-family dwellings: green within reason (R)evolution in light, form and materials
Immortality through product Evolving modes of practice Home and away: lessons from the leisure zone Systems building and prefab Sustainable interiors
Plus, the exhibition floor, with 200 exhibitors and a "neighborhood" of prefab homes, is open Thursday through Sunday, and you can get in on the weekend for $50 at the door (though the full conference costs $349, or $149 for students). There are also home tours Saturday and Sunday, but Saturday's tour of Westside single-family homes is sold out. Sunday's tour, of private downtown homes (cost: $85), still has space.
Question: My daughter, who lives in Westchester, has a house with coved ceilings and wants to paint the rooms but is wondering if there is a crown molding that breaks up the ceiling and accommodates the rounded ceiling and corners? — Greg
Answer: From Reseda licensed general contractor and author Gary M. Katz:
There isn't a manufactured crown profile that fits a cove ceiling. However, there are still two ways of doing it.
First, you could install a crown molding with a small shelf above. I've done this before and have seen the detail in historic homes,too, though I'm not always thrilled with the design. The shelf doesn't really hold much, because of the coved ceiling, so it becomes a dust shelf.
Another choice is to cut a new top "shoulder" on a standard crown molding, so that the crown will fit against the ceiling, but often the cove is too large a radius and a small shelf is still needed.
Probably the best alternative is to skip the crown and install a picture rail molding. Picture rail is the architecturally authentic way to terminate a cove ceiling; it provides a termination line for the ceiling color.
You can mount the picture rail at the beginning of the cove or even a few inches lower.
Gary M. Katz is the author of many carpentry books and DVDs. His newest DVD, with Jed Dixon, is on wainscoting and paneling and is the sixth in a series called "Mastering Finish Carpentry."
(Photos: From top: HGTV, HGTV, Kathy Price-Robinson)
As shocking as it may seem to fans of young, hip, cool, midcentury contemporary design, this style will not be popular forever.
Stick around on the planet for a few decades, and you'll understand all too well that today's "modern" is tomorrow's "hopelessly dated."
Whenever I find homeowners denigrating Mexican tiles or avocado green appliances from the 1970s, I caution: Think about your karma. Thirty years from now, in a kitchen remodeled today, a young person may gaze upon the stainless steel appliances, glass tile backsplash and sleek cabinets and declare them "totally gross."
I started thinking about the end of our contemporary era when I studied this photo from Architectural Digest. I'm using this luminescent white kitchen (which is in a New York penthouse) as inspiration for my own kitchen update.
Notice how the living room furniture and the railing on that staircase in the background are very contemporary. But look at the kitchen itself. The beadboard on the cabinet doors, the white-washed table and floor, and those metal, farm-style chairs look suspiciously country in flavor.
In another magazine, I read that poofy drapes are coming back into style. And another article asked if it's not time to reconsider growing herbs.
This is all starting to sound like Mother Earth News to me. And if we are headed for a transition from contemporary to earthy, this kitchen says it all.
If this was my house I'd be really fit, and here's why: Every evening, I'd walk back and forth, from street to front door, over and over again, just to enjoy the sensation of this lit walkway.
I'm sure this would make the folks at the International Dark Sky Association happy. After all, this is where you need nighttime light, on the ground, and not shooting out into the sky.
Read the whole story of this Westwood remodel in the Home section.
Well, why not use outdoor lanterns inside? There's no law against it.
I saw this budget design trick last night on "Designed to Sell" with Lisa LaPorta. She's a SoCal gal, in case you didn't know.
In this particular show, Lisa wanted to punch up the sconces on either side of a vintage fireplace and add more metal to the room. Lisa calls metal the "jewelry" that completes the look of a room.
But rather than shopping for the wall lamps in the interior lighting section, she perused the exterior lights, which tend to give you more drama for the dollar. The lamp shown here, with a rubbed-oil bronze look, costs $79 at Lowe's, though Lisa said on the show that she got hers for $35 each.
Can you imagine something like this inside a house? It would be especially fitting in one of the small Spanish bungalows we see in these parts.
Out on my daily walk around a golf course community, I watched this Craftsman house being built. I watched it being framed and plastered and sided. I watched the windows go in and the roof go on. (This is the back of the house, the angle I see from the walking path.)
All the while, seeing that it had Craftsman architecture, I looked forward to the day when stone facing would grace the bottom of those distinctive tapered columns, and perhaps on the bottom of the walls as well.
But when the house was finished, the stone did not appear, though a "for sale" sign did. It may have been a "spec" house. The builder may have run out of money. I'm not sure if it ever sold. It sits vacant to this day.
My very strong feeling is that this house needs stone. It's crying out for it. And so to help the owner (who may very well be reading this blog), I've taken the liberty of photographing four different types of stone facing I've seen my walks. They are below.
If this was your house, and you were charged with choosing the desperately needed stone facade, which of the following four styles would you select?
You may not often see the words "slate" and "flow" in the same sentence. But it was by repeating the use of slate throughout her Mar Vista remodel that Janet Mitsui-Brown created a harmonious flow through her home.
Above you see the slate used on, clockwise from top left, the living room fireplace, gate posts, family room fireplace, garden deck and fountain, master bathroom floor and walls, and the chimneys.
When I toured the home, a calmness came over me as I experienced the same materials and colors repeated throughout the two-story home where Janet lives with her husband, daughter and mother. There was none of the herky-jerky feeling you can get when every room is different and you have to shift and adjust to each.
She also repeated the use of marble for the countertops in the kitchen, bathrooms, office and a smaller kitchen her mom uses at the back of the house.
And here's perhaps the best part: Janet saved a load of money buy purchasing the slate and marble in bulk, by the pallet, rather than buying a little here and there for each project.
Saving money is good, but the repetition part goes against my nature, which is to mix things up, try new textures and colors, get creative. But I do crave the harmony I feel in homes where there's a theme and repetition. So that’s my dilemma.
How about you? Do you prefer consistency or variety in your home?
I'd like to think I played some small part in the fabulous success being enjoyed by Dan Gallagher, a young, hardworking and extremely courteous decorative painter from Sierra Madre.
One day he's featured in the Pardon Our Dust Blog (here, here and here), and the next thing you know, he and his work are featured in print, in the Home Section of the Los Angeles Times.
Above you see, clockwise from top left, Dan admiring the 300-square-foot mural he painted, Dan and mural installer Michael Baughman putting up the mural, Michael applying the adhesive, and another room where Dan applied metallic Venetian plaster.
With this kind of talent, he should go far. And I'm taking some of the credit!
Do you ever feel "terminally unique?" I do. And that's why blending my own glass tile backsplash is so appealing. Oceanside Glasstile of Carlsbad offers an online tool for mixing up the colors you like best. Here's my favorite blend! It feels exciting to my bones. Granted, it's not relaxing. It's not classic. But, it's me.
And oh what a difference grout color makes. Here I show the same blend with (clockwise from top left) gray, green, white and red grout.
And if you're leaning toward green, this would be considered a green choice in terms of proximity to SoCal. These tiles are manufacturered just outside Tijuana. And in most green building philosophies, if stuff is made within 500 miles of your home, that's a good thing.
I heard some great advice about getting hip with color trends, and I'll share that in a moment.
But first, you have to get current. As David A. Keeps reported in this newspaper's Home section, here's the deal:
"Orange and red aren't quite dead, but the trendiest hues — purple, green, silver, even pale magenta — have a blue streak. The color of the season falls somewhere between turquoise and cobalt."
So here's the advice I heard: When you like a trendy color, don't go out and spend $2,500 on a couch of that color, or tile your backsplash with it. The color trend will be long gone when that couch or backsplash is staring you in the face.
Rather, plop that trendy color into your life with dishes, pillows, baubles and other accessories. In fact, if you're a color-trend fan, it might be a good idea to decorate with a neutral palette so the color of the day can be added, subtracted, changed and modified according to your whims and those of the trendsetters.
