Time for another break

I spent a bit of time on the phone this afternoon. I was making arrangements to rent a car in The Bahamas. Cat Island in the Bahamas to be exact. I'm making a triumphant return to the land that time forgot in about two weeks and I am so due for a break I can't stand it. Being on the phone with somebody over there today made my upcoming long weekend away seem a lot more real. That's mostly because trying to conduct anything resembling a business transaction on the Out Islands is an exercise in letting go of my American expectations. And for me, that's an important first step in getting out of my own way.

Dealing with this kind of stuff over there starts out like giving a cat a bath but eventually I give in and let it just happen. It's funny, a phone interaction like the one I had this afternoon with an American car rental company would have had me unleashing the wrath of Khan. But since it was with Mrs. Gilbert of Mr. Gilbert's Motor Inn and Car Rental, By the time I said goodbye I was calmer than I'd been in months. I'm still not quite sure I completed my car rental reservation but it will all work out. See? A calm that borders on Zen and that was just from a phone call.

Cat Island is about 40 miles long and a mile wide. Its population hovers around 1000 people. It sits in the Atlantic Ocean about 350 miles southeast of Key Largo. It is the definition of secluded and quiet. There are no phones, no internet access, no TV, etc. Just miles of empty beaches and blessed solitude. Me, a couple of friends, John Steinbeck and I plan to do some serious battery recharging.

This has nothing to do with kitchen design, interior design or sustainability and that's precisely the point. Everybody needs a getaway.

This is the side of the New Bight International Airport on Cat Island

This is the side of the cottage. I like this photo.

This is looking past a tree at the porch with the azure seas lapping in the background.

Ahhhh.

Oh Target my Target

Those of us who are in the know, know that for at least the last ten years, Target has been raising the bar on what a discount store is capable of. They've been teaming up with well-known designers for the last couple of years. Thomas O'Brien, Victoria Hagen and Michael Graves have all designed lines of furniture and housewares for them and their offerings been pretty uniformly good. Last year, Target teamed up with Dwell Studio and started selling a special collection of their linens. last year it was all linens from Dwell Studio, but this year they've taken the dive into furniture.

This is a leather ottoman by Thomas O'Brien for Target. The retail price is $129. That's not a typo. None of the prices you're about to read are typos.

This is an upholstered headboard from Dwell Studio for Target. It sells for the princely sum of $149. Don and Betsy Draper, eat your hearts out.
This is a $29 lamp by Thomas O'Brien for Target. Pottery Barn who? $250 table lamp where?

And this is not a $2,000 Barbara Barry nightstand. It is a $149.99 one from Dwell Studio for Target, my Target.So it looks like Target's getting better at this cheap chic thing the longer they stay at it. The high-end furniture and houseware people hate you, but I don't.

Paste the wall?

I love wallpaper with a passion that borders on the unnatural. But I get it that it's a chore to hang and labor worthy of Hercules to remove. There's something about wallpaper paste and our climate in Florida, over time the stuff turns into something resembling a cross between Krazy Glue and concrete. Ugh. That's all history with an innovation brought to market by my friends at Graham & Brown.

Graham & Brown is a British company that sells gorgeous wallpaper, decorative mirrors, digital murals and more. They are a pretty big presence in the US market, they have a wide distribution network here and their website sells their products in dollars. Graham & Brown has come up with something they call Paste the Walls. Their Paste the Walls papers reverse the typical order of pasting and papering. With old-school wallpaper, you roll out the paper, paste the back of it and then hang the wet paper. Throwing around wet, sticky wallpaper is a lot of what makes wallpapering such and onerous task. Well, using their technique (and special papers that can handle it) you roll wallpaper paste on the wall and then hand dry paper to a wet wall. This keeps the paste from penetrating the paper too far (which is why traditional wallpaper is so hard to remove), it makes sizing easier, pattern line ups are easier to manage and when you want a change in a year or two, the stuff peels right off. What a great idea.

Graham & Brown's designer papers that use the Paste the Wall technique run from about $25 to $80 per double roll. That's pretty much what traditional, good wallpaper costs. So there's another great idea. They have a new, innovative process that makes their products easier to use and it doesn't cost any more money. Hurray for Graham & Brown!

Mood Indigo

I've been writing a lot this week about sustainable building products, and with each mention I refer to a store in Gainesville called Indigo. Indigo opened in May of 2007 and their mission statement reads: "Responsibly providing communities with state of the art sustainable solutions. Impacting our world through an innovative multi-faceted business that places people and planet alongside growth and prosperity. " Indigo's vision is "Inspiring ourselves, the community and the world by sharing the secrets of a modern sustainable lifestyle."

Indigo offers classes on sustainable construction that are open to both the trades and the public. Indigo's website reads like a sustainability Christmas List. Dual flush toilets, sustainable lumber, formaldehyde-free plywood, low VOC paints, non-toxic cleaning supplies --it's all here and a lot of it is available for sale through their website.

These people are onto something, something big. I wonder what it would take to get them to open a location in Saint Pete? Hmmm. Never mind, but please look over their website. If you're planning a renovation, think about a trip to Gainesville to see this place for yourself.

On beyond zebra

Sandwiched between Chelsea, Union Square and Gramercy Park is the Manhattan Center for Kitchen and Bath. It is the Mecca of my profession and it defines what a kitchen and bath showroom should be. I walked through its hallowed doors for the first time about four years ago and thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Of the many beautiful things I saw there, one that stuck out more than anything was a counter top made from zebrawood. In fact, here's a photo of the MCKB's showroom and I'll give a quarter to whoever guesses where the zebrawood counter is.

Prior to that, all I knew was that zebrawood was an exotic hardwood and that it was really expensive. I assumed that it was expensive because it was rare and I didn't give it a whole lot more thought. After having made my pilgrimage to the MCKB and seeing how gorgeous a counter made from it is, I started talking up zebrawood like a mad man. At the time I worked at a ridiculously fancy schmancy design studio and I used to specify zebrawood just because I could.



Then I actually looked up what zebrawood was and I learned that zebrawood is expensive because it's rare all right. And it's rare because it's an endangered species. Zebrawood is actually Microberlinia brazzavillensis, a tropical hardwood from Gabon, Cameroon and the Congo. It is not harvested in anything close to a sustainable manner and its popularity is hastening its demise. Ever since I got the straight dope about zebrawood I got religion about it and it is now first on my verboten list.

But leave it up to the geniuses at Smith and Fong to come up with a replacement. Their product Plyboo Neopolitan is a dead ringer for zebrawood only it's made from bamboo. An untrained eye could never tell them apart, and this trained and discerning eye has a hard time. The stuff's great and it represents what the idea of sustainable building products is all about. It's not about doing without. It's about doing things smarter. I have another quarter for anybody who can guess where to buy Neopolitan. Can't think of it? Click here.