How to deal with a washing machine

In Europe, where to put the washing machine takes on an importance that's not the case in the US or Canada. Since homes tend to be smaller there and space tends to come at a premium how to deal with laundry is not something to be taken lightly. When I was in Italy for Cersiae last month, I saw what has to be the best integration of a washing machine with a bathroom ever.

The manufacturer is Geromina and since nobody in Italy seems to have any use for a dryer I'm going to assume that the machine shown is a washer only. What do you think? Would you integrate a washing machine into a bath?

Hansgrohe and Axor are giving away a $10,000 bathroom

Do you want your life to look like this?

How about a bath that looks like this?

To celebrate their new Facebook page, Hansgrohe and their designer brand Axor are giving away $10,000 in bath fixtures. There's no trick or trial to go through in order to qualify. All you need to do is go to Hansgrohe's new Facebook page, give it a like and then fill out the entry form. The contest is running from now through October 31st, but don't put it off.

I take a shower every morning under a Hansgrohe fixture, I have the Pura Vida handheld and I love it. Though given the option, I'd add a few more fixtures to my set up. With $10 grand worth of Hansgrohe and Axor shower stuff I don't doubt for a second that my life would end up looking like this.

So go register on Hansgrohe's new Facebook page today.

Check out my Cat Island/ Hurricane Irene fundraiser too if you'd be so kind.

A visit with American Standard

As I mentioned here last week, American Standard had me in New York last week for  a day of product education and a tour of their research facility in nearby Piscataway. While there, American Standard put my fellow travelers JB Bartkowiak, Laurie Burke, Andie Day, Saxon Henry and Rich Holshuh in The Standard Hotel in the Meatpacking District.

Photo via JB Bartkowiak

The Standard is the current center of the universe for all things hip and cool in Manhattan and it was fascinating to have a front row seat for all of it. Ordinarily, I'm an east side of Midtown guy and it was wild to see the worlds of fashion, art, music and money collide in the lobby of The Standard. It was fascinating surely, but I've never felt so old and irrelevant in my life. Hah! But man oh man, the view...

So my Wednesday last week was spent with the marketing and design folks at American Standard. I went into the whole experience with an open mind but I wasn't expecting to be wowed. I should have know better, there were industrial designers involved after all.

I love hearing the stories behind products and I love meeting the people who design the objects most of us take for granted. The amount of thought that goes into something as mundane as a toilet is inspiring frankly, and anybody who can figure out a way to re-engineer toilets and showers and faucets to use water more efficiently is OK in my book.

Any time I go on one of these sessions I'm always on the look out for that one break away innovation, that one thing that pushes an entire industry forward. I found a couple of them at American Standard but none of them comes close to what they're doing in their Outreach lavatory faucet.

At first glance, the Outreach looks like any other centerset lavatory faucet on the market. But if you look at it closely, notice the line at the bottom of the spout. This faucet does something utterly different.

It has a pull out, similar to what you'd expect from a kitchen faucet.

When I shave every morning I have a ritual where I splash water around my bathroom sink to get the shaving cream scum and beard crumblies down the drain. My ritual doesn't work very well and I probably use three times the amount of water I need to in order to clean my sink. A pull out sprayer would make sure of my (and every man's) morning dilemma. Great thinking American Standard.

And if an afternoon of innovation in Piscataway weren't enough, our whole crew went to dinner at Cookshop in Chelsea that night. Sitting a hair's breadth away was none other than Ron Howard. God I love New York. Thanks American Standard for getting me back there.

Photo via JB Bartkowiak

The number of reading glasses at that table speaks volumes about the median age of the typical design blogger. I love having peers!

Back to New York

from Wikimedia Commons

Man oh man do I love this town.

You know it's funny, this is the sixth or seventh time I said "I'm going to New York" on this blog. Or is it the seventh or eighth? Who's counting?

Anyhow the K&RD show is going back on the road next week and I'll be in the City from Tuesday through Friday. This time, the great folks from American Standard are bringing me, Saxon Henry, Andie Day, Laurie Burke, JB Bartkowiak and Rich Holschuh together for a few days to learn about American Standard, Crane Plumbing, Jado | Porcher and Eljer products.

This is going to be a great week and I owe a great debt of thanks to American Standard's PR folks Nora DePalma, Wendy Silverstein and Jen Datka for making all of these arrangements.

I guess it's a function of having been around for a while but I know all of the bloggers who will be there so this will be as much a reunion for many of us as it will be an opportunity to get some product education. And what better place than New York? And by the way, they're putting us up at The Standard. Woo-hoo!

Everybody arrives on Tuesday and everybody involved will be live-Tweeting the action as it unfolds. If you're a Twitter-er, follow these people to keep up on the action as it unfolds.

Me @Paul_Anater
Saxon Henry @SaxonHenry and @adroyt
Andie Day @AndieDay
Laurie Burke @cabinetgal1
JB Bartkowiak @BuildingMoxie
Rich Holdshuh @ConcreteDetail and @adroyt
American Standard @amercanstandard
Professor Toilet @professortoilet
Nora DePalma @noradepalma
Wendy Silverstein @WSA_PR

My shower? Why yes, it's a Speakman

Until a month ago, my shower life looked like this.

via

But in early May, the Speakman Company sent me this chrome beauty,

And now my shower life looks something more like this.

via

That's a bit of an exaggeration but not really.

