A new domino effect

Somebody handed me the new issue of a magazine called "Domino" (www.dominomag.com) today. I'd never heard of it, but I think it's one I'm going to start picking up. It's a Conde Nast publication that been around for a year from the look of things; and I was surprised at its depth and range, not to mention its practical advice and resources. I am always cautious of these sorts of things. Most of the magazines in this genre exist to house ads for mediocre products and their advice consists of whatever they've been paid to say.

Not so this one. It covers a pretty wide-ranging number of design sensibilities with an emphasis on making things look like today. What got me too was that every photo in the magazine is annotated with directions on where to find the stuff in the photo. What a concept. And I mean down to the paint colors on the wall.

They have a really extensive website as well, and there is content on the website that is independent from the print version of the magaine. How very new media of them. It's useful stuff too. There is even a calculator tool to estimate how much paint you'll need to paint a room, how much wallpaper to buy if you're looking at a paper job and most interestingly, how much fabric to buy before you tackle re-upholstering a piece of furniture. Too cool! Check it out:

http://www.dominomag.com/resources/calculators/paint

Let's hire a contractor!

When you're ready to take on a renovation to your home, smart people hire a contractor. People who watch a lot of local news view the very idea of this with great fear and loathing, but it needn't be a nightmare if you use your head. Local news stations love a "bad contractor" story, probably because the people at the station are as petrified by the process as their viewers are. Just relax. As with just about everything else in life, do your homework and ask a lot of questions. Don't pretend to know what you're talking about if you don't. Be honest and straightforward and trust your gut. Get references and follow up with them.

Here are a couple of dos and don'ts. This is by no means a complete list, but it's a good place to start.

1. Do consider your contractor's personality. This person will be in your home each day, so it's vital that you feel comfortable talking to him or her. A contractor who listens to you is the contractor you want. Someone you can't talk to is someone who's not going to be able to provide you with the finished result you want.
2. Don't be an absentee homeowner. Don't expect everything to fall into place automatically. Your approval is the most important part of a job. Stay in communication daily by phone and do a walk through with your contractor regularly.
3. Don't let anyone start working until you have a signed contract. A good contract should cover the following: start and finish dates, total cost (include how changes will be handled), a payment schedule, names of all parties, contractor's license number, proof of insurance, description of project, and provisions for early termination. If necessary, consult a lawyer.
4. Don't micromanage the crew. Instead, schedule regular meetings to discuss and review the progress of your job.
5. Don't pick the lowest bid. If something seems too low, chances are that it is. No one works for free. You don't and neither should your contractor.
6. Do keep a list of who's been in your home. Record in a notebook the contact information for each person who's worked on your job.
7. Don't dance around what you have to spend, especially if money is tight. Everything should be in the contract. It is perfectly OK to say to a contractor, "I have $50,000 (or $30,000, or God help you $10,000) to renovate my kitchen, what will that get me if you do this job?"
8. Do demand proof of insurance and a valid license. Verify the status of both of these on the website of your local builder's association. Anyone working on your home must have liability and worker's comp insurance. Remember that you're liable if you hire an uninsured contractor and one of his crew is injured in your home.
9. Don't rely on your imagination. Demand to see color swatches and paint chips for finishes before you order materials.
10. Do nominate a decision maker. The easiest way to prevent "he said, she said" is to appoint one household member to deal directly with the contractor and to update everyone else.

If you're unsure, don't do anything. It is better to put off a renovation than to rush into a contract if you aren't comfortable and sure.

Children as acessories

Yesterday's New York Times ran a really amusing piece about what happens to exquisitely designed homes once a child or two enters the picture. "Parent shock: children are not decor" has had me laughing since I read it yesterday. I just love the Times sometimes. Who am I kidding? I love the Times all the time.

Click on this link to read the whole article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/garden/14kids.html

What caught my eye was the image here that shows a happy dad and son with a foam-edged Noguchi Table in the foreground. A Noguchi Table is a modern design classic and it's been in continuous production since Herman Miller (www.hermanmiller.com) introduced it in 1947. The Noguchi table was the brainchild of the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isamu_Noguchi) and is a loving ode to simplicity and utility. A 3/4" thick piece of glass seems to float over a tripod made from two pieces of interlocking wood. Absolutely stunning, but a recipe for disaster when there's a two-year-old in the room. Keep the kid out of the room is my advice, but then again that's coming from a 40-something with no kids. I suppose that children are important, but for Pete's sake that's an original!

