Honeycombed

Amazingly my pleasant experience with California Closets extended to Hunter Douglas window coverings. Originally I was not going to change the vertical blinds but they look really sad and tired in the new surrounding. I am also attracted to the energy saving aspect of the honeycomb shades...
If it's not because of the necessity of blocking out sun in the afternoon in one side of the house, and if I have more energy efficient windows, and if I don't have neighbors just 10 feet away, I'd much rather have no window coverings at all. However, since all of the above do not apply, the windows need to be honeycombed.

I met up with the Hunter Douglas representative on the 8th, decided everything by the 15th and voila in two weeks the shades are installed. Super efficient and smooth transaction. Basically it's just so much easier to deal with established specialized businesses, especially since I have been having so many problems with custom work, carpenter, plumber etc. These specialty stores really know what they are doing.

Finally something to cover the skylight in the kitchen during the hot summer days.

Vertical sliding shades in the dining room.

Top down, bottom up horizontal shades in the living room.

Wooden shades in the Tatami room.

Top down, bottom up in the guest room.

Vertical blue shades in the master.

Yellow top down bottom up for the study.

And in the study there is a new change. I ran into the painter a couple of weeks back and I inquired about putting some color behind the bookshelves and to remove some awkward shelves at the top. He agreed to do it with a very reasonable price and now I have background colored bookshelves ;-)

HERE COMES THE SUN

Finally I'm very glad to be able to end the year on a high note. Happy New Year everyone.

Toto Recall 2

Believe it or not, Toto problem resurfaces after more than 3 months of peace and quiet. Remember it was the wall hung toilet wreaking havoc back in September? This time around the standard toilet wants to join in the fun.

To choose a toilet it is essential to measure the toilet rough in which is the distance between the wall behind the toilet to the center of the waste pipe on the ground. Most common distance is 12 inches thus a 12-inch-rough-in. However, there are 10-inch and 14-inch-rough-ins as well.

When I picked the toilet there were 3 main elements I was looking for:

1. Toto with a washlet
2. universal height which is slightly higher than the normal ones so as to prepare for old age ;-)
3. the trunk has to be straight for easier cleaning

Other than that California already has the code to have dual flush so I was happy to find the Toto-412MF which is also reasonably priced and comes in 12 and 10 inch rough in.

The contractor wants me to buy everything and have them ready to be installed whenever. I told him the selection and he said to get the 12-inch one. The toilet then took a month to be delivered, so basically I have it since August. With all the demolition, carpentry work, painting... the original toilet was left to be used by the workers, so it's not until now that this toilet is being installed. And it doesn't fit!

1 inch OFF

I have a $400 toilet sitting there just one inch off. Both the wall and floor has been tiled, the rough in distance is 11inch. I swear it has something to do with the tiled wall behind the toilet. That wall didn't use to be tiled and the tiles and the waterproof paper must have decreased the distance. Of course an experience person should be able to foresee that, but of course not in my case. So now I am stuck with 2 options. One is to dig the tiles up, jack hammer the concrete floor, reposition the waste hole and put in a new one. Another option is to forfeit the $400 toilet and buy a new one. Obviously the first option seems ridiculously complicated even though the contractor and plumber said that they will do it for "free." Somehow it seems wasteful to do that. The 2nd option is to try and sell the 12-inch rough in toilet which seems to be a much more reasonable alternative.

I would very much like to buy the same toilet with the 10-inch rough in but that will take another month and while I was away at a wedding, the contractor found a toilet and swear that it's the same model and installed it. All happened while I was gone. So now I have a 10-inch rough in toilet but I'm not sure it's the same model. On top of that there is a big 1 inch gap with the wall behind.

Big 1 inch gap to the tiled wall.

Not sure why I've been having so many problems with toilets. Somehow Toto and I have been having a very tumultuous relationship so far. Hopefully this is the end of the drama.

with washet. Not sure if I like the look! Sigh.

Let there be some light

If you are in the market to shop for more than just functional lighting for your house, I highly recommend the following sites:

http://www.surrounding.com/
http://www.lumens.com/
http://www.ylighting.com/

They all carry modern classic designs with a rather wide price range. I'd have to say that I have been pleasantly surprised by the roles that lights play in the design of a room. Unless you are using recess lighting, they make quite a statement on the wall or on the ceiling. It's practically like hanging paintings in the room except that you can't really change them out as easily, thus I do feel the pressure of picking the right lights. Hopefully I picked the ones that I won't get tired of and also serve the purpose of providing sufficient and pleasant lighting. To add to the complication, I only want to have LED or fluorescent light, absolutely no halogen. Believe me, this makes it way more difficult. Lots of the nice design still make use of halogen and haven't switched over to the more modern green light source.

Another thing to keep in mind is that if the lights are from Europe, which a lot of them are, it may take up to 6 weeks to get the shipment; and if there's any mistakes, you'll also need to deal with the lengthy turn around time. Basically plan ahead and don't schedule the electrician unless you are sure