Away away

I'm taking off tomorrow morning and entrusting the care and feeding of this blog to Melody McFarland from I Like Pigeons Because Nobody Else Does, Kelly James from DesignTies and Franki Durbin from Life in a Venti Cup. I have no idea what they are going to write about or even when they plan to post for that matter. Letting go like this is a lot more freeing than I thought it would be.

This is a short trip. I'll be back in circulation and posting away again starting on Thursday morning. So in the meantime, enjoy these guest posts. I'm looking forward to coming home and reading them, almost as much as I'm looking forward to loosening the reins for the next couple of days.

I'm off to a place where kitchen design doesn't matter and that's kind of cool. Ciao!

That bathroom cost how much?!

One of my brothers and I had a brief e-mail exchange last week concerning a bath renovation project that fell into his lap last week. The brother in question is the king of the do-it-yourselfers. He knows what he's doing and over the years, he's done a great job on his and his family's home.

The bath project in question started out as an expedition into a wall to fix a slow leak. The home in question is 100-year-old-or-so former school that he's converted into a home for his large family. As is usually the case in an older building, fixing a simple leak is never simple and such a job rarely consists of a quick fix.

In the course of cutting into a wall to find the bad water line, he ended up with a full-blown construction site on his hands. It happens. What really got him though was how much money he ended up spending on what was supposed to have been a minor repair in a secondary bath.

I sympathized, but it's not as if there's anything I could do about the cost part. Bathroom renovations are expensive and quick fixes either don't exist or they are not something that will really improve what's already there. I get called on a lot of bath jobs, but I don't end up working on most of the rooms people call me about. I live in a part of the world with somewhat older housing stock. Older housing stock means small bathrooms. Unless a bath is being expanded or it's part of a larger renovation project, I can't make enough money on the job for it to be worth my time. That may sound haughty or cold, but so what. Even a small bath remodel requires a lot of my time, generally the same amount of time it takes to work on a larger job. I make more money on larger jobs, so it makes no sense for me to take on a time-intensive small bath.

I'm not alone in this either. Anybody who's ever tried to find a contractor or designer willing to work on a downstairs powder room knows what I mean.

Anyhow, the great Kelly Morisseau from KitchenSync had a link on Twitter yesterday and it led to a blog called Confessions of a Tile Setter. Confessions is written by a man who goes by the name of Suntango, and Suntango's Texas-based blog is filled with all kinds of insight regarding the renovation business form the perspective of a skilled tradesman. In Suntango's blog entry from last Friday, I found this:

According to an annual construction cost survey by RemodelingOnline, a mid-range remodel of a 5x7-foot bathroom averages $11,585-$14,889; for an upscale expansion of a 5x7 bathroom to 9x9-feet within the existing house footprint, costs run $35,111-$43,050. These are averages; actual costs may be higher or lower.According to an annual construction cost survey by RemodelingOnline, a mid-range remodel of a 5x7-foot bathroom averages $11,585-$14,889; for an upscale expansion of a 5x7 bathroom to 9x9-feet within the existing house footprint, costs run $35,111-$43,050. These are averages; actual costs may be higher or lower.

According to a construction survey by RemodelingOnline, a mid-range remodel of a 5x7-foot bathroom averages $11,585-$14,889.

Here in Texas that is a bit high. However, you could easily shell out $30,000 in a small bathroom with upscale materials like a heated floor, heated toilet, heated towel bars, gem quality Natural Stone Tile, upscale fixtures, TV Monitor in mirror, etc.

For an expansion of a small 5x7 bathroom to 9x9-feet or larger within the existing home, cost can easily get into the high teens to close to $30,000. Again this can escalate with added features and trades.

You can pretty much hang your hat on these figures gang. In my experience, they are dead on. If you're thinking about a bath renovation sometime soon, keep these numbers handy as you work out a budget for it.

Man! Now here's a contest!

As a sure sign that times is hard, Sub-Zero is sponsoring a Dream Kitchen sweepstakes with a grand prize worth $50,000. Never in a million years would I have guessed that Sub-Zero would some day have a sales promotion of any kind, let alone a give away. But this is no ordinary sweepstakes. As with everything else they touch, they are doing this in a big way. The lucky winner of this random drawing will receive:

A Sub-Zero BI-30UG Glass Door Refrigerator/ Freezer, a Wolf 30" Gas Range and a 30" Wolf Ventilation Hood.

And if that weren't enough, the winner will get a Sub-Zero 424 Wine Chiller.

Then, they're throwing in $5,000 worth of Kohler fixtures.

And $5,000 in Ann Sacks Tile.

Three walnut swivel counter stools from Maguire.

A Shansi dining table from Baker.

Two Guild arm chairs from Baker.

Four Guild side chairs from Baker

And if all of that weren't an embarrassment of riches already, the winner will receive a years' delivery of Fiji water and 48 bottles of wine from Uncorked.com.

As I said originally, Sub-Zero does everything in a big way.

This contest is only open to folks who live in the contiguous United States and the District of Columbia. Sorry Canadian, European, Hawaiian, South American, Asian, Australian and New Zealand readers. Did I miss anyone?