Here's what one looks like without the child-proof foam edge. A real Noguchi will set you back around $1400 and you can see them at Design Within Reach (www.dwr.com) and Room and Board (www.roomandboard.com), among others. Any Noguchi you'll see at either of those places is a real, Herman-Miller produced original. Although I have to admit, Modernica (www.modernica.net) in LA makes a pretty convincing knock off for around half the price of a real one. Of course, the knock off won't be signed and will lose its value over time.

Wrapping the edges of that table in foam, while jarring, is probably something Isamu Noguchi himself would have approved of. The whole point of the modernists was to bring beauty to the masses through furnishings they could afford and live with. If you ask me, it's a lesson that could be re-learned by more than a few of the neo-modernists out there.

It's trade show season --woo-hoo!

Every year, the tile and stone industries join forces to put on a trade show that makes my mouth water. "Coverings" is taking place in Orlando this year from April 29th through May 2nd. I cannot wait to get there. The photos littering my entry today are highlights from last year's show.

The kitchen to the left is a beautiful room on a whole lotta levels. It's open, airy and relies on the wall mosaics and floor tile patterns to add interest. This makes for a simply furnished room that's in no way Spartan or empty. Were it not for the tile work, this room would look positively bare.

There is so much to the world of tile and it's unfortunate that most peoples' ideas of what's out there comes from the tile aisle at the home center. True, most of what I'm showing here and most of what I'll see at Coverings this year is the extremely high end of the market. However, interesting needn't mean outrageously expensive automatically. Even if a lot of what I see at the show is aspirational, it's always good to see the high end of the market. An awareness of the high end helps you buy better knock offs. The styles that end up in a home center started out years before at the high end and trickled down. Sort of the same way that fashion or cars or any other consumer product does.

When I was registering this afternoon, I looked through the list of exhibitors and to call it extensive is the understatement of the century. Among the hundreds of tile manufacturers and stone importers are a fair number of Chinese businesses. I would say that the percentage of obviously Chinese concerns is approaching 10 per cent of the exhibitors. I suppose it's a reflection of the world economy and China's place in it. That China is a growing world power doesn't concern me necessarily, but I do find their presence at these trade events to be interesting.

Their emerging economies and sensibilities haven't quite figured out how to attract the eye of western designers, I think I can say that pretty safely. When you compare the booths of the Chinese manufacturers to those of the Italians, the Spainish or any other international firm who's been around for a while it's pretty jarring. The Chinese exhibitors tend to display their wares in booths that look like a grouping of folding tables. Period. The Italian booths in particular tend to look as if the muses themselves decided to go into the tile business.

More curiously still, the Italians have been making mosaics since the dawn of western civ. True, the Chinese are no strangers to ceramics, but it was the Italians who made tile into an art form. Italian mosaic tile in particular sets the standard. In my office are some samples of Sicis glass tile from Venice (http://www.sicis.com/). The families of northern Italy have been making glass tile since the Venetians figured out how to make colored glass a thousand years ago. The formulas that went into the glass sample on my desk have been passed down from generation to generation for hundreds of years and the result is an iridescent blue-violet that looks good enough to eat. Needless to say, the per square foot cost is pretty high.

However, in a box on the floor of my office is a new shipment of mosaic tiles in iridescent colors. There is a blue-violet in there that's a dead ringer for the pedigreed Italian stuff. Side by side, I would have to be told which one is which. But the big difference is that the new samples I have are made in China and they cost less than a third of the good stuff. Hmmm.

Lies and more lies from HGTV

Against my better judgement, I watched a new HGTV show this morning called "Color Splash." I recorded it at some point over the weekend, something in the description caught my eye. It seems the host was going to renovate a kitchen for somebody and I'm always curious to see what one of those shows does with a kitchen. Sometimes, I think I seek out irritation to prove to myself that I'm alive.

