Literally.

I’ve never carried a purse.  I work in the Cloud. If it doesn’t hold onto me by itself (e.g. ring, watch, clothes),  fit in my pocket (or sock), or the overhead bin, it doesn’t go with me.

A la messenger

There are days I have a lot of small things I need, which all go into a slim messenger bag. The kind that slings across the body, leaving hands free. Here’s the collection of crap:

• tape measure
• camera
• mp3 player
• gridded notepad
• gum
• pens + pencils
• scale
• sample dwgs
• catalogs
• business cards

Oh – and I carry a Michigan smoothie in my pocket to remind me that I’m connected to the Earth.  Not the other way around.

And there is my boring & literal answer to this edition of #LetsBlogOff. For more enlightening entries, click below!

Weigh in!

Calling kitchen design comrades and / or anyone who has this product in their kitchen.  How is it?

A client is after a softer, warmer material for their island in their new kitchen, & Suberra looks like a great candidate.  They’re not listed on the Exhibitor roster for KBIS next month, so I’m bummed about that.

It is a handsome product, no doubt.

Eco Modernism has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

I love the contrast & balance of the gray mosaic tile, the faucet & the coconut husk sink. I couldn’t find any more info on it, but got the tip from my Materialicious RSS feed.

Gems, they are. Truly.

We’re setting up to do a demo & installation for a 3 person family.  I think nerves expose people’s funny bones.  Here’s what he sent me tonight:

“I don’t think we’ll realize the full extent of the disruption until we wake up and notice the old kitchen isn’t there and we have go elsewhere to eat our cheerios.

We have a one room efficiency apartment out underneath the deck (accessible only from outside) that has a smaller fridge, convection oven, hot plate, microwave, some cabinets and a sink – so we’re not going completely cold turkey.

I’m going to make sure all that stuff still works and try to organize a trial dinner run – that will make me popular once the recognition of our coming culinary deprivation sinks in.  I’m going to liken it to camping to make it appear more fun.  Nobody’s grumpy when they’re camping.”

They’d be the envy of many a past client with that second kitchen to get them through the project!

Think think think

Honestly – no single bit of wise words comes to mind as the “best advice I ever received”. The first one that stands out is this one:

Your persistance will take you a long way.

It was from an engineer I was working with. He was burned out, working in a company that had transformed from entrepreneurial (people are empowered to do their job as best as they see fit) to corporate (justify your existence in the company or perish).

Another stand out:

Never let anyone tell you you can’t do it.

That one’s on a sign outside of Larry’s Beans here in Raleigh. They’re a fair trade coffee company that treat the earth and people with respect.

Lastly, from a documentary on Elvis, there’s this one:

Make it yours. Make it real. Make it pop.

No idea what movie it was.  I think the person who said it was his producer.

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Halp!*

Incoming Message to EcoMod:
Hello, We have major traffic jam issues in our kitchen and would love some ideas on making changes that would bring a happy flow during our food rush hour traffic!

EcoMod’s response:
Hi – wow that sounds like a job for EcoModernism! ;D

There’s no charge for the first hour I meet with you in your kitchen to see the space & find out what your goals are.  Here are a few questions to help us get our bearings:

1. Where is the traffic-jam-plagued kitchen located?
2. How soon are you looking to make changes?
3. I (sometimes wrongly!) assume you are interested in an IKEA kitchen, is that right?

I have some availability to meet around 11am either day this coming weekend. Let me know if that works for you & I’ll dispatch myself to the congestion zone.

Becky

* see urbandictionary

Stay tuned….

Number One Pain Point

The biggest challenge of living with a kitchen remodeling project isn’t how to pay for it.  It’s how to live without it. More specifically, how will you clean your dishes?

Bathroom sinks are not meant for casserole dishes or pilsner glasses. & after you wash them, where do they dry?

2 birds, 1 stone

Yeah, using dishes is a Good Thing for the planet, in theory, since you’re not filling up a trash bag with used ones.

A better way to survive a renovation might be to take the opportunity to learn to compost. Instead of doing dishes in that teeny bathroom sink,  what if you used biodegradable munchware & integrated it right into the compost with the food scraps?

World Centric has a nice variety of compostable plates, bowls, & flatware. They also have a comprehensive FAQ which includes:

• How to create a compost system
• Compostable vs Biodegradable
• info on food allergies & intolerance to gluten

Learning is the opposite of worry*

A nice benefit of doing the compost thing while the kitchen reno is underway: you get to watch the compost pile do its thing. A nice distraction from the predominant sensation of not having a functional kitchen for a couple of weeks.

AND you’ll have a great treat for the soil in that garden, whose harvests you can cook in the new kitchen!

*It is for me, at least. YMMV

Before

Before summary:

• no pantry,
• extremely limited storage
• dead end
• less than 36″ between cabinet banks
• dark entry way

After

After summary:

• storage galore! (many of the new cabinets are less than 1/2 full!)
• removal of closet lets daylight all the way to entry door of condo
• horizontal cabinet bank extended into living provides storage for media
• under cabinet task lighting
• pooch bowl zone (they can’t chase them around the floor anymore!)
• quartz countertop with undermount sink
• concealed slide-out garbage under sink
• refinishing of hardwoods with warmer, natural tone

We slightly modified the wall that the range is on, extending it by a couple of feet to catch the run of base & wall cabinets. The plan is completely opened up & supports flexible furniture placement & a huge amount of natural daylighting from 14′ high windows.

Happy client!

Negacy?

Years ago when I worked at Cisco Systems,  I became a member of the team responsible for making the new stuff play happily with the older stuff.

Our work enabled those early adopters who invested in first release software & hardware (yay for visionaries) to stay relevant & integrate new releases into the older ones & still hum like a sewing machine.

The term for the early stuff was “Legacy Systems”.  & in many ways, to put it bluntly – it was a pain in the butt.  Newer scripts & equipment evolved in parallel with other new scripts & equipment. So the natural tendency of designers was to use all new stuff. Who wouldn’t want to go with more efficient, smaller, more robust, and faster stuff?

Oh, but for the albatross of making it harmonic with the old stuff.  In reality, it was simply another design requirement. It wasn’t glamorous, like the new stuff. But it was a workhorse that imposed its wisdom on moving forward.

It’s both.

While we bumped up against the constraints of the past,  it made us maintain an adaptable pace – by humans.  That experience made me realize that I can move as fast as I want to with things.  Can’t do that with people. They need soak time.

Even in this day & age of multi-tasking (which is really just another term for inefficiency) & information consumption, we still take awhile to change.

Legacy makes us look behind us so we can look ahead of us.

Check some other folks’ thoughts on legacy here: