Life's too short for cheap hardware

I had a conversation with a client about hardware yesterday. Hardware in the sense of cabinet knobs and pulls, door hardware's another animal all together. Anyhow, I told him that if he doesn't know what constitutes "good" hardware he shouldn't learn or he'll never look at a cabinet knob the same way again. I was joking of course, I think everyone should have an idea of why things cost what they do and what separates the good stuff from the dreck.

There is a world of difference between a dollar knob at Home Depot and $30 knob from me. There's more to it than the fact that I have a dog in this race too.

Good cabinet hardware comes from foundries where solid metals are turned into art. Not good cabinet hardware is cast in a cheap alloy and then plated in whatever the finish du jour is. Trust me, that dollar knob only looks like brass.

I'm fortunate to sell good hardware from Schaub and Company in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Schaub designs and sells some of what I say is the best hardware in the business. Schaub doesn't shy away from getting creative and they do some really amazing and unexpected things with shell inlays and semi-precious stones.

This Branches series is from their Symphony collection. They are not for everybody, but for the right person, nothing else will do. Schaub uses black pearls and crystals in these handles and knobs and they have to be seen to be believed.

This series, also from the Symphony collection, uses shell inlays in a nouveau Art Nouveau style I like.

Here's a continuation from the same collection.

And a little more shell inlay here. The crab knobs are my favorite. What a great idea to use pen shell inlays to form a crab shell. Those crabs are gorgeous and light-hearted at the same time.

When I'm looking at the offerings of a hardware supplier, the first thing I look for is whether or not they work with bronze. I'm no metallurgist, but as I understand it, bronze is a more difficult metal to work with. Like brass, it's an alloy of copper and zinc, but bronze is a more dense metal. For my money though, nothing looks or feels like it. It's also nearly impossible to produce cheaply. The presence of bronze in a hardware collection is an indicator of quality.

Bronze hardware is usually really rustic-looking but it needn't be. Schaub just rolled out a new collection of modern-ish bronze handles and I think I'm in love. Again.

This is the co-ordinated knob. Ahhhhhh.

Of course, Schaub does a really good job with truly modern and contemporary stuff too.

I searched for years to find a good hardware supplier and I settled on Schaub and Company about two years ago. For my money, nobody else had as well-rounded a range and though no one will ever accuse them of being cheap, their hardware packs a lot of value into their price point. This is hardware for the long haul.

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Let there be wood

Wood floors don't figure into my work very often, but that's a function of where I live more than anything. A traditionally-built, wood frame house in Florida has heart of pine floors. In what's called a Cracker House, wood floors were necessary because Cracker Houses never sit on the ground. Instead, the floor joists rest on pilings that raise the house a foot or so off the ground. That the floor joists span the distance between pilings means that this construction method calls for a flooring material with a lot of give.

Believe it or not, this house is not sitting on the ground.

Building homes on concrete slabs started to catch on in the 1950s. With the arrival of the slab, terrazzo, stone and ceramic tile floors became the default floors in this part of the world. So while folks in more northern climates were thinking of tile floors as exotic, people here were looking for something new. Enter the wood floor.

Wood floors figure into around 10 percent of my projects and when I get to specify a new one, it's a bit of a big deal. I've been trying to find the perfect floor for a project and I keep coming back to walnut. Walnut's my favorite hard wood and a walnut floor is a thing of such staggering beauty it makes me... it makes me... it makes me stagger.

The floors I'm specifying are to come from Carlisle Wide Plank Floors in Stoddard, New Hampshire. Their website is beautiful and all of their offerings are gorgeous, not just the walnut. Carlisle Wide Plank Floors were unknown to me until a week ago and what a find. If you want to look at some great inspiration photos of some beautiful floors, check out their site. Better yet, if you're in the market for a new floor, consider Carlisle.

Dust off your Capezios

Is nothing sacred?

A tale of two master suites

I am drawing out two master baths this weekend. I don't do too many of them and I enjoy the challenge when I get one. The first is an exercise in more and my client wants me to use this image as an inspiration photo.

I don't like it, but nobody pays me to like what I design. When it's finished, it will be lovely and tasteful and my clients will love it. Their friends will too and for a lot of people, a master bath like this is something they aspire to.

Not me man, my fantasy master bath is one similar to the second design I am doing for another client. In my heart of hearts I'm a minimalist and so is client number two. Even though I will pour myself into both projects, project number two will satisfy me more because it strikes so close to what I like.

I like minimalism because it doesn't provide any distractions or places to hide. In a minimalist setting, some one's alone with his thoughts and for me that's a peaceful and enjoyable thing. I get it that not every one's wired that way but after years of considering why I'm so drawn to the kinds of room settings that a lot of people think of as cold, I've come to the conclusion that it's because I like my own company.

Anyhow, master bath number two is going to be as clean and unencumbered as I can make it. For years now, I've loved the shower systems made by Chicago-based LaCava. In particular a pan system they call the Tatami.

The Tatami is a series of fluted, porcelain blocks that sit in a shallow pan. This allows for a smooth and seamless transition from the floor in the room to the shower. Because this transition has been so smoothed out, it allows a designer to re-think the whole idea of a shower enclosure. The lower left illustration in this diagram shows how the Tatami works in cross section.

The shower set up I'm working on has a single, clear glass splash guard that will be about four feet wide and run from the floor to the ceiling. That's it. Just a single sheet of glass at the end of the room with the Tatami system on the floor.

This is sort of my idea for this shower. Sort of. Only in my plan, I'm going to use a single sheet of glass and leave it open at both ends. With a single shower head in the ceiling I can do this. Talk about minimalism. When this shower's not in use it will all but disappear.

Master bath number two is a lot more challenging to design because I can't rely on any of my usual tricks to make flaws in the structure of the room disappear. It requires me to think about every finish and every fixture because the few objects in the room have to work together to add to the sense that the room's empty.

I have no idea what I'm going to do with the vanity yet and I'm sitting here wondering this morning. I'm wondering how to pare down the idea of a bathroom vanity until it's just that, the pure idea of a bathroom vanity. How do I suggest utility without sacrificing utility at the same time?

There are times when I love what I do for a living, and having the opportunity to think like this on a Sunday morning is definitely one of those times.

So what do we think? Am I out of my mind? Anybody have a competing master suite philosophy?