I love stuff that makes sense. And as much as I love trash—I do; throwing it away mostly; it feels like accomplishment—there is too much of it in the waste stream in my amateur perspective. Diesel garbage trucks choking down the road at 5 MPG to landfill a bazillion tons of garbage at a landfill [...]
Want your plant to tweet you if it’s thirsty? It can.
March 5, 2012 By 92 Comments
It’s true. For just $1000 your plant can tweet or call you if it’s thirsty. Spotted by our friends at HomeFixated.com and The New York Times, it’s a device created by NYU that detects moisture and sunlight. Then it tweets or calls you to let you know what it needs. And it can even just [...]
3-D Rubik’s Cube… reinvented as a fun dresser
March 3, 2012 By 4 Comments
Rubik’s Cube is a fun way to get frustrated, and extremely rarely it’s a way to feel exceptionally brilliant when all the colors line up just right. But now here’s a new way to be delighted with Rubik’s Cube as furniture you use daily. Yes, it’s a dresser. Fun to look at, and impressively designed [...]
Taniya Nayak lights up Wayfair with amazing fixtures
March 3, 2012 By 26 Comments
I’m a fan of Taniya Nayak. She’s a talented designer and seriously fun to work with. But that’s not the only reason why I was excited to see Taniya’s new line of lighting from Wayfair. The lighting collection has a depth of styles and types that I wouldn’t have expected in a first lighting line [...]
Heat it and Beat it
March 2, 2012 By 85 Comments
I am a big fan of wood burning appliances in the home—for lots of reasons. The main reason is that there’s just something about it. Call me a cave-man (I’ve been called worse), but I love providing heat for my home and my family with wood that I cut and split (or at least haul [...]
Busted! Outsmart concrete demo
February 29, 2012 By 12 Comments
I love home improvement, but some days are better than others, notably, those NOT spent renting, using, and returning a jackhammer to break up concrete or boulders. Among the nastiest items I’ve have to break out are concrete steps. Monolithic pours, there is just so much concrete that whaling away at them with a jackhammer [...]
Get the Lead Out: Lead Paint and Dangers in the Home
February 23, 2012 By 6 Comments
Lead paint in our homes—just the presence of it—can be dangerous, especially to our kids. And the scary thing is, it’s the dust that you don’t see that can be the biggest danger. It has been thought for many years that the primary danger caused by lead paint was in kids eating the flakes of [...]
The Roof: Designs on Taking the Outside In
February 16, 2012 By 6 Comments
Here’s one of the awesome things about design: it reinvents things. It takes the common and makes it uncommon. I’ve seen a lot of this from Theresa who has done incredible things on both a large and small scale. I’ve also seen it on the 5 Extreme Makeover: Home Edition builds I’ve been on where [...]
Formica for the Floor–BAM!
February 16, 2012 By 74 Comments
“Formica” is one of those words like “Popsicle,” “Xerox,” or “Band-Aid,” words that are so popular that they’ve come to stand for an entire category of products. Band-Aid for example, refers to “plastic adhesive bandage.” And each of these brands, for a variety of reasons, has earned the top spot—generally because they were the first [...]
Small Projects: BIG Change
February 15, 2012 By 16 Comments
As much as I love whole house remodels, bathroom blowouts, and full-tilt-boogie decks, docks, and pergola building, some of my favorite projects ever are the small ones: small projects that make a giant difference in the way we see, feel, and interact with our homes. Exterior window shades, for example—especially those on a Western wall—are [...]
