The new issue of Design Commotion is live

Yes, the October issue of Design Commotion went live yesterday. Design Commotion is a monthly magazine that's devoted to world design. DC is chock full of images and articles and the October issue has the added bonus of a collaboration I did with Saxon Henry, Design Commotion's editor. Check it out, it's like an Apartment Therapy for adults.

The second story in DC demands special note. Take a look at this room.

This is the new Apsleys restaurant in London's Lanesborough Hotel. I don't think I've ever seen a more beautiful restaurant dining room in my life. Wow.

Why why why Delilah?

That's the name of a Tom Jones song and it has nothing to do with this post. Well, I suppose I'm about to shake my fist at the sky and shout "Why?!" The similarities stop there though.

I am spending the better part of this weekend drawing my heart out and coming up with great rooms for clients. As I'm wont, I have the TV on low in the background to provide white noise. I'm working on another floor plan and the project in question is the back end of a house. We're removing a bunch of the interior walls and creating an open floor plan to replace the rabbit warren of hallways and small rooms that are in the space now. When this is all said and done, the family room, the kitchen and the dining room will all be in one big space. Even though I don't sell furniture or carpets, I usually end up specifying the furnishings that go into the rooms I draw.

So as I was sitting here, drawing away contentedly, I heard a commercial for Rooms to Go that jarred my out of my reverie. Rooms to Go is a chain of cheap furniture stores in the South that specializes in selling entire rooms of matching furniture at once. It's all bad --poorly designed and poorly constructed imported garbage that will end up being thrown away in five years. They are running a special this weekend where they're giving away a 40" flat screen TV with the purchase of one of their $1900 living rooms.

Because I'm drawing a living room, I suppose I'm particularly sensitive to living room assaults right now and the $1900 living room they're pimping is just that, an assault. I mean, look at this thing:

My eyes burn when I have to look at stuff like that. Sheez-oh-man, I get it that there's plenty of room in this world for everybody's tastes, but this stuff is beyond the pale.

Here is is again from another perspective:

And here it is with no people in it so you can better imagine yourself reclining in this luxury.

Imagine, drink holders and snack trays built right into your sofa! No wonder Americans are so bloody fat. They ought to call this the Lethargy Sofa. It gets worse though.

To the left of the guy in the second photo is a white table lamp.

This is it. Again, ouch. They are throwing this in with the $1900 living room suite as a bonus.

I don't understand what would prompt someone to waste money on crap like this. In addition to being poorly made, it looks terrible. That Lethargy Sofa up there retails for $1199.99 when it's purchased on its own.

For 99 cents less, you can have the 84-inch Eugene sofa from Room and Board. The Eugene is made in the US, it's tasteful, it's well made and will last forever. Finding reasonably-priced, well-made furniture is not difficult but it does require a little legwork. You don't have to chose between Rooms to Go crap and a $10,000 heirloom-quality sofa. Really. There's a nearly unlimited number of options between those extremes. When it comes to furniture, how it's made is more important than who made it. Do a little research, find out what makes a good sofa a good sofa. I wrote a piece on sofa construction back when I was just starting out as a blogger. Check out Sofas, Sofas Everywhere but not a Place to Sit from February, 2008. And now that that's out of my system I can get back to work.

Sears' Blue Crew needs some work

I am working with a lovely couple on a pretty significant renovation; the centerpiece of which is a contemporary, open kitchen. The kitchen's going to be spectacular. It has a separate freezer and refrigerator, a 36" induction cooktop, a dramatic ventilation hood, a built-in oven and a built in microwave. Built-in appliances are a nice touch and a great way to make a kitchen appear to be more sleek and streamlined. The oven and microwave are going to be stacked in a tall cabinet like this set up from GE Monogram.

Almost, but not quite. My clients had already researched and selected their appliances prior to retaining me, so I didn't have a whole lot of influence when it came to selecting them. Now, my clients are perfectly lovely people, but they went to Sears and bought a full suite of Kenmore Pro appliances.

In Sears' defense, they have decided to throw themselves back into the appliance world and they have been spending gobs money bringing in new product lines and rebranding themselves. This is all well and good, but it's still Sears.

