Behold the power of the blogosphere

So get this. On Monday, I received an e-mail from a reader in Long Island and she included this photo of a Christopher Peacock kitchen.

She asked me if I knew who made the light fixture in the center of the photograph. Oh man, I like it when someone asks me a question that requires that I dig around for an answer, but my knowledge of what's available in the lighting world is a bit limited. Limited to the sorts of modern or classic lights I usually specify, that is. When it comes to what Christopher Peacock's doing with his lighting, I turn to my favorite Christopher Peacock fan, Gina Milne. Gina writes the great blog Willow Decor and the woman knows her lighting.

As a matter of fact, the reason I know Gina was a similar quest for a light used in a Christopher Peacock kitchen about a year ago. I stumbled up on her blog when I was doing Google searches to try to track down the lighting fixtures in Peacock's now-infamous Refractory Kitchen shown here.

Gina researched this kitchen photograph extensively and published the results of her sleuthing in a post called Elements of a Christopher Peacock Kitchen.

So I thought I try my luck again and I sent the photo my reader sent me to Gina and asked her if she knew who made the ceiling light.

Gina in turn, sent the photo to another design blogger, Brooke Gianetti. Brooke is an interior designer and architect and she writes the blog Velvet and Linen. Brooke turned the quest for this light for my Long Island reader into a blog post of her own and asked her readers if anyone knew who made the light.

Mind you, this took place within hours of my reader asking me.

So on Tuesday morning, Tammy Connor, an interior designer from Birmingham, AL; identified the light in a comment left on Brooke's blog. Brooke told Gina couple hours after that and Gina told me as soon as she heard from Brooke. I shot an e-mail back to my reader around 24 hours after I received her original e-mail. Pretty wild stuff.

How all of this works is pretty mind bending when I sit and think about it. Someone in Long Island asked someone in Florida question (me). I referred to a designer in Boston. She referred it to a designer in LA. The designer in LA got her answer from another designer in Birmingham. That's pretty wild. None of these networks would have been possible until very recently and it's already become commonplace. We live in amazing times.

Oh, the light fixture is the "Cubic Lantern" by Formations in LA. The original e-mail writer, my reader in Long Island has already found it at a lighting dealer in New York. So thank you Gina, Brooke and Tammy!

As an additional note about the above mentioned kitchen design, what’s been especially praised about the design are the hard wood floors, beautiful machines and how they blend well with the kitchen elements, balancing the rustic look with modern touches (like the chairs).

Chosen and maintained right, they’ll be a source of positive vibes in decades to come. I always advise people to take good care of the hard wood floors, primarily by choosing a good hard floor cleaner. If asked for specific recommendations, I always go with Hoover FloorMate Deluxe. 

Thermador's got a new gig

Not to be out done by Dacor, Thermador is running an incentive program through November of this year.

If you buy a Thermador 36" or 48" pro range,

Or a Thermador double wall oven,

And a 36" Thermador cooktop,

Thermador will give you a Thermador dishwasher.

Further, if you buy a Thermador 36" refrigerator,

Or any two Thermador Freedom Columns*,

Thermador will give you a Thermador ventilation system, stainless steel panels and toe kicks for your refrigerator.

These offers can be combined for a a potential savings of nearly $7,000. This is a pretty sweet deal. Kitchen design trivia quiz: What company invented the wall oven? Hint: The answer occurs 12 times in this post.

*Thermador's Freedom Columns are a modular systems of freezers, refrigerators and wine chillers that can be mixed, matched and combined in whatever configuration you chose. It's a system unique to Thermador and one that warrants its own post some day. In the meantime, you can read about Thermador's Freedom Collection on Thermador's website.

Thank you Jamie Goldberg!

Due to a recommendation by my colleague and pal Jamie Goldberg, I was selected to attend this year's GE Experience at GE's Experience Center in Louisville, KY. The GE Experience is an invitation-only, two-day presentation and training session. Here's GE's description from their website:

A theatre for the senses, the Monogram Experience Center is a 9,000-sq.-ft. complex filled with an array of stimulating and appealing spaces - all designed to showcase the latest in Monogram appliance innovation. Among the highlights is a professional culinary studio, where guests have a unique opportunity to prepare meals with a gourmet chef. Guests can also find something delicious to savor in the wine-tasting room, a facility that elevates the art of wine to state of the art. A showcase gallery with full multimedia capabilities provides further insights into the remarkable design and performance potential of Monogram appliances.

After a full day of sensory indulgence, guests can retreat to rooms at 21C, which was named a 2006 Hotel of the Year by The New York Times.

So on July 6th, my new pals at GE Appliances are flying me and a handful of other lucky souls to Louisville where we'll be feasted, feted and trained in all things GE Monogram. We get to cook in the GE Monogram kitchen theater under the tutelage of GE's chefs, and that has me more exited than anything. This is an honor and I'd like to thank the gang at GE as well as the brilliant and lovely Jamie Goldberg.

Jamie's on her way to New York this week to investigate a number of kitchen and bath showrooms. Jamie's going to write a guest post here where she'll report some of the highlights of her trip. Stay tuned and thank you again Jamie. Check out Jamie's blog, she does a great job.