My new shower head is Speakman's Neo, model S-3010, and I've enjoyed my test drive with it for the last couple of weeks so much that I'm going to keep it.

Speakman's Neo features five adjustable stream nozzles and 12 massage jets in a standard size, 2gpm shower head. At two gallons per minute, it's considered to be a low-flow fixture. Low-flow fixture used to be a kiss of death but Speakman's technology harnesses those two gallons for all they're worth. If I didn't know it were a low-flow head I'd never believe it.

My Neo has another Speakman innovation that I'm quite impressed with. Normally, a shower head has a series of flow settings that you click through one by one. All Speakman shower heads feature something called Anystream. Anystream is a 360 degree adjuster that allows the spray settings to flow into each other infinitely. This allows for a perfectly adjusted shower and because there are no locking parts, virtually assures a long life.

Add to all of that this shower resists sediment build up and clogs all by itself and I'm sold.

You can find Speakman shower products, faucets, valves, safety products and HVAC solutions at better dealers just about everywhere and you can also buy a Speakman Neo just like mine on their website.

Congratulations to Delta/ Brizo!

The first kitchen and bath manufacturer I ever interacted with was the Brizo faucet brand and its parent, the Delta Faucet Company. It's no secret that the Brizo brand has a special place in my heart.

A couple of years ago, Brizo was the new luxury brand from Delta Faucet. On the watch of Delta Faucet Company's brilliant CEO Keith Allman, Brizo was allowed to develop and flourish and shortly after that they started working with MSL. To call MSL a PR Agency sells them short, but I suppose that's what they are. Maybe if I called them the world's PR Agency of record it would come close...

Anyhow, MSL's Director of Social Media Outreach is a guy named Charlie Kondek, and two years ago Charlie reached out to me, an unknown kitchen and bath designer in St. Petersburg. Charlie was working very closely with Brizo's Senior Channel Manager, Jai Massela.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that Jai, Charlie and lived out a real-life social media case study over the last couple of years. In the course of living out the case study; a guy in Ann Arbor, a woman in Indianapolis and a guy in St. Pete developed a friendship I treasure. In the course of watching Brizo grow into the recognizable brand it is today, it's been a real thrill to call the people behind the brand my friends and I love recalling how I knew them when.

Here's a shot of me and Jai from a couple of years ago but oddly, I don't have one of me, Charlie and Jai. Charilie? Jai? We need to arrange a photo op!

On May 5th, Brizo and Delta cut the ribbon on their new showroom at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. It's over 3000 square feet with 96 working examples of their products. The Showroom is called DREAM₂O. Among those displays are 40 working lavatory faucets, 40 working kitchen fixtures, 11 full showers and five H₂Okinetics (shower and body spray combinations).

They're on the fist floor of the Mart and if you're in Chicago, please stop in and say hello. If you do, tell them I sent you. What follow are some photos of the grand opening from May 5th.

Endless congratulations gang, you deserve every accolade you get for this new showroom.

 

Want to be a hero every morning?

This is the new Spider shower head from Italian manufacturer Visentin.

It can be ceiling or wall mounted and each the the mini shower heads can be positioned independently. Visentin is not the first manufacturer to play around with this shower configuration. I find them to be interesting but not for the reasons Visentin wants me to.

When I see these shower heads, I see the head of Medusa.

Head of Medusa by Caravaggio, 1595

Medusa was a Gorgon, one of three terrifying sisters who wreaked havoc across the the landscape of classical antiquity.

Medusa started out as a ravishing beauty and a priestess in Athena's temple. She had a lot of luck with gentlemen callers but pressed her luck too far by bedding down Poseidon in the temple itself. This enraged Athena (who wouldn't be enraged?) so Athena turned Medusa into a hag and transformed her glorious hair to snakes.

Enter Perseus. Perseus was a hero-in-the-making and his mother was about to be wed against her wishes to King Polydectes of Seriphos. Polydectes send Perseus to go retrieve Medusa's head because he wanted to give it as a gift. Perseus enlisted the help of Anthena and Hermes who gave him a Cap of Invisibility, a sword, a mirrored shield and a pair of winged sandals; and off to work he went. By using the cap of invisibility and the mirrored shield, Perseus got close enough to Medusa to behead her without ever having to look at her.

Perseus holding the head of Medusa, a photo I took on an archeological dig in Castellamare della Stabia in southern Italy.

Once he had the head, Perseus flew back to Seriphos, showed the head to Polydectes and turned him to stone, thus saving his mother from a marriage she didn't want to go through with. He later gave the head to Athena who attached it to her shield and ended up with the ultimate revenge on the fornicating Medusa.

Perseus with the Head of Medusa, Benvenuto Cellini, 1554. Perseus looks poised to take a shower in this statue or am I just imagining things?

