Paste the wall?

I love wallpaper with a passion that borders on the unnatural. But I get it that it's a chore to hang and labor worthy of Hercules to remove. There's something about wallpaper paste and our climate in Florida, over time the stuff turns into something resembling a cross between Krazy Glue and concrete. Ugh. That's all history with an innovation brought to market by my friends at Graham & Brown.

Graham & Brown is a British company that sells gorgeous wallpaper, decorative mirrors, digital murals and more. They are a pretty big presence in the US market, they have a wide distribution network here and their website sells their products in dollars. Graham & Brown has come up with something they call Paste the Walls. Their Paste the Walls papers reverse the typical order of pasting and papering. With old-school wallpaper, you roll out the paper, paste the back of it and then hang the wet paper. Throwing around wet, sticky wallpaper is a lot of what makes wallpapering such and onerous task. Well, using their technique (and special papers that can handle it) you roll wallpaper paste on the wall and then hand dry paper to a wet wall. This keeps the paste from penetrating the paper too far (which is why traditional wallpaper is so hard to remove), it makes sizing easier, pattern line ups are easier to manage and when you want a change in a year or two, the stuff peels right off. What a great idea.

Graham & Brown's designer papers that use the Paste the Wall technique run from about $25 to $80 per double roll. That's pretty much what traditional, good wallpaper costs. So there's another great idea. They have a new, innovative process that makes their products easier to use and it doesn't cost any more money. Hurray for Graham & Brown!

Mood Indigo

I've been writing a lot this week about sustainable building products, and with each mention I refer to a store in Gainesville called Indigo. Indigo opened in May of 2007 and their mission statement reads: "Responsibly providing communities with state of the art sustainable solutions. Impacting our world through an innovative multi-faceted business that places people and planet alongside growth and prosperity. " Indigo's vision is "Inspiring ourselves, the community and the world by sharing the secrets of a modern sustainable lifestyle."

Indigo offers classes on sustainable construction that are open to both the trades and the public. Indigo's website reads like a sustainability Christmas List. Dual flush toilets, sustainable lumber, formaldehyde-free plywood, low VOC paints, non-toxic cleaning supplies --it's all here and a lot of it is available for sale through their website.

These people are onto something, something big. I wonder what it would take to get them to open a location in Saint Pete? Hmmm. Never mind, but please look over their website. If you're planning a renovation, think about a trip to Gainesville to see this place for yourself.

On beyond zebra

Sandwiched between Chelsea, Union Square and Gramercy Park is the Manhattan Center for Kitchen and Bath. It is the Mecca of my profession and it defines what a kitchen and bath showroom should be. I walked through its hallowed doors for the first time about four years ago and thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Of the many beautiful things I saw there, one that stuck out more than anything was a counter top made from zebrawood. In fact, here's a photo of the MCKB's showroom and I'll give a quarter to whoever guesses where the zebrawood counter is.

Prior to that, all I knew was that zebrawood was an exotic hardwood and that it was really expensive. I assumed that it was expensive because it was rare and I didn't give it a whole lot more thought. After having made my pilgrimage to the MCKB and seeing how gorgeous a counter made from it is, I started talking up zebrawood like a mad man. At the time I worked at a ridiculously fancy schmancy design studio and I used to specify zebrawood just because I could.



Then I actually looked up what zebrawood was and I learned that zebrawood is expensive because it's rare all right. And it's rare because it's an endangered species. Zebrawood is actually Microberlinia brazzavillensis, a tropical hardwood from Gabon, Cameroon and the Congo. It is not harvested in anything close to a sustainable manner and its popularity is hastening its demise. Ever since I got the straight dope about zebrawood I got religion about it and it is now first on my verboten list.

But leave it up to the geniuses at Smith and Fong to come up with a replacement. Their product Plyboo Neopolitan is a dead ringer for zebrawood only it's made from bamboo. An untrained eye could never tell them apart, and this trained and discerning eye has a hard time. The stuff's great and it represents what the idea of sustainable building products is all about. It's not about doing without. It's about doing things smarter. I have another quarter for anybody who can guess where to buy Neopolitan. Can't think of it? Click here.

A house of straw

This is Kirei, a plywood product from the innovating geniuses at Smith and Fong. Kirei is made from the usually discarded stems of sorghum. That stuff is usually called straw when it has a use and waste when it doesn't have a use.

Sorghum is a grain and the seeds are made into a sweetener that's usually referred to as sorghum molasses. Sorghum molasses' popularity has waned significantly in the US, but it's still a widely cultivated crop in other parts of the world. When it's converted to ethanol, it has a higher yield per pound when compared than corn so there is a growing interested in sorghum cultivation in the US.

Anyhow, Smith and Fong figured out how to make a decorative and structural ply product with the straw that's left over from Sorghum processing and it's really neat-looking stuff. The desk below is made from Kirei and bamboo plywood. What results is a beautiful, functional and sustainable office desk. Neat!

Where is it available? Why, at Indigo of course.

Sustainable lumber that looks great

If you spend any time in art or craft galleries in Florida, you have no doubt run across bowls and vases made from palm wood. There's a detail shot here that shows palm wood's unique, "thready" grain pattern. The structure of a palm tree trunk is essentially a tightly packed bundle of fibers and when its cut and stained the effect is really stunning. I don't know how popular palm wood is outside of areas where palms grown, but in this part of the world it's pretty popular stuff. I love seeing it: it's an organic, local touch and I've always wondered why it doesn't get used outside of bowls and vases.



Enter Smith and Fong's Durapalm. Smith and Fong is a San Francisco-based building product innovator and their Durapalm product is made from culled coconut palms. A coconut palm has about a 100 year lifespan as a coconut producer before it's cut down. Until Durapalm, the spent coconut palm ended up as more agricultural waste. Durapalm takes the palm tree and makes it into laminate plywood, similar to how bamboo gets turned into flooring.

That laminate plywood ends up as a sheet good for use as paneling or cabinet doors, it gets cut into planks for use as flooring, or it gets cut into what are essentially tiles and then used as wall cladding. It's really wild stuff and certainly unlike anything else you're likely to come across in somebody else's house any time soon.

Pretty neat all around. It's unusual, beautiful and sustainable --a triple crown. But where to find it? Why Indigo of course. Hurray Indigo!