This photo shows how the residents of a Westwood condo brought the trendy color of lime green into their home without a lot of expense or long-term commitment.
Your fellow home enthusiast Kyla has a design dilemma and needs your help. She's in love with this two-tone couch and ottoman with dark leather on the bottom and milk chocolate microfiber cushions. She's also quite enamored with black Mission-style tables.
And she writes:
Will these two looks be good together or will the black and brown look horrible? If these looks will be a good look, what would you suggest for wall color? Also down the road we will be replacing the floors. I would like to go with wood and I prefer DARK wood over light. Do you have any suggestions? I am at a total loss. I feel like I have lost sense of imagination and can't put a look together for anything. I'm forever second-guessing myself.
For a cool contemporary home, these DIY paintings might be fun and flexible.
These look so sophisticated. But actually, they're simply canvases stretched on wood frames covered liberally with gesso-thickened paint. And where in the world would artists be without the miracle of gesso?
Just moving one colored canvas in or out of a scene makes a big difference.
Other advantages: These canvases are:
• Easy to hang
• Easy to store
• Easy to move
These paintings were included in "Kitty Bartholomew's Decorating Style," a book that I co-authored.
They were photographed in the Westwood condo of a cool young couple.
Men, could this be true? You're abandoning your man-caves for man-kitchens and man-patios?
This emerging (get it?) trend was announced in a press release for ReVision, a remodeling company that won an award for the outdoor man-kitchen you see here.
Todd Senft, from the Canadian remodeling company, said the project was created for "a young entrepreneurial bachelor, who doesn't want to just sit in front of the TV, watching sports and drinking beer. Guys like him are into cooking, into wine, and they want to impress friends, family and clients. He wants to be responsible for feeding his own guests."
Plus: "It's an evolution in sophistication: more and more we see guys, like this client, who have great ideas for customizing their own kitchens. They've given it some thought and they know what they want."
This outdoor space incorporates a bar, open kitchen, barbecue pit, fireplace, eight-person hot tub and a shower/change area. It has poured concrete countertops, an intricate surround sound speaker system hidden in the 1-by-4 tongue-and-groove cedar ceiling, and a large outdoor fireplace and overhead gas heater.
What I'm not seeing here is any mention of a large-screen TV for watching college basketball, professional basketball, college football, professional football, soccer, golf, baseball, poker, boxing, mixed martial arts and the upcoming Olympic Games.
So I wonder — observing my own household — is this strictly a Canadian trend?
Check out the same client's indoor man-kitchen. Love that masculine pebble backsplash!
Have you ever seen that really cool poster of colorful New Orleans doors? I came across that recently and it occurred to me: Hey, we've got some pretty cute doors where I come from. So I dipped into the photo gallery of homes I've written about, and sure enough, the doors are good-looking. Have a peek, and enjoy.
Got a distinctive door? Send a photo to podblog@aol.com for use in the next montage. Be sure to include your city.
As I'm perusing tile stores to get ideas for my own backsplash, I come across a photo of this gorgeous green glass tile. It's in a house featured by the L.A. Times Home Section in an article title, appropriately, Exploding with color.
What struck me was the use of the same color in all the tiles. It occurred to me that when you're considering 3/4-inch or 1-inch tiles, there is almost an irrestible urge to mix it up and include all your favorite colors. See what I mean here and here.
But there is something powerful, bold and courageous in using the same color all the way around.
Am I onto something? Or could this be hard to live with?
I see a couple of ideas here that are useful for my own remodeling. But the thing that really jumped out at me in this story is that the homeowner and I have nearly the same name: she is Kathryn Price, I am Kathy Price. However, she has three kids and a law degree. And I don't. But still.
This simple dining room makeover took place in a Western Springs, Ill., home, near Chicago, and was reported on by the Chicago Tribune.
