Another shameless plug for SketchUp

I spent the better part of the morning designing a huge, open floor plan kitchen for a lovely couple from Dunedin. They want something interesting and contemporary, so I took their architect's renderings and shifted things around a bit as I am wont to do. Now, I want to show something interesting but in order to work in my industry, I'm compelled to use a truly inferior piece of software called 20/20. I've complained about 20/20 before, so I won't add to my list of public grievances. Not too much anyway.

My quest for an interesting kitchen started with an inspiration photograph. Here's my inspiration. I'm love the supports below this glass bar, and I really like the idea of sheathing a knee wall in bamboo veneer as has been done here.


Now a knee wall is usually a structural thing that adds support to an island or a peninsula. As a structural element, we usually hide them. But in this case, the designer drew attention to it, so much so that it's arguably the focal point of this peninsula. So for my interesting kitchen assignment, I want to take the idea of this exposed knee wall in a peninsula and apply it to an island. Two islands in this case. Easy right? Wrong.

I work with some very expensive professional software called 20/20. 20/20 bills itself as "the world's leading interior design software." You need to have a license to buy it and operate it is how exclusive a proposition this software is. You'd think that with all that exclusivity, I'd be able to render something resembling the back of this peninsula to show to my clients. So you'd think.

Here's the best 20/20 could do after about four hours.

20/20 can't draw a curve on something that's standing up, like my bar supports here. It can't apply a bamboo veneer texture to my wall or supports. I can't show the curved glass bar. Not only can it not do most of what I want it to do, my system crashed three times trying to get it as far as I have. PATHETIC. So now I get to tell a client during a presentation "Ignore those straight supports, let's pretend they're curved like in the picture I showed you. Now pay me $40,000."

That's clearly an unacceptable scenario. So my next option would be to hand draw the rendering above. However, that would take me the next two days to complete and I need to show my ideas to these people today.

So, I launched my FREE copy of Google's SketchUp and banged out this in about ten minutes. Now I ask you, how can software that cost three times as much as the laptop I run it on be trounced so soundly by software that's free for everybody? How does that happen?

I'm famous!

The kids over at Apartment Therapy are running a little sumpin' sumpin' I wrote about Bahamian getaways. The story's complete with the studliest photo ever taken of me in all my 43 years. Thank you JD! Check it out here!

Let me quote myself:

Here are some shots of a slice of heaven I'll be returning to in a week.The Out Islands of the Bahamas are for the most part an undeveloped Eden about an hour's flight east of south Florida. My friends and I rent the same cottage every couple of months on Cat Island at a resort called Fernandez Bay Village. I use the term resort loosely....

There are no hot stone massages or organic meals. Rather, there is a 40-mile long, virtually uninhabited island. There are beaches with no foot prints on them, reefs that aren't charted, nights illuminated by the stars, and a blissful quiet that turns my overworked brain into jelly...

Nothing to do but kayak, dive, swim and read. Ahhhhhh. Having no telephone, no internet acess, no television and zero contact with the outside world for a couple of days is the ultimate tonic; even if it's bitter at first. Having all of that plus daily maid and turn-down service is almost too much to bear!

Keep calm and carry on

I was reading through Apartment Therapy's weekend postings this morning and I came across this kitchen:


Austin-base graphic designer Alyson Fox opened her home to the editors of Apartment Therapy and I for one, am glad of it. It's an interesting room but what really caught my eye was the poster hanging to the left of the cooktop. What a great directive for life in general and today in particular.

It turns out that Keep calm and carry on was a British propaganda poster commissioned in 1939 by the Ministry of Information in the lead up to war with Germany. A couple of souls at Barter Books in London found an original and proceeded to reproduce it and sell it on their website. It's a pretty cool thing all around. A vintage feel, a way to touch history and a firm yet kind directive for every day living. It's a killer combo.

So as we gear up for today's arrival of Fay, let's remember to Keep calm and carry on.

Yes, yes, let's talk about the weather

Apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan.

All this talk about impending storms got me thinking about snow globes. Well not really, but it reminded me of these beauties I first came across on Apartment Therapy.

Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz are a Pennsylvania-based husband and wife team who gang up on the humble snow globe and drive a dagger into its heart. Precisely what art is supposed to do if you ask me. But check these things out. Who would think to take something so wholesome, so simple, so aw shucks American and turn it on its head? These things are brilliant. Beautiful to look at and painstakingly constructed.

Their art comes in two species; the globes themselves and then limited edition photographs of the globes. If you'd like to inquire about their art, you can contact the artists directly here. Or you can reach their representatives at the P.P.O.W. Gallery in Manhattan.

I'm going to start giving an award periodically: Kitchen and Residential Design Blog Award. Future generations will come to call it the KaRDB Award. I predict that in time, winning a KaRDBA will carry the kind of cachet that a Tony or Drama Desk award does today. So with that said, I hereby grant the first KaRDBA to Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz.

You are now entering the NO PANIC zone.

Well it looks like Tropical Storm Fay will be Hurricane Fay by tomorrow morning. That storm is going to hit somewhere along Florida's Gulf Coast on Tuesday. So today's the day to decide how seriously to take these warnings. After having seen firsthand the damage that rained down on Florida in 2004, I'd recommend that you take this seriously. However, taking a storm warning seriously is not an excuse to freak out. Rather, it's an opportunity to prepare for what all of us who live in these climes know is an inevitability. Now that we know what's out there, we can come up with some concrete plans to get us through whatever the next couple of days will bring.

First, if you're going to leave the coast; leave now. Now if you plan to stay, find out what your evac zone is. Your evacuation zone also tell you how high above sea level you are. Pinellas County has a zone finder on their website that's really handy. All you do is write in your address ans hit send. It tells you your zone and it also tells you where the closest shelters are to you. Know where they are just in case we do get hit. That website is filled with other useful information on how to prepare in the days leading up to the arrival of a hurricane. That would be now.

Again, this isn't an excuse for a melt down. If we get spared the arrival of this storm, there will be plenty more over the next couple of weeks. Know where your important stuff is and know what you plan to do to prepare for it. Get gas today. Go to the ATM and get cash today. Tell your friends and family what your plans are. Today.

Hurricanes come with the territory and this is not news. They are a force of nature that no one can do a thing about. Knowing that you're completely impotent in the face of one is the key to defining what you can control. I can't stop a storm, but I don't have to sit back and do nothing either. So step to it!