A Soviet look back

I love looking back at old catalogs and magazines. I could spend hours in a used book store combing though 40-year-old issues of Better Homes and Gardens and Sears Catalogs. I'm old enough to remember that stuff when it was new and it's pretty humbling to look back at how truly fleeting everything is.

Well in that same vein, I came across a website called English Russia a couple of weeks ago, and the guy who writes that blog posted some pages from a 1983 Soviet Look Book. In the old Soviet Union, all household goods were sold by the state and a new catalog came out every year. I suppose it was the Soviet equivalent of a Sears or Penny's catalog from the same era.

It's interesting to get this kind of a look into the domestic lives of ordinary Russians from the Soviet days. When I think back to 1983, I can remember very clearly wondering what life wasreally like over there. I knew the fires of the Cold War were stoked with a whole lot of propaganda --theirs and ours. And I knew that I'd never get a straight answer until I went over there myself. 

Well  that never happened and I never did get my first-hand look into Soviet life. Russians I've come to know over the years have told me enough of their childhood stories that I think I can cobble together a good sense of how life was on the other side of the Iron Curtain. But I have to tell you, this Soviet Look Book from 1983 has really piqued my curiousity all over again. Look at some of this stuff. The appliances in particular are fascinating.

1983 wasn't too long a time ago. Right?

Check out these ceilings from Valley Tin Works

Valley Tin Works is a Pennsylvania-based company that prides itself in being the last company left that makes traditional, stamped tin ceiling panels. They are also the only company in the US that restores original tin ceilings.

Tin ceilings don't show up very often in my part of the world and when I do see one, it's invariably a plastic fake gracing the ceiling in a home where a tin ceiling has no place. I don't care how cool you think it looks, a tin ceiling has no place in a Florida ranch house. However, some of the older buildings here had them back in the day and it's good to know that they can have them again should the need and the impulse arise.

But in looking over Valley Tin Works' website, my Yankee roots began to stir. I loved going into an old storefront or home when I was a kid and seeing that they still had tin ceilings. There's nothing quite like them and I know from having lived in the Tin Ceiling Belt as a kid, that dealing with them when they need to be repaired can be a character builder.

Tin Ceilings gained popularity in the US in the 1880s as a less-expensive replacement for the exquisitely detailed plaster ceilings that were popular in Europe at the time. At the height of tin ceiling craze, there were about 45 companies in the US that made the stamped tin plates. The depression and two world wars sounded a death knell for the tin ceiling. Over time, such tin ceilings as there were either fell apart and were removed or they turned into the ultimate do-it-yourself project. So from the ashes of history, Valley Tin Works arose in 2004 with a master metal smith at the helm.

Valley Tin Works makes traditional tin ceiling patterns and makes them available either unpainted or finished with their signature, multi-step, lifetime paint finishes; a handful of which I'm displaying here. Valley Tin Works doesn't shy away from finding new uses for these stamped tin plates either. Their tin panels can be used as kitchen back splashes, as wall cladding or as art.

Check out their website, there are photos galore of the work they do and have done. BravoValley Tin Works, bravo.

SketchUp 7 is amazing!

I downloaded the new version of  Google's SketchUp yesterday and am now running SketchUp Pro 7. This thing is a wonder, believe me. There's a free version available that's great to use to get your feet wet in the pool of 3-D architectural rendering. If you want to wade in deeper still, the Pro version is available for $495. When I stop to consider how much other professional-grade rendering software costs, that $495 is all but inconsequential. It's practically a nominal fee when consider further how horribly most other rendering programs work. SketchUp works, it does everything I need it to do and more and it makes me look good. What's not to love?

I've seen the future gang, and the future has an icon on my desktop.

Sherwin-Williams Gone Wild

So the fourth and final 2009 palette from Sherwin-Williams is something they're calling Techno Color and I have to say it's one of the more daring palettes I've ever seen them do.  For a company around whose neutrals I've built a career, there is nothing neutral about this palette. I mean, look at the inspiration photo. Techno Color is bold and bright and somehow environmentally friendly. I predict that the colors in this palette will show up all over the place and I think they'll stay around the longest out of the four palettes I've reviewed in the last couple of days. Anybody want to venture an opinion?

Gauntlet Gray

Hep Green

Zany Pink

Ruby Shade

Reflecting Pool

Zircon

More Design Pro LED Lighting from Kichler

Since I wrote about Kichler's Design Pro LED under cabinet lighting yesterday, I need to mention it one more time before I move onto another topic. The lighting I was talking about yesterday is LED in the form of a box and that's all well and good. I'll take under cabinet lighting in its box form any day over what I usually see. What I usually see is the Home Depot halogen puck light.

Puck lights don't work well as under cabinet lighting because the super bright halogen light isn't diffused enough and you end up with a series of spotlights illuminating your counter. It looks sloppy and still leaves too many shadows in the area where you prepare food. Add to that the amount of heat kicked off by halogen bulbs and I have to wonder why bother?

Well, Kichler re-imagined the puck light and came up with something they're calling a disc light. The light produced by the discs has the same warm quality as the light emitted from the rest of the Design Pro LEDs and are a great solution for a space where box lights won't work.

The Design Pro LED Discs are 3/8" of an inch thick if you can believe that, and each disc comes with embedded installation screws and connection wiring already coiled inside. Features like these are an electrician's dream come true and they take the guesswork out of a retrofit. Kichler's Design Pro LED under cabinet lighting sounds like a winner to me. I'm using them in my next job, that's for sure.