My first cork floor is in

I have been on a cork floor kick all year and the first of the three cork floors I have in the works is in as of last week.

There are about six seams in this photo and I bet you can't find one.

The material in question is from the Earth and Classics palette from US Floors' Natural Cork Collection. US Floors' Natural Cork Collection is a series of glueless, engineered, floating floors. The interlocking planks are each 11-5/8" by 35-5/8" and they are 15/32" thick. The underlayment's already built into each plank and the installation's a snap.

US Floors' Natural Cork Floors carry a limited lifetime warranty for residential use and maintenance consists of dry mopping when needed. My homeowners are as ecstatic about their floor as I am. I knew it would be beautiful and easy to live with and being right is a lot of fun sometimes. This is not the first cork floor I've ever encountered, this is however the first cork floor I've ever convinced someone to install in her home. I was a little nervous about how she'd like it once it was installed and it's good to know that my worry was for naught.

The kitchen where this floors is in a transitional contemporary style but I think this floor could have worked in a kitchen of any style.

US Floors makes a terrific product and anybody who makes something that makes me look good gets a thumbs up from me.

Oh since I know you're wondering. This floor cost around $9 a square foot. Check out cork floors from US Floors.

Bon Ton handmade tile

If you took this 1914 illustration by George Barbier from the pages of La Gazette du Bon Ton and reinterpreted it as handmade tile nearly 100 years later, the result would be something like Bon Ton Designs in Minneapolis.

I first saw Bon Ton Designs at the trade show Coverings two years ago and these poppies have haunted me ever since.

Mary Anderson is a tile artist. Kurt Anderson is her husband and business manager. Together, they operate the studio Bon Ton Designs. Mary's designs are original as are her glazes. All of her work is made to order from an extensive catalog and she embraces the opportunity to create truly custom, one-of-a-kind work as well.

You can see the Art Deco, Art Nouveau, Arts and Crafts and Modernist influences on her work, but each of those influences is just that, an influence. Mary's work is clearly a product of now and she pays respectful homage to the great designers of the past. Call it what you will, but I call it art.

You can see the rest of Mary's catalog and installation photos on her website, Bon Ton Designs. Go!

An eco-narcissist speaks

My urban chicken blog post is the gift that keeps on giving. It's been busily collecting comments in the weeks since it since appeared and last night a self-proclaimed eco-narcissist named Jerry tried to take me to task, point by point. Indeed.

Jerry, it's my blog and I can write about anything I bloody well please. But clearly, Jerry thinks I'm a heartless prick. Someday Jerry, we'll have a chat about hyperbole. In the meantime though, Jerry has a lot to say and I'm afraid that Jerry's important points would be missed if they remained buried at the end of a three-week-old blog post. He seems to need an audience so I'm going to give it to him.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Jerry the eco-narcissist. His words appear intact, I have changed nothing.

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Paul, I (obviously) count myself amongst those ideological eco-narcissists that advocate urban poultry, and I feel compelled to respond to your rant against birds that (unless you have forsaken eggs and chicken from the grocery store are now both passively and actively abusing. Passively by supporting the agri-business practices of commercial egg farms, and actively with your comments here.
First as has been pointed out roosters are not required for eggs, and no one I know of is advocating for roosters in an urban setting. Bringing up roosters is just silly, so let;s talk about HENS.
For starters I have a licensed flock of 5 hens from which we average 4 eggs per day. "Do we need eggs?" is now a joke when we pass them in the grocery store. And as to quality Mother Earth News (I know, eco-narcissists, right?) commissioned a study and found that pastured eggs like the ones from my back yard contain more Omega-3s and other good stuff, and less cholesterol and other bad stuff. And they do taste better. The ones from the grocery store? They taste like the grocery store. If you've ever grown a tomato and bought one in the store and tasted the difference you know what I am talking about.


Loud? Compared to a dog barking all night, I'll take some daytime clucking any day. Besides, they do sleep at night, and so do I.


Smelly? If hens, their coop or run smell bad it is from serious neglect. A modicum of effort (1 minute/day) can keep that under control. Again easier to clean up after than a dog. I NEVER have to walk around the neighborhood with a little bag of chicken poop!


KFC? You mean Kentucky Fried Cruelty? If you had any idea how THOSE chickens lived you would think twice about allowing that in your city.