Appliances are a very specialized product and they need to be sold by highly trained salespeople. No one would ever think to buy a car at Wal-Mart (I hope), but for some ungodly reason, a lot of people have no problem going to a big box for an appliance. Such purchases have an unacceptably high rate of bad endings if you ask me, and so long as I have breath to speak, I will never send someone into a big box for an appliance.

So my clients gave me a list of their appliance model numbers pretty early into our working together. Those model numbers allow me to look up the specifications and sizes of each appliance. This is wildly important information, especially when it comes to handling built-in appliances. With regular brands, I go to the manufacturer's website and look up the specs. All appliance manufacturers have special pro sections on their sites where people like me can go to get the information we need to do our jobs. Combing through appliance specs at nine o'clock at night is the "glamour" part of kitchen design by the way.

Actually, I don't mind it. It's quiet, kind of nerdy work that requires a fair amount of concentration. Appliance manufacturers have dimension guides that cover every conceivable measurement anybody could want. You see, there is no real standardization in their industry, and none of them have ever met a whole number that was an acceptable dimension. For example, A KitchenAid KEBS277S measures 29-3/4" wide by 28-3/4" tall. But not so fast, they are the dimensions of of the front of the appliance, and while important, they are not what I'm looking for. Its maximum recessed width is 28-5/16" and its maximum recessed height is 27-1/2". Those recessed dimensions are closer to what I'm after, but what I really need is the guidelines for the opening dimensions in the cabinet where these appliances will actually be built in. In case you're wondering, those dimensions are 28-1/2" by 27-3/4". We always use width before height so if you want to sound like you know what you're talking about, rattle off dimensions as width first then height.

Anyhow, the point of that is I need those dimensions so I can have  a cabinet built that will fit these appliances exactly. If I can't tell the cabinet maker these dimensions he can't build me the cabinet I need. They have to be exact because we're talking about a several thousand dollar cabinet here and there's no such thing as a return for custom work. So if I screw this up, I'm buying the replacement. Trust me, it's a mistake you only make once. No two wall ovens and no two microwave ovens have the same dimensions, hence my making such a big deal out of this.

Now, built-in microwaves are a bit of a scam if you ask me. Most of them, regardless of the brand, are actually counter top microwaves with what we call a trim kit wrapped around them to make them fit into a hole in a cabinet that's the same width as the oven below them. So when I get specs for a built in microwave, what I'm after really is the dimensions of the trim kit and the opening dimensions for the cabinet.

This is a Thermador countertop microwave oven.

This is a Thermador trim kit.

Presto change-o, it's a built in microwave oven!

Now, I have never pulled specs for Kenmore appliances before. So I went to their website and expected it to work the same way just about everybody else's does. But alas, it does not. Sears' website stinks. It spends more time touting the virtues of the Blue Crew than it does dispensing information. It's difficult to navigate and the information I needed was buried. There was no pro section and no dimension guide. Ridiculous.

So I found the information I needed for everything after taking too much time, and I thought I was wrapping up when I entered the model number for the trim kit. There was no trim kit that matched my model number on their website. In fact, there were no trim kits period. Nice job Blue Crew.

The site listed a toll-free number and they assured me that it was staffed by trained professionals. I called. I poked through their phone tree and got connected with a guy who put me on hold immediately. The line went dead after a couple of minutes. Grrr. I called again and got a woman who put me on hold immediately. Double grrrrr. When she came back to the line I introduced myself and told her I needed some dimensions for the trim kit for a microwave oven. I explained that there was no mention of the trim kit on the website and that I couldn't order a very expensive kitchen until I got some dimensions. She put me on hold.

She came back on the line and I gave her the model number for the microwave and the trim kit. She looked up the microwave first. "Sir," she said, "that's a counter top microwave." I explained that I knew that and that all built in microwaves were actually counter top microwaves in disguise. This was news to her. I asked her to look up the dimensions for the trim kit. "Oh sir, that's in a different book. I need to put you on hold again."

She came back to the line, "we don't have any dimensions for that."

I did not lose my cool. I explained to her that I had a list of model numbers from a Sears in Florida and that my clients had indeed purchased a trim kit from Sears. "Well, I don't know what to tell you sir." That's weird,"  I told her, because I couldn't find it on their website either. "Well, I wouldn't know. We can't get to the website from here."