So Lower 48ers, you have until August 15th to sign up for this things so get on it. All you need to do is register. There's no test or tasks involved, just register.

Mosaics as art, presented by Mosaic Art Now

I mentioned Mosaic Art Now the other day in my post about the mosaic in the Bronx MTA station at Bedford Park Boulevard. Mosaic Art Now (MAN) is an organization dedicated to celebrating the mosaic as an art form. MAN was founded in 2008 by mosaic entrepreneur and artist Bill Buckingham with the publication by Mosaic Rocks Press of the first issue of the magazine, Mosaic Art Now. Since then, MAN's operational scope has grown to include a website, blog, and a Facebook page. With MAN's expansion into cyberspace, Buckingham has been joined by co-editors Nancie Mills Pipgras and Michael Welch.

Spin-off (detail), Sonia King

In its mission statement, MAN describes itself succinctly:

MAN promotes the international understanding and appreciation of contemporary mosaics through quality publications and a lively online presence. We deliver provocative and inspirational content for artists, curators, architects, designers, collectors and educators.

I applaud their efforts on behalf of this ancient and often overlooked art form. What's really cool about MAN is their devotion to the history of the mosaic while at the same time embracing how the art form is expressed today. And besides, this stuff is just cool.

Mosaic Art Now, the magazine, is a 76-page, full-color publication. As its highlight is The Mosaic Gallery, an exhibit in print featuring the works of 34 artists from around the globe. Artists whose work the editors selected for their excellence in mastery, innovation, audacity and intent. Thought provoking and educational articles about mosaics and the artists who make them round out the magazine's content. You can order a copy from Mosaic Art Now's website. This publication page also lists the magazine's back issues which are now available as CDs.

Maria, 2008 --Michael Ferris, Jr.

In addition to being a print publication, Mosaic Art Now is also a blog that combs the Internet every day to find and share interesting work and ideas. It is on MAN's blog that I found the MTA piece I wrote about the other day. Nancie writes the Mosaic Art Now Blog in a knowing, passionate voice. Her understanding and insight leap off the screen. I learn a lot about this medium through her enthusiastic descriptions and that's a good and welcome thing. Here was one of her insights into that Community Garden project from the other day:

Check out the cat's paw shadows. That considered use of tesserae flow, or "andamento" not only separates the shadows from the background, but indicates which way the sun is shining.

This is what separates the "duplicators" from the artists of fabrication. Brilliant.

--Nancie Mills-Pipgras, 6 June 2009

I noticed the shadows when I first saw the photos of that installation, but I lack utterly the language to describe them. Or should I say I lacked them in the past tense. Thanks to MAN and Nancie, I feel like I know a bit more about all of this.

Mosaic Art Now maintains an extensive Facebook page as well. Follow this link and become a fan, I have.

Many thanks to Nancie and the rest of the gang at Mosaic Arts Now. Keep up the good work and I'll be sure to check in regularly.

A Walk with Blue, Lynne Moor

Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see

The brilliant Phil Plait, an astronomer who writes the blog Bad Astronomy, posted this yesterday and I am amazed.

You can see embedded spirals in this image in green, pink-orange and blue. Well, wonder of wonders, the green and the blue are actually the same color. Phil popped the original image into Photoshop and isolated the "two" colors to be sure. Here they are side by side.

Sure enough, they are both RGB 0, 255, 150.

Human brains are amazing machines, but cameras they are not. I deal with identifying colors for a living and I'm pretty aware of the tricks my brain can play when I'm trying to judge what color a specific color is. I always look at colors in isolation when I can and have been known to mask off whole sections of carpet patterns so that I can really see the color I'm looking at. I warn people all the time about looking at paint chips in a fan deck --don't do it! Your brain can't judge with any degree of accuracy a color that's displayed in a line up of similarly hued and tinted colors.

So let's look at what's going on with this fantastic optical illusion.

These look like different colors because this illustration is shortchanging our brains' ability to contextualize these "blue" and "green" colors. As you can see in the close up, the magenta and orange stripes aren't continuous. The orange stripes don't go through the "blue" spiral and the magenta stripes don't go through the "green" one.

Without any conscious awareness of it, our brains are forced to see the "green" stripe in contrast with the orange stripe and the color reads as green. Similarly, the same "green" color, when we're forced to compare it to magenta reads as blue. To prove this, concentrate on the spot where the "blue" stripe butts into the orange stripe on the right side of the image. If you stare at it long enough it will read as the same green as the stripes on the left side of the image. But only at the point where the two colors intersect. It's wild! If I stare at that intersecting point, my brain will let me see the green but only at the intersecting point. If I widen my focus slightly, it still looks blue in the center of the stripe.

Human brains are amazing things but they cheat and play fill in the blanks all the time. As a designer, I think I'm pretty aware of this and I'm pretty adept at forcing perspective and hiding flaws. Usually, I'm pretty good at seeing though these kinds of optical illusions. I have to say though, that this one surprised me. I love this kind of stuff!