Salmonella? Again you are confusing us with those nasty factory farms. The conditions of even the most casual coop are far too clean to allow salmonella or the more serious threat of e.Coli0157 to be an issue. Thank you for not mentioning bird flu. That would have been really silly!


As to you and your brother being attacked by chickens as children I will only say that if I were repeatedly outsmarted by a bunch of birds with brains the size of peas I would not be bragging about it. You had food. They wanted food. You couldn't figure that out?


As to your photo of the butchering table, I assume that is there for shock value. I am one of the few hen keepers who keeps them strictly as a source of protein. When they have lived their productive life and stop laying all of my girls will end up in the stew pot. Yes, that is a happy day. When we had Shaniqua and dumplings we celebrated the fact that she lived a good life, died a painless death, and provided for our family with her eggs, poop and her very flesh. Yes, I still eat chicken from the store too, but I won't eat battery birds because THAT is cruel.


As to my experience I've been keeping chickens in an urban, not suburban, setting for 5 years and my friends are all getting their own when and where they can. Yes there is a learning curve and mistakes were made. But I still think that keeping the farm out of the suburbs is the wrong direction. How about keeping the suburbs out of the farms? 


And really, if you are going to single out chickens (which is a funny thing to do) tell me how they are better than dogs?
My chickens don't threaten dogs, but dogs can threaten my hens (if they get in the yard)
Hen poop becomes organic fertilizer for those aforementioned tomatoes. Dog poop gets left all over the place where I step in it, it pollutes our rivers, and smells like, umm, poo.
My hens never attack anyone smarter than they are. (Nothing personal meant by that :-) I can't say that about the pit bulls around here.

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And there you have it, the eco-narcissist speaks. I don't know about you guys, but I'm hankering for a big 'ol bucket of KFC.

A designers' round table about software

OK, this one goes out to my designerly friends. Well, people on the manufacturer's side too. Just no software people. Got that?

After one of my American Gothic posts from the last few weeks ago, a mini conversation started in the comments about design software. It started with Pam Rodriguez and me and then Sue Murphy got in at the end. I think Pam missed it. Pam's a Chief Architect fan, I'm a SketchUp fan and Sue was wondering about the relative strengths and weaknesses of the different design and architecture rending programs out there.

I suggested that we have a panel discussion about it and that's what we're going to do.

I'd like to schedule a conference call at some point in the next week or so to talk about design software. This is not a sales or a recruitment tool, let me be perfectly clear about that. This is an exchange of ideas, peer to peer.

The great folks at Masco are going to let me set up a Webex for this round table discussion. Doing this as a Webex will allow everybody to take turns sharing desktops and that way everybody can see how you use your design software.

Again, this is a peer to peer opportunity, a chance to talk about software strengths and weaknesses without any providers listening in.

Whattya think? Who's in? Drop me a line here or through Twitter and let me know if you're interested. I'll coordinate everything else.

Find missing money

This is not a scam. Believe me, no one looks askance at this sort of thing than me but this one checks out. Let me tell you how I know.

I have many, many clever nieces and nephews. The cleverest of all of them, and certainly the cleverest one in suburban DC is Sarah Bruno-Currier. Sarah is the mother of the perfect child whose photo I ran back in February. Anyhow, Sarah sent me a text message a week ago and it said simply "Did you ever live on West Shore Boulevard in Tampa?"

I did in fact live on West Shore Boulevard about 15 years ago and it was the site of an unhappy time in my life and an absurd real estate squabbling match when good lovin' went bad. I owned that home and I hadn't thought about it in ages. Getting a text message from my niece that mentioned it sent my mind go to dark places immediately. "Don't make me wade back into that mess" was all I could think.

I don't like communicating through text messages so I called her immediately. Sarah told me that she'd been searching around on the internet and found a website that's a clearing house for unclaimed money. Before I could tell her that it was a scam, she told me that a title company in Tampa owed me money.

That's about the best way to get me to pay attention to anybody. Owes me money? Sure!

Sarah sent me the link to Missing Money, a national database of money that's been turned over to states when the person who's owed the money can't be found.

I clicked on the link, entered my name and was re-directed to the website of Florida's Department of Financial Services. Sure enough, a title company in Tampa owes me $54. While it's hardly a Powerball win, it's nice to know that someone actually owes me money rather than the other way around.

Check it out and see if anybody owes you money. Find Missing Money.