Here's what I noticed that can help me:
Paint that table: I have a wooden table in my kitchen that probably won't retain any zing whatsoever after I get my kitchen walls and cabinets repainted. Trouble is, my husband Bill bought that table a few years ago and brought it home for me as a gift (see it here). Now, Bill is not very domestic. That's all on me. So for him to take the initiative and have enough caring and concern to actually pick out a table and bring it home . . . well, that's not something you want to set out with the recycling. So this room shows me that painting a wooden table can be a solution. And I'd definitely go with high gloss. And it looks great with wooden chairs, and I have wooden chairs.
Go bold with the chandelier: I've had this same issue, using a too-small chandelier or hanging lamp to fill the space. Going big and bold takes courage, but what a difference it makes here. I'm considering a hanging lamp over my kitchen table, so I want to remember this lesson.
Pour on the moldings: This room already had base moldings, but nothing where the walls meet the ceiling. Adding the crown moldings gave this room a substance it couldn't have gotten otherwise.
I'm enthralled with this 435-square-foot apartment in Greenwich Village, N.Y. It has only one window, in the living room, yet the space feels light and open. What you see here is the living room from each end, with the kitchen on one side, and the bedroom on the other side through glass doors. (Click photo to enlarge.)
The story in the New York Times says the couple — husband Suchitra Van is from India and wife Nette Gaastra is from Holland — bought the apartment for $296,000 and remodeled it with $26,000 they got from wedding gifts, along with $15,000 of their own savings. That's $41,000 to remodel a space just a bit larger than a two-car garage.
How did they spend the money? Some prices were revealed: a DeLonghi stove for $1,762, a G.E. dishwasher for $622 and a Hansgrohe shower faucet for (wow!) $670. The steel-framed doors into the bedroom cost $986 and were shipped from India and fitted with glass in Manhattan. And yet, the four Ikea cabinets cost only $141. The floor looks expensive, and the husband designed the porcelain enamel backsplash and countertop.
This place makes me want to declutter and lighten up.
For Kim Myles fans who were put off by what one commenter here called a “bizarre” color scheme during HGTV’s “Myles of Style” show on Sunday, tonight's presentation may have been her vindication.
The boutique hotel décor of the reveal was stunning with a richly hued wall of puddling drapes and a three-toned upholstered headboard. (Click photo to enlarge.)
It turns out Sunday’s show was a “sneak peek,” and tonight's was the real premiere. The homeowners, a couple named Buddy and Tamara, had filled their bedroom with enormous, chunky wood furniture that stuffed the room. The walls were peach-colored, and the whole thing just wasn’t working.
Kim’s idea was for a "permanent honeymoon hotel retreat." The walls were re-painted “cool khaki” and a new headboard was made from panels of plywood covered with brocade fabric in three luscious colors. Two sections of wall were painted metallic gold, and small shelves held a dozen red candles. “Metallics are your friends,” Kim said, “they’re going to bounce light around.”
And a final touch: Buddy covered two accent tables with sheets of glass tile. Amazing. I need to do that, or find ways to use glass tiles other than a backsplash because, frankly, how many backsplashes does one have in a house?
In the end, the whole room came off like a $500-a-night hotel room (not that I’ve ever stayed in one).
A few minor quibbles: What happened to the original furniture? It looked like it cost a few bucks. Did they sell it? Also, who’s going to light a few dozen candles on a regular basis, or ever? I have two wall hangings with three candles each, and I think I’ve lit all six about three times.
If you saw the sneak peek Sunday and the premier Thursday, did Kim vindicate herself?
Note to HGTV: I'd love if you'd include "before" photos on your website so we can more fully appreciate these transformations.
Michael Abel, an architect and contractor from California, and his Israeli-born wife Nava, built and decorated this 1,800-square-foot, five-bedroom, three-bathroom home in the town of Zichron Yaacov, Israel, which overlooks the Mediterranean.
The article says that many of the building materials, including interior doors, were found discarded on piles at other construction sites, and that wood shelving and built-in desks in the kids' rooms were made from salvaged wood.
Nava Abel is an artist and art teacher (she studied at California College of the Arts) and she sees her house as a palette.
