I'm touched and honored

My new pal Scintilla at Bell'Avventura wrote about the strega in her Positano neighborhood today. Her post is a series of stories about a curious old woman who steals vegetables from the neighborhood gardens. Missing melanzane aside, you can add the strega to a very long list of reasons I need to go back to Positano.

Over the course of a thousand words Scintilla evokes a place where myth and memory join hands and work an impossible magic. Her post took me back to a place where eggplant-stealing witches and 10th century icons coexist in relative peace. A place where the town dog takes a nap on the same beach Saracen invaders stormed a thousand years ago. For ten minutes I was standing under the Mediterranean sun and inhaling a rosemary and lemon scented breeze. Just when I thought it couldn't get any better, I came to her final paragraph and read that she'd dedicated those stories to me. My day is now perfect. Thank you! Read "Stregata" here.

Caveat emptor: Ikea sells appliances

Ikea just released a new line of somewhat retro-looking appliances in a color they call Anthracite. The finish is a matte charcoal gray and admittedly, they look pretty good. Ikea had these appliances made for them by Whirlpool and that's all well and good. However, this is Ikea we're talking about and these things are being sold at a price point that defies belief. Well, it strains credibility at any rate.

Ikea's a perfectly fine store. In fact, they're beyond fine. They've revolutionized furniture retailing in the sense that discount no longer has to mean ugly. My beloved Target owes its success in a lot of ways to the trails blazed by Ikea. With that said, there are certain things I'd never buy at Target, despite my fondness for the place. Just as I'd never buy a pair of shoes at Target, I cannot imagine buying appliances at Ikea.

Maybe I'm wrong. Anybody out there have any of these babies yet? Talk to me about it.

Anyhow, here's a run through of some of their new stuff.

This is the Datid 30" built in oven and it retails for $749.

This is the Datid range hood and it retails for $549.

This is the Datid 36" range and it retails for $1749

This is their Datid 24" wall oven and it retails for $599.

This isn't part of their Anthracite line, but it's still new. This is their $999, 36" wide, counter-depth refrigerator with stainless steel doors. 

I'd love to know who made this for them and what corners were cut to arrive at that price. Be cautious for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that this counter-depth fridge is only 68" tall. That makes this a tiny refrigerator, even if it only costs a thousand dollars. Listen to me, only a thousand dollars... But seriously, any counter-depth refrigerator for under two grand smells fishy.

So there, I did my duty and publicized something for Ikea. Please read up on these things before you buy one. Something you have to buy twice isn't a bargain. Remember that.

All good things must end: my last post on faucets for a while

Fixtures, fixtures everywhere but what does it mean and what should I pick? Well, what it means is that there are a bunch of manufacturers who make a bunch of finishes and the one you should pick is the one you like. I have a strong preference for Kohler fixtures. They make a high quality product at a price point that's a value proposition. A Kohler faucet is not a faucet you'll be replacing any time soon. They are as sound mechanically as they are beautiful too.

So here are a couple of fun facts I got from my pal Sarah the product manager at Kohler. 

Brushed nickel is the number one selling finish for kitchen faucets.

Chrome is number one on baths.

A new finish has a ten year run rate. By that I mean that when Kohler introduces a new finish, they expect it to remain in production for ten years. Though exceptions to that ten year rule abound. Chrome and nickel have been consistent best-sellers since the 1930s and oil rubbed bronze has been in production for the last 15.

As an aside form me, expect oil rubbed bronze and its kin to be the next ones forced into retirement.

What's making a strong come back are warm gold tones. And that's designer speak for brass. You heard it here first kids, inside of five years all the cool kids will be sporting brass faucets and cabinet hardware. Again. Ugh. I never liked it much the last time around, but who am I to buck a trend? So here's a run down of some of Kohler's cool fixtures and finishes.

Never use harsh abrasives or lime-dissolving chemicals to clean a new faucet of any kind. On a faucet with a living finish, the heavy duty cleaning stuff will remove your hard won patina. On consumer-grade faucets, a thorough clean with the big guns will damage the clear top coat and end up reducing the life of the finish. Remember, a soft cloth and a mild detergent are your plumbing fixtures' best friends.