I told her to forget I ever called, and I called the local Sears where the trim kit had been purchased originally. I combed through their phone tree too and finally reached someone in their appliance department. He couldn't help me because he had customers waiting and they were short handed. He knew what I was talking about at least and he took my number and promised to call me in an hour with the dimensions I needed. He called when he said he would but the only dimensions he had were for the trim kit itself, not the cut out the trim kit fits into.

In frustration I finally drove over to Sears and measured their floor model myself.

This is not the way to run the show when you want to become a player in the appliance business Sears. Why not take some of the serious cash you're spending on the Blue Crew TV and print spots and spend it instead on updated spec books and some training for your trained professionals? This doesn't bode well and you can rest assured that you have a kitchen designer in Florida who's actively pointing his clients as far from your doors as he can. I'll say it again, please buy your appliances locally, from people who know and understand what they sell and who make a living wage.

The Skinny on Ceramic Tile

Hey everyone: Saxon Henry here guest-posting for Paul. Coming away from my trip to Italy to cover Cersaie, the annual international ceramic tile and fixtures exhibition, with the caveat “thin is in” cemented in my brain may be of no surprise to most of you—after all, the country is filled with slim gorgeous people in some of the smartest fashion I’ve seen in ages. But it wasn’t all the eye candy that brought this phrase to mind. It was the innovations in the ceramic tile industry that inspired its repetition day after day.

The technological advances taking place in Italy will soon make that clunky ceramic tile your grandmother came to know and love a thing of the past. The good news transcends aesthetics, as less waste is created during renovations because the tile can be installed over other surfaces, making the need to rip out walls and floors unnecessary.



Marcello Becchi of Trend USA, a company that has been on the forefront of establishing green products and practices, called what is happening “an evolution of cradle-to-cradle sustainability.” Trend’s Trend Q, containing up to 69% post-consumer recycled glass, at 6mm thick is one of the products that easily clads existing surfaces. La Fabbrica’s super thin porcelains, some of which are available in both matt and glossy finishes such as Cathay, are among the skinny offerings to Cersaie.



Mutina brought new products in its Dechirer Collection, designed by Patricia Urquiola, to the fair. The company debuted wall tile introductions last year that measured 3mm thin. This year, a 4mm-thick tile that is suitable for floors with light traffic was presented.



The manufacturer’s booth was buzzing with excitement the afternoon Urquiola was in attendance to launch additions to her collection that include tiles with random cutouts formed by slicing through the ceramic with water jet cutters.



Ceramiche COEM was exhibiting its Travertino collection at 4.8mm thick, which includes embedded fossils. Refin Ceramiche’s “Skin” line is also 4.8mm thick, and includes smooth and patterned tiles that can work in concert to bring geometric textural interest to a room.



Enzo Mularoni of Del Conca treated the press to a fascinating presentation about the company’s new Therma collection that weighs in at 4mm thick. Mularoni, who is an avid sports fan, hit upon the idea of using carbon fibers under his tiles to heat them—inspired by the thermal coatings used on tires during motorcycle races. Because the carbon fibers add only an extra 1mm of thickness to the installation, the heat is closer to the surface of the tiles, making temperature adjustments more immediate. “An advantage of this type of heat,” said Mularoni, “is that it eliminates the need to pump water through pipes, saving both water and energy.”



These are but a few of the companies—out of nearly 1,000 exhibitors—bringing slim alternatives to the fair. I’ll be following advancements in the coming months. If you’ll check my Examiner page from time to time, I promise to bring you the latest developments. Ciao for now!

Long distance design

A reader contacted me the other day to ask if I'd be willing to work with him and his wife on a house they're building. They are in another part of Florida entirely and there is no budget to pay for me to do any of the work on site. Instead, we're doing all of this over the Internet. It's amazing what can be done with a .pdf of a set of building plans and some digital photos of the site. Such times are these!

This is not the first remote job I've done and I like working this way. The people I work with benefit from a reduced fee schedule and I benefit for obvious reasons. It's a win win.

So if you're a reader, even one blown in by the winds of a Google search, and you've thought to yourself "Gee, I wish I could hire this guy," the answer is yes you can. Thank you Dustin and Robyn and I'm psyched to get started.