Paraphrased Reader Question: What do you think of open shelves?

Open shelving (replacing wall-hung cabinets) has become very popular over the past few years, and I'm curious as to your opinion.

The ever tasteful and hilarious Raina Cox from If the Lampshade Fits posed that question to me last night. Before I answer it though, I need to crank out some effusive praise for the work of La Cox. If the Lampshade Fits is one of my daily must-reads. Poke around on her site and you'll see why.

Anyhow, onto Raina's question. I see these magazine spreads too and there's no doubt that there's a trend afoot.

traditional kitchen design by seattle architect Bosworth Hoedemaker

Done and styled correctly, open shelves in a kitchen photo spread look terrific. But there are a couple of things at work here.

contemporary kitchen design by san francisco interior designer Amoroso Design

The photos you see in magazines are styled and propped extensively. They are also lit perfectly and professionally. Styling and photographers' lighting then gets enhanced further by our pals at PhotoShop so by the time it's all said and done, what's left is a cartoon of a kitchen, it's not real.

Cabinets have doors on them for a couple of reasons. One of those reasons is that they keep dust and airborne cooking goo off your stuff. The other thing cabinet doors do is hide your stuff. Stuff stowed behind a door doesn't have to be pretty or arranged.

When you replace wall cabinets with shelves you seriously limit your storage capacity and you set yourself up for the additional chore of arranging and dusting your magazine-perfect kitchen shelves.

However, all is not lost.

I love the idea of limiting the number of wall cabinets in a kitchen design and I love the idea of white space in any room, kitchens particularly. In my own designs I lobby tirelessly to go easy on the wall cabinets and instead rely on tall cabinets and efficiency-minded base cabinet inserts for storage. The kitchen in the photo below illustrates the concept perfectly.

contemporary kitchen design by san francisco interior designer Nicole Hollis

The only wall cabinets in that photo are very short and they're probably where glassware goes. All other dish storage has been shifted to the two-drawer base cabinet on the rear left and into the tall cabinet between the wall ovens and the refrigerator on the back wall. Once all the storage needs were met, there was ample room for two display shelves on the left side of the rear wall. The next photo shows a variation on the same theme.

traditional kitchen design by san francisco general contractor Mueller Nicholls Cabinets and Construction

The two stainless shelves are for display only, the storage heavy lifting gets done by the wall cabinets to the left.

So as lovely a fantasy as this may be:

Remodelista

This is closer to reality.

De-Victorianization on Division

Proceed with caution is all I'm saying.

Chair lust, Italian style

I saw these beauties on Trendir and I had to spread 'em around.

This is the Loop 3D Vinterio, designed by Claus Breinholt for Inifiniti.

These stackable chairs are available in six veneers; dark-stained oak, amazakoue, American walnut, black cherry and my favorites, sapeli/ sycamore and character tulip.

I don't know about you guys but I'm coming down with the shivering fits over these things.

Le Département d'Etat a volé mes souvenirs

Zut alors!

That's French for "The State Department Stole My Memories" if you need a translation.

My new passport arrived yesterday and to my horror, my old one wasn't returned. To all of you non US-ians,  our passports are valid for ten years. When our ten-year term is getting close, we fill out a form, get a new photo taken, write a check and send all of that and our old passport to the State Department. After a couple of weeks, the new one arrives. In the same envelope is the old passport, only with a couple of holes punched in the first page, making it invalid.

Getting back the old passport means that we get to hold onto our old passport stamps and visas. Getting my passport stamped is one of my life's greatest thrills and I love to thumb through my old passports and remember different places where I've been.

Well, for some ungodly reason my old passport wasn't in the envelope yesterday. I know it's not a big deal but it really bothers me. I paid a lot of money to get those passport stamps and more than that, they represent a ten-year chunk of my life that I can't get back.

My last passport was stamped for the first time in the lovely country of Grenada and got its final stamp when I flew back to the US from The Bahamas last fall. Ten years, three continents and countless miles and experiences lived in those passport stamps and now they're in the bin of a shredder in Washington. Had I known I'd never see that old passport again I would have ripped out all of its pages before it sent it back.

So fellow US-ians beware. When you turn in your old passport send it off with a fond fare thee well because you're never going to see it again.

A bas la bureaucratie! Vive les anciens passeports!

Saxon Henry's Roaming by Design profiles the Blogger 19

The Blogger 19 from left to right: Andie Day, Saxon Henry, Cheryl Kees-Clendenon, Sarah Lloyd, Ann Porter, Johnny Grey, Kelly Morrisseau, Laurie Burke, Jason Wu, Susan Serra, Carmen Natschke, Jamie Goldberg, Aston Smith, Chuck Wheelock, Leslie Clagett, me, Pam Rodriguez, Adrienne Palmer and Sabrina Velandry

A little more than a month ago, I was honored to be one of the 19 designer/ bloggers invited to New York by Brizo to preview some of their new offerings and attend a fashion show. So far as I can tell, Brizo pulled off an industry first --they put together a focus group comprised of industry influencers, each with his or her own internet following. I blogged about the event and the attendees here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Geez I write a lot.

As of this morning, Roaming by Design started the definitive series on that event and it will continue tomorrow. Reading about it a month after the fact has left me marveling at the whole experience all over again. Check out her posts today and tomorrow.

Reading Saxon's profile of me has left me beaming and blushing at the same time. Thanks to everyone who put our event together and thanks to everyone who attended. We made history kids.

KBIS... there's an app for that

The Kitchen and Bath Industry show is in less than four weeks. If you're going to be in Chicago, let me know and we'll arrange a meet up. In the meantime, I'll be presenting at 11am, 1pm and 3pm at booth S1210. I'm speaking about my designerly process and the tools I use to express my vision. That sounds kind of lofty and I promise to make it interesting.

Anyhow, KBIS is always a whirlwind of activity and this year promises to be no different. In order to keep track of what's going on when, there's a mobile website that behaves like an app available. Navigate your phone's browser to kbis.tripbuilder.mobi and it will launch itself. There's nothing to download.

If you have an iPhone, you can make a button for you home screen that will launch the page automatically. Once you're on the KBIS Tripbuilder page, hit the plus sign at the bottom of your screen. Select "Add to Home Screen" and you're done. You can do that with any webpage by the way.

I'm sure that Blackberry has some inefficient and inelegant way to do something similar although it may involve a DOS prompt.