This is the Antique in  faucet in Brushed Nickel

This is the Purist in Polished Chrome

This is the Clairette in Stainless

This is the Devonshire in Brazen Bronze

This is the Devonshire in Oil Rubbed Bronze

This is the Finial in Vibrant French Gold

This is Memoirs in Polished Chrome

This is Pinstripe in Polished Nickel

So your options are seemingly endless, but know that a quality faucet will last forever. So remember that when you're considering your finish options. Forever. Hmm.

So thanks to my pals at Kohler for all the good information. I now know more about faucet manufacturing and finishes than I ever thought existed. If you ever have a question about this stuff, just shoot me an e-mail. I'm sure I'll be able to answer it.

The Peoples' faucetry

So if the higher end of the market uses ancient foundry methods to make objets d'art doing double duty as bath and kitchen fixtures, what's available to the rest of us? You know, the same us who bristle at the thought of an $1800 lavatory faucet.

Well, that's where our pals at Kohler come in with their modern and efficient production methods. Metal casting and finishing have come a long way since the Babylonians figured out how to cast bronze thousands of years ago. When plumbing fixtures are mass-produced now, they are cast in a variety of base metals (usually alloys of brass), then they're plated and finally, they're clear coated to resist corrosion and to make the finish last a lifetime.

All manufacturers have their own, secret alloys and formulas; but the production methods used by all of them are essentially the same. Individual components are cast in a base metal alloy and then polished and cleaned. Then the components are plated with a finish and covered with a clear top coat.

Plating takes two forms these days, and the first method is electroplating. Electroplating was invented in the early 1800s and was in wide-scale use by the middle part of the same century. Electroplating uses electricity to deposit a thin layer of metal on another metal. It's a pretty simple operation now, but figuring it out in the first place represented a huge leap forward.

An electroplating chamber is essentially an electric circuit. An anode is made from the finish metal, in the diagram above that metal is nickel (Ag). The anode's connected to the positive pole of a battery. The target for the electroplating (in the example above, a spoon) becomes the cathode and gets connected to the negative pole of a battery. The anode and the cathode are submerged in a bath of conductive solution and the electricity gets turned on. The electricity flows through the solution to complete the circuit. As the electricity leaves the anode, it takes nickel molecules with it. When the electricity lands on the cathode, it leaves the nickel molecules behind. Ta-dah! We have an electroplated spoon.

There's a second finishing method called physical vapor deposition (PVD). Physical vapor deposition is a marvel of physics and chemistry but I'll spare you another description of a process here. Suffice it to say that in PVD, the conductive solution is replaced with a gas and the whole process takes place in a vacuum. PVD allows a manufacturer more control over the finished product and by adjusting the mixture of gasses in the vacuum chamber, a manufacturer can achieve a number of effects that aren't possible with electroplating.

I bring this up because if you're in the market for a new faucet or two, you will come across the acronym PVD. PVD is never defined and that kind of officious acronym use drives me nuts. So now I know what it means and you do too.

Once the plating's done the fixture gets its final color and finish. If the final finish is something like oil-rubbed bronze, then there's a multi-step powder coating process that follows the plating. If a final finish is something like brushed nickel, then the plated fixture has a texture applied to it. The actual finishes always sit on top of a base of plated metal.

After all that, the fixture gets a clear coat that's usually cured with heat. It's kind of like a clear glaze on pottery, though the temperatures are nearly so high as that. This clear top coat is what allows Kohler to offer a lifetime warranty on their finishes. Oil-rubbed bronze will look like oil-rubbed bronze forever, brass finishes will never tarnish and nickel will never get any more dull than it was the day it was installed.

So when you look at this vibrant brass finish from Kohler, you're not really looking at a brass fixture. If you could see it in microscopic cross section, here's what you'd see.

These same electroplating and PVD methods get used on all mass-market finishes from brushed nickel to stainless steel, from polished brass to chrome. This is not a bad thing. Plated and sealed fixtures last longer and look better longer than their solid-metal counterparts. So remember that you're talking about finish colors, not finish compositions when you leave the high end of the market behind.

Author! Author!

Go see Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino. Man oh man what a movie! I went into it a little spooked by this trailer, frankly. The movie has a humanity I wasn't expecting. A humanity and a sense of humor and I loved it. Go!