I’m not big on showers. Baths are my daily therapy. (However, according to my poll, only 22% of you agree with me.) But I’ll admit that my husband’s rainfall-type showerhead makes for an extremely satisfying experience. And it occurred to me while reading an article about rainfall showerheads in the Chicago Tribune that standing under…
What an awe-inspiring, wonder-filled, baffling and stupid world we live in. Today, millions and maybe billions of children are going hungry. Yet, here I sit, planning my kitchen upgrade. A recent commenter on this blog suggested I give up envy and desire and be happy with the kitchen I have. He or she has “ugly,…
In the years since my husband Bill and I moved into this house, we’ve spent many fine hours fantasizing about what we could do with this kitchen — punch up the ceiling, pop out the wall into the dining room, create a big island with a cooktop. And so on. But two growing concerns —…
To be honest, I don’t go to McDonald’s for healthy food. But, I might go to a certain McDonald’s for a healthy environment (and maybe to get some design tips for my own home). That McDonald’s is in Hacienda Heights and its owner, Mark Brownstein, wanted to redesign the store to deal with slumping sales.…
Following the builders show last month in Orlando, I drove over to New Orleans to check out the damage from Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the levees. I’d never been to New Orleans, but my husband had lived and worked there for 15 years. Ever since the tragedy more than two years ago, I’ve…
Perhaps you’ve heard this ditty about the choices we make in life: We choose based on emotion, and then rationalize our choices with logic. It’s like that with me and claw-foot-style tubs and pedestal sinks. The logic says: bad choice. And a previous posting on this blog brought many well-thought-out comments from readers on why…
Is the economy in a slump? A pre-slump? A recession? A depression? A slow-down? Whatever’s happening, we seem to have less money to spend on our homes. And so today begins a new series on the Pardon Our Dust Blog called Small Change, where we share with each other the economical changes we’ve made to…
Here’s a dilemma that pits tree hugger against tree hugger: What happens when one home’s trees block another home’s solar panels? This problem is not new, but with increased interest in rooftop solar panels, the consequences are more than aesthetics or sunny days versus shady days. Now we’re talking about a homeowner’s ability to generate…
I’ve interviewed a dozen or so people who have installed tankless water heaters (which heat your water on demand rather than storing hot water in a tank) — and several contractors who have installed dozens more tankless water heaters — and the comments I’ve heard about the devices have been overwhelmingly positive. And yet .…
This item falls under the category of "Duh." With 74.8 million owned dogs and 90 million owned cats in the United States (according to a recent survey by the Humane Society), you kind of wonder why pet feeding stations are not standard in new homes. The feeding station pictured here was built into the Glassell…