For those of us intimidated by bold color, this house could be a catalyst to a more daring use of hues, or an affirmation that off-white is all right after all.
Do you love that painted concrete floor in the hallway (seen in the bottom photo)?
To be honest, I don't go to McDonald's for healthy food.
But, I might go to a certain McDonald's for a healthy environment (and maybe to get some design tips for my own home).
That McDonald's is in Hacienda Heights and its owner, Mark Brownstein, wanted to redesign the store to deal with slumping sales. And because he saw from census data that the population surrounding the store was nearly 40% Asian, he decided that design according to the ancient Chinese art of placement would be just the ticket.
To guide the project, Brownstein, owner of 23 SoCal McDonald's, hired Dr. Chi-Jen Liu, a fourth-generation feng shui grand master, who works with his daughter, Master Jenny Liu.
To invoke the five elements of fire, earth, wood, water and metal, the remodel includes:
• Waterfall • Earth-tone booths • Wooden ceiling • Potted bamboo • Offset entrance to deflect evil spirits (see Janet Mitsui's offset entrance in L.A.) • Red pole for good fortune (see one of these in Gretchen Zee's Santa Barbara remodel)
Just a few months after the remodel, according to a story on NPR, business is up by double-digit margins. And I wonder: Would feng shui in my home give me more prosperity? A double-digit increase in my income sounds pretty good.
After visiting Susan Rose at her 1933 Eagle Rock home, I wondered how I would have handled the dilemma she faced with her fireplace.
The problem stemmed from the fact that Susan wanted to add a new bedroom onto the side of the house where the fireplace already existed. (The other side of the living room faces gorgeous views of Eagle Rock.)
So she had to decide what to do: Remove the fireplace? (See how the fireplace looks from inside the living room.) Or incorporate the back of the fireplace (originally on the outside of the house) into her bedroom decorating scheme?
As you can see from this photo, Susan chose the latter, having the masonry of the fireplace covered with the same smooth-troweled plaster as her new bedroom, but in a contrasting color. The antique hutch and trailing houseplant add to the scene.
You'll also notice that she settled for a step-down into the new bedroom, to save money, rather than raising the new floor up to the level of the house. Would you have done that?
I do some writing for a Better Homes & Gardens magazine and when I present my editor with a great remodel in a galley kitchen she tells me they can't use galley kitchens because they are too difficult to photograph.
And I'm like, well most people have galley kitchens. And she's like, we still can't feature them.
So it was with some delight that I came across this galley kitchen remodel in the San Francisco Chronicle. It was executed by interior designer Brian Dittmar in his own Bay Area home.
The challenge with most of our kitchens, mine included, is that we can't make them bigger, so we have to use the space we have. Here's what I think makes this project so appealing:
• The new cabinets at the end. Moving the refrigerator from the rear of the kitchen to the front (see it on the left side?) allowed room for those cabinets on the rear wall, which now makes this a U-shaped kitchen.
• Lighting above the upper cabinets. This draws your eye up toward the ceiling and gives the sense of a much larger space.
• Wraparound counter. By continuing the counter around the corner in a cool curved shape, the designer created a small eating area where none existed before.
I saw this done on a smaller level in a Los Angeles condo. Click here and look on the right side of the photo to see a little wraparound counter with two stools.
• Light-colored cabinets. Even if you love dark woods, they can feel stifling in a smaller room. The light cabinets really open up the space.
Yes, it's still a small kitchen, but the new version is quite handsome. It does look a little narrow, though, probably because of the camera angle. Hmm, I wonder if that editor is right and galley kitchens really are difficult to photograph.
What do you think? Does this kitchen work for you? Why or why not?
If you were born prior to 1984, you may recall how frightened some of us were of that year on account of George Orwell's 1949 book, "1984," that foretold a bleak vision of a future with a Big Brother state of government and a band of thought police.
However, in terms of the New American Home — the model house built each year by members of the National Assn. of Home Builders to show off new products and technologies — 1984 might have been the height of sanity and restraint.