Paint that porch ceiling Haint Blue

I spend a fair amount of time specifying paint colors for people and last week I was working on a color scheme for the exterior of an older home. The clients warned me that they didn't want anything wild. I took that as a good sign because clearly, they'd seen some of my more adventurous work and they still called me.

So I came up with a scheme that involved three shades of taupe, white trim and a black front door. Ho-hum, but it was pretty refined and as instructed, "not wild." However, this house has wrap-around porches on the first and second floors, after all it's an old, traditional Florida house. I specified Sherwin Williams 7608, Adrift, for the porch ceilings. Adrift is a light, neutral blue. In an effort to sell the idea I referred to the ceiling color as Haint Blue and they were smitten and signed off immediately.

Painting a porch ceiling blue is a very traditional effect, even though it doesn't show up very often anymore. It's a southern thing, but I'm a Yankee's Yankee and I grew up in a house with a blue porch ceiling in Pennsylvania. Ours were blue because that was the color they were painted when my parents bought that house in the '60s and we never changed it. I think that there was some vague story about the color keeping spiders away. Like I said, they were vague stories and really, we never really talked about it very much. But every time we painted the house, those porch ceilings stayed blue.

Well, about a year-and-a-half ago, a great friend of mine moved to New Orleans. Within days of his landing there, he turned into a combination of Marie Laveau and Tennessee Williams. In a matter of hours, he'd absorbed all of the lore of that fable-filled city and was spouting it back like a lifetime resident. I have never seen someone make a geographic transition with that kind of ease and thoroughness. I envy him his sense of place sometimes. Anyhow, when he was telling me about his house on about day two, he mentioned that its front porch had a Haint Blue ceiling.

I'd never heard the term before, but I knew exactly what he meant. Apparently Haint Blue still figures prominently into New Orleans homes. I asked him where it got its name and he said that New Orleanians use that paint color to keep away haints, or or spirits of the dead with bad intentions.

Well, I did a little digging around, and the practice of painting a porch ceiling blue did start in the American south. The expression Haint Blue comes from the Gullah people of the South Carolina and Georgia  low country. They painted the entries to their homes light blue to keep the bad spirits away. The blue color represented water, and as everybody knows, haints can't cross water.

If you were an impoverished descendant of slaves in the coastal south in the 1800s, you got paint the same way you built your house --from scratch. Powdered pigments were mixed with lime, white lead and milk. The lime and lead content of those early paints probably had the added benefit of poisoning insects that landed on it. So even though the pigment got all the credit, the credit was actually due to the toxic soup the pigments were suspended in. Any color of those old, home-brewed paints would have poisoned insects, but the Haint Blue got all the glory. This is interesting, because a blue ceiling is credited with repelling insects even now. Paint doesn't have lime or lead in it anymore, so it's not surprising that modern Haint Blue (and all house paint) is completely ineffective as a bug repellent.

All of the woo-woo nonsense not withstanding, painting a porch ceiling blue is an interesting, and depending on where you live, unexpected touch. So even if I don't buy the myth, I appreciate the connection to the past. If you're in the mood for an exterior color change , think about adding some Haint Blue.

Porch furniture – a few tips

If I had to choose one word to describe a good choice of porch furniture it would be “inviting”. The look, feel and comfort can change the whole dynamic and make the difference between enjoying long “lemonade afternoons” and having a porch that hardly ever used.

The second rule of thumb would be easy care. Most wicker, teak and cedar will handle whatever the elements throw at them.

On the other hand, if your furniture is not exposed but on the roofed part of the porch, you have more room for experiments, like going with inflatable furniture. The days when air mattresses and chairs were just for the beach are long gone and some of today’s inflatable furniture looks like it belongs on the cover of a “Veranda” magazine.

The best of inflatables and air mattresses can add a tasteful touch of a modern and inviting look that says, “Forget about that presentation due tomorrow and come sit with me.”

Support the 3/50 Project

The 3/50 Project is a nationwide, grass-roots effort to save independent businesses that were already reeling from the incursions of the Wall Marts and the Home Depots of the world before the bottom fell out of the economy. The 3/50 project is really simple.

Here's how it works.

Pick three independently-owned businesses you'd miss if they disappeared. Stop in. Say Hello and buy something. Anything. Your purchases are what keep those businesses afloat.

That's the three part. Now spend $50 a month, every month at one or each of those three businesses.

If half the employed population spent $50 a month at independent businesses, it would generate $42.6 billion in revenue. Imagine the impact if 3/4 of the employed population participated.

Something as simple as changing where you spend the money you'd spend anyhow could change the face of the landscape. Instead of complaining about the demise of mom and pop businesses, why not do something to help them stay in business?

And if you need a little more convincing, according the the US department of Labor, for every $100 spent in an independent business, $68 stays in the local economy through local taxes, payroll and other expenditures. When you spend that same $100 at Wal Mart, only $43 of it stays in your local economy.

Think about it. If you'd like to participate, just do it. If you'd like more information or if you'd like to be listed as a supporter, the 3/50 Project has a great website. Check it out and keep driving the next time you see a big box.