Happy anniversary Thos. Moser

Thos. Moser is celebrating their 40th anniversary as fine furniture makers and when I say fine I mean it.

To celebrate, Moser's offering 21 desirable pieces from their collection at discounts of 10 to 20%. You can see the available pieces by following this link to Thos. Moser's website. When you're ready to buy some new dining chairs, a rocker, a bench, some stools or a table, enter the promo code JUL12 to get the discount.

But hurry, there are only five days left. This promotion will end on July 22.

Any time I hear someone whining about how nobody builds furniture with any kind of craftsmanship anymore, I point them to Thos. Moser's website to disprove that uninformed opinion. Moser makes exquisite wooden furniture and even if you're not buying anything right now, perusing their website will renew your faith in US furniture makers.

It must be sink week: check out the new Cerana from Blanco

The Cerana from Blanco is their first ceramic sink to be introduced in North America and leave it up to Blanco to come up with something truly innovative to mark this new category's debut.

While the sink may be new on this side of the Atlantic, the material it's made from is not. Fireclay's been around for hundreds of years for very good reason. It's extremely durable and holds up well to everyday wear. Where the innovation comes in is that this apron-front sink is reversible. Yes, reversible.

Both sides of this sink are finished and the drain's in the absolute center. One side has the rounded lines of a traditional apron-front and the opposite side has a more linear, modern appearance. When it comes time to do the installation, pick a side and just go for it.

Modern installation

Traditional installation

It's a terrific idea and this video explains the concept and execution really well.






Good job Blanco! To see the Cerana and the rest of Blanco's collections, poke around on their website.

Kohler Colors with Jonathan Adler

Kohler's rolling out four, new and vibrant colors with the help of Jonathan Adler. Say what you will about Adler, but I give him all kinds of credit for bringing vibrant color to six, select kitchen and bath sinks from Kohler's existing collections.

Here's the full palette:

In situ, those colors are Greenwich Green,

Piccadilly Yellow,

Annapolis Navy

and Palermo Blue.

These Jonathan Adler colors are only available in enameled iron because the degree of saturation shown in these sinks can only be achieved with enamel. The sinks available in these colors are Tides, Canvas, DemiLav Wading Pool for the bath and Whitehaven, Riverby and Iron/ Tones for the kitchen.

These sinks are cast in the Kohler foundry in Kohler, WI and carry a lifetime warranty.

There was once a time when I lived to take potshots at Adler's work. While it's true that his creations aren't for everybody, what's also true is that he's a fundamentally decent man who understands his audience perfectly. Besides, anyone who'll pose with the likes of these two can't be anything but a good guy. Right Cheryl?

So what do you think? Is there room for this kind of bold color in a sink? Would you ever use color this way in your own home?

Fire

My neighbor's house burned the other night.

I live in a historic neighborhood. All of the homes here are at least 100 years old and all of them are wood-framed. Because this neighborhood was platted out in a time before such things as zoning, all of our houses sit very close to one another. The roof lines of two of my neighbors are separated by around three inches in fact.

We tend to be pretty paranoid when it comes to fire around here. All of us on this block have been particularly vigilant about fire safety because we know that if one house goes up, we'd lose the whole block.

Well, my neighbor's house burned the other night and mercifully, there was no wind blowing. The lack of wind and the fast response of the St. Pete Fire Department kept the fire contained. Had it been a windy night I'd be writing this from a Red Cross shelter.

Even so, the 20 minutes that the fire burned destroyed his home and left him with nothing but the clothes on his back.

He's a disagreeable guy. He's alienated all of us over the years but even so, my heart goes out to him.

I cannot imagine what it's like to lose everything in a fire. Despite his losses, he's fortunate to have made it out the back door before he lost his life to smoke inhalation. As it is, he and his dog made it to safety but his cat didn't.

Fire's not something that occurs to most people as a viable threat but it is. Do yourself a favor and guard yourself against it. Get at least two fire extinguishers. Keep one in your bedroom and one in your kitchen. Install and maintain smoke detectors. Put one outside of your bedroom and another one in your kitchen.

Think through an escape plan. If your house were on fire how would you make it out?

My neighbor was lucky, blessed even. He had no extinguishers or smoke alarms and that he survived that fire is something that borders on the miraculous.

Despite his suffering, this event has proved itself to be a cautionary tale to all of us on Seventh Avenue. It ought to be a cautionary tale to people everywhere. Fire extinguishers and smoke detectors will save your property and may very well save your life.

Trading palm trees for corn fields

I grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And no, I'm not Amish.

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Lancaster's about an hour west of Philly but it's a world away. As you drive west from The City of Brotherly Love, the clock seems to work backwards. The urban congestion gives way to the gently rolling farmland of Chester and Lancaster Counties. This is the place where the American Revolution played out and Lancaster is the oldest inland city in the US. My ancestors settled there in 1740 and those rolling hills are encoded in my DNA.

When I was younger and living there I felt the place to be a prison. Getting to Philly or Baltimore was a pain and I always felt like I was missing out on something because I lived in a small town. I longed for a change of venue, some kind of different scenery.

What I couldn't see back then was how beautiful an area it is and how fortunate I was to live just a bit removed from the harried nature of life in a major metro. I left the area for good in the early '90s and sought my fortune elsewhere.

A funny thing has happened here in the last couple of years though. The housing collapse reaped a pretty grim harvest in Florida and one by one, most of my friends left the area in search of greener pastures. As they left, I started traveling for work a lot. While this was going on I've found myself looking for an anchor time and again. I needed something to tie me to Florida, to home.

That anchor never materialized however. In fact, as people continue to move away I'm less tied to this place than I ever have been. Part of me knows that I could go out and make new friends, but another part of me doesn't want to put forth the effort.

While all of this has been playing out, I've begun to see the appeal of the land where I was born and raised. I've been back for short visits in the last few years and my beloved brother Steve's been offering me his guest room for a longer stay.

So I'm going to do it. I'm going back to Pennsylvania for the entire month of July. I'll stay with Steve, work from his home and get a first hand look at what life's like in Lancaster now. I can take the train to New York from there without any trouble and I'll have ready access to just about anywhere in the northeast, thanks to Amtrack.

Because it's farm country, the local produce I'll have access to is already making my mouth water. I'm looking forward to baking bread with my nieces and catching up with my nephews and siblings. I have an enormous family and our get togethers are as loud as they are legendary. It'll be great to cook for an army without the stress of having to leave right away.

Truth be told, I'm staying for a month as a test of sorts. I want to see if I can handle living there again. I want to see if I can handle trading palm trees for corn fields. I'm going into this with my eyes wide open and had someone told me five years ago that I would consider moving back to PA someday I'd have laughed hysterically.

July will be an interesting month, that's for sure. As I mentioned in a Let's Blog Off post last fall, my life in Florida has always felt like borrowed time, even after 20+ years. I'm a Yankee's Yankee as hard as I try to ignore that.

As much as I love walking down the sidewalk to the beach, it doesn't really feel real. People in the Northeast think faster, understand things better and forge deeper bonds than they do here. Pennsylvania has a sense of place I miss. Leaving when I did was difficult, I felt that I was severing ties that were supposed to last a lifetime. I hope to reconnect some of those ties next month.

So I'll be blogging like a madman while I'm up there. I'll be experiencing things and places I know already but it'll feel like it's the first time. I love living where I do, but something's missing. Maybe I'll find the missing piece next month. And maybe I won't but it never hurts to look.