Behold the New American Home of 1984, pictured here. It cost less than $100,000 and was 1,500 square feet.
I'm going to put an exclamation point here (!) because the 2008 showcase home, which will be unveiled to the public today in Orlando, Fla., is a whopping 6,725 square feet. The designers call it "plantation style," but let's just call it a plantation. The 2007 model home was 5,283 square feet, and the 2006 home was 6,981 square feet and, according to the NAHB, "was designed as a winter retreat for a retired couple."
More interesting to me is the modest 1984 home. Among its innovations was the newly coined “master retreat” concept; 24-inch on-center framing; an adjustable-stem faucet and instant hot water dispenser in the kitchen; a delay-start dishwasher to save water and energy by enabling off-peak use and a heat pump system with integral water heating to reduce energy consumption.
And so I think: 1984, come back!
You can see all 25 of the NAHB's annual showcase homes by clicking here.
In the beginning, there was the bare bulb. And then there came to pass the light fixture. Soon upon the land, dropped ceilings and fluorescent lights spread. As humans progressed, recessed lighting became the rage. And then pendant lights became the queen of cool.
So the trouble is, how do you go from a recessed light over your island or sink to a pendent without calling an electrician? I've got nothing against electricians making a buck, but there's all the finding of them, and the scheduling, and then the paying. And there are troubling signs in the economy, as President Bush said recently. So DIY is more than ever de rigueur.
That's why the gods invented creativity and capitalism, so that companies would cook up the very thing you need at the very moment you need it. And so, voilá, an Instant Pendant Light from Worth Home Products. Without using any tools, the company says, you can replace the bulbs in a recessed or can light with a pendant light. They were featured recently on the Apartment Therapy Los Angeles blog.
You can see your choice of lights here and watch a slide show of a can light being switched out. Personally, I'm enamored with the blue pyramid-shaped lamp pictured here. You can buy instant pendant lights online from Lowe's for less than $60.
Anyone used these? Are they as simple to install as they seem?
Some kitchen layouts are awkward. Some without grace. But this one, in a Corona tract house, was flat-out stupid.
You can see, in the top photo, the kitchen after the $7,000 DIY remodel. It is truly wonderful.
But in the next photo you see the kitchen as it was originally laid out. The rough sketch on the bottom shows you the problem: the dishwasher, which was set in the peninsula next to the sink. When the dishwasher door was open, the homeowner, Stephanie Taylor, could not stand at the sink.
Have you ever tried loading a dishwasher when you were not standing at the sink? Whichever genius designed this kitchen may have never loaded a dishwasher.
A second layout problem was the distance across the room between the sink and the stove. With her short stature, Stephanie felt she was "ping ponging" across the kitchen from stove to sink and back again.
And finally: The stove was in a traffic pattern between the family room on one side of the kitchen and the dining room on the other. You don't really want children and others trekking past a stovetop filled with boiling pots, do you?
In the remodeled and reconfigured kitchen, you can see that Stephanie's husband Rick, who remodeled the kitchen over five weeks, got rid of the peninsula and placed the dishwasher right next to the sink. And he switched the places of the refrigerator and stove.
That's my nomination for Stupidest Kitchen Layout Award. Can you top this?
But I was struck by the pan drawer underneath the cooktop. Of course you have to put something under a cooktop. It can't well be dead space.
But the idea of having to move away from the burners to get something from the drawer just doesn't seem right. And wouldn't stuff on the burners, like pasta sauce, splash down onto the drawer's contents?
I would almost prefer to see two open shelves tucked under there with good-looking pots and pans displayed.
Is it just me?
Or is this a logical place — indeed the very best place — to put a big drawer for pots and pans?
The real reason I'm so dismissive of trends is that I'm lousy at spotting them until they're nearly over.
Those in the know have been using subway tile for a few years, and I wonder: Is it still trendy or over? Should I make this economical choice for my own remodel?
In the top left photo, you see subway tile used in designer Enid Harris' Westwood kitchen, which was featured on these pages awhile back.