The moral of the story? Take your pick. Never fool around with a god in another god's temple, no matter how good he looks or the kinds of promises he makes. He's going to get away Scot free and you're going to have to deal with some kind of divine wrath. Another good one to remember is to be careful of sending the son of the woman you want to marry against her will on a heroic labor. Overall, just like any classical myth, the overriding lesson is always "behave yourself."

That's a lot of work to go through just to take a shower in the morning. Heaven knows I love Classical Mythology, but sometimes I want to just start my day with a conventional shower that doesn't inspire me to think so much.

What about you? Do these many-serpent-headed showers move you in any particular direction? Would you take a shower with a Gorgon?

Yet another defense of the residential urinal

Check out the Drop urinal from Hidra.

Hidra developed the Drop specifically for the residential market, they didn't adapt a commercial one for home use. That's how most residential urinals come to be by the way. A manufacturer takes something that's meant for heavy use and scales it back a little bit.

Hidra took another tack though, and the Drop never had an incarnation as a commercial product. To make it easier to fir into existing baths, the Drop has been made slimmer and taller. It's also a pretty attractive piece of porcelain.

For the life of me, I will never understand the widespread rejection of urinals for home use. Having half the population flush 1.6 gallons of fresh, potable water down the drain every time they need to dispose of about a pint of liquid is one of the more absurd practices of modern life. It's a terrible misuse of resources and people continue to do it because of a strange unease around urinals.

Sometimes that unease is warranted but not for the reasons you may think. I was in Spain with my great friend Bob Borson earlier this year and he had encounter with a urinal in Valencia that has to be read to be appreciated.

Anyhow, back to the business of urinals. Think of it this way, if there's a man or men in the house and there's a urinal present, toilet seats can be kept down. That alone would make the divorce rate plummet.

If you're contemplating a bathroom remodel and there are men who will be affected by the renovation, consider installing a urinal in your new bath. The men involved will be thrilled and you'll cut down your water use significantly. At this stage of the game, who wouldn't welcome a lower utility bill?

You can find the Drop and more cool bath stuff on Lazio-based Hidra's website.

Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec rethink the bathroom for Axor

While I was in Germany last month I saw this vanity. Notice how the shelf over the sink is also the faucet.

Pretty cool idea and I love all of the tiered surfaces surrounding that sink. I learned while I was there that this sink and shelf are part of a new collection from Axor, the leading edge of the Hansgrohe brand. Brothers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec designed a collection of some 70 components that are intended to be mixed and matched to make a fully custom bath design.

A big part of that is that the sinks and tubs aren't pre-dilled. All you need is a carbide-tipped bore and you can have your faucets be anywhere you want them. That is a great idea. Here are some glamor shots of the collection.

My pals at Hansgrohe tell me that the Axor Bouroullec is already available in Europe and will be coming to North America this summer. You can see all of the components from the Axor Bouroullec on Axor's international website.

Greetings from the International Builder's Show

Greetings from the Orange County Convention Center in finger-splittingly cold Orlando Florida. Actually, I'm already on my way home by the time you're reading this. These last three days have been spectacular. The new stuff I saw, the great people I met up with, it's been a real whirlwind.

Of all the great things I saw, there are a few that really stood out. The first is Brizo's new lavatory faucet called the Siderna. In addition to being really beautiful and sleek, there's a lot of sophisticated engineering hiding underneath it.

Check out this handle.

What's really wild about it is that those handles don't have the typical set screws that lock down a handle. Instead of set screws, the handle's held in place with really strong, rare-earth magnets.

It took the jaws of life to pry this handle off. I never would have guessed that a magnet could hold a faucet handle in place, let alone hold it in place so tenaciously.

Thanks to Brizo's generosity, I have seen that Siderna before, but only as a prototype. The last time I saw it was about a year ago when it was a working model. It's a rare and cool, cool thing to watch a product go from an idea in an industrial designer's head to a real product that anybody can buy.

From Merillat, I saw their new Pantry Corner, corner base cabinet. The cabinet industry has always been a very top-down industry when it comes to innovation. New, interesting products, start at the top of the market and work their way down. Merillat is a budget-friendly, value cabinet line. They're a well-built cabinet and they're sold at a price point that can't be beat. Typically, their notable innovations have come from things like that price point or the fact that they have a five-day production time. Five days for made-to-order cabinets. That's pretty innovative.

Well, this time, they're turned the tables a bit and they've come up with a corner base cabinet that the high-end, custom brands will be following.

This is the Corner Pantry.

It's a corner cabinet with three, very deep drawers in the center.

On each side of the drawers, there's a pull-out storage cabinet that's large enough to actually use.

Very smart and a much more efficient use of a kitchen corner than a lazy susan.

A week ago, I ran a couple of posts on a new series of laminates from Formica, the 180fx series. Prior to Wednesday, I'd only seen samples and a real highlight of the show was seeing 180fx laminates in person.

That they look so spectacular on photos is not a PhotoShop trick, Formica is in the throes of turning the laminate world around and in doing so they are reinvigorating and unfairly maligned product category. So bravo to the Formica Corporation.

I'll probably have another blog post or two about IBS 2011 and then it's off to Germany for IMM and a series of factory tours that have been arranged for me and five of my pals by Blanco sinks.