"Color Splash" didn't disappoint. David, the host, got off on the wrong foot by incorrectly identifying the wood species of the floor and the existing cabinetry. Beware anybody who claims to be a designer and can't identify a wood species by sight. Throw them out of the house immediately. Somebody who can't tell the difference between oak and birch is somebody who doesn't know what he's talking about.

Strike two came pretty quickly after that when the homeowner made the uninformed observation that modernism was cold and this was met with effusive agreement from the show host.

Modernism is not cold. It is un-ornamented and depends on textures and colors for warmth when warmth is the goal. The host had a prime opportunity to dispell the corollary myth that clutter makes a home feel warm. But then again, this is a television show. A television show that depends on sponsors to stay on the air. The sponsors need the viewers to buy the sponsors' wares and clutter up their houses. It makes sense, sort of, that a show host would encourage people to load up on crap they don't need. So since the show host passed up an opportunity to say what needed to be said, I will. Clutter doesn't add anything but clutter. Basket collections, fussy curtains and artifacts from our nation's agricultural past add nothing but distraction and noise to a room. Clear out the clutter and conquer the world I say.

Anyhow, as I watched this half hour program I was reminded again that this was meant to be entertainment. Most people watch this stuff and realize that what they're watching isn't a guide to what to do or to expect when they embark on a renovation of their own. I hope so anyhow. Again, due to the magic of television, a six week renovation was condensed miraculously into a half an hour and there were no cost overruns or scheduling problems. There couldn't be any cost overruns, because there was never any mention of cost to begin with.

What gets me about the shows on this network in particular is the way that the PR departments of their big sponsors make it into the banter of the shows' hosts. And this is where that network really rubs me the wrong way.

In the program I watched this morning, the show host went to a Home Depot and referred to it as a one-stop shop for all of his renovation needs. He talked to a cabinet guy in the Home Depot and they discussed how great Kraftmaid Cabinetry was. Then when he was specifying the counter top material, he needed "something more resilient than granite" because the homeowners cook a lot so he selected a Silestone counter. That was three obvious plugs in the span of about two minutes and they were masquerading as expert opinions. That really burns me. The patent untruth of this stuff can't be allowed to go on unchallenged.

Kraftmaid is the largest manufacturer of pre-made cabinetry in the US. It is known in the industry as "Crap made." It is not great, custom cabinetry. What it is is mass-produced and resonably priced. It's great for rental units and vacation homes. Period.

Home Depot is not a one-stop shop. Home Depot sells cheap stuff and that cheap stuff is sold to you by people who aren't trained to know the difference between price and value. Home Depot is a great place to buy framing lumber and tools. Home Depot is about the last place I'd go if I wanted a good light fixture or kitchen faucet.

Finally, Silestone is not more resilient than granite. Silestone is a major sponsor of that network. Manufactured stone, generically known as quartz, is pretty interesting stuff. It's strong, stain resistant and heat resistant. However, it's essentially terrazzo. If you like the look of terrazzo, then by all means get a Silestone counter. If you don't like how it looks, don't let some TV show or untrained cashier at a home center talk you into it with a bunch of corporate newspeak.

In a perverse way, the manner in which HGTV weaves the opinions of its sponsors into its content is almost admirable. Almost admirable because it's so seamless and reasonable-sounding. But corporate BS it is never the less. Silestone's parent corporation, Consentino, paid a lot of money for David to say what he did on that TV show this morning. Consentino has every right in the world to buy advertising. HGTV has every right in the world to sell airtime however it sees fit. BUT, as an audience member, please be aware of what's going on.

It is not 1985 and you're not watching the original runs of "This Old House." The rise of the home center invented a new market --the do-it-yourselfer. From the start, that was a pretty finite group of people. It seems that doing-it-yourself as a cultural phenomenon has crested and is starting to shrink. This is putting a squeeze on the home centers and the companies who stock their shelves. They have to get smarter about how they reach people. Product placement and editorial input on networks like HGTV makes sense if that's the goal. But every time a show host reads a line scripted by a sponsor, they lose a little more credibility.

If you feel compelled to watch that stuff, watch it for entertainment value. Because that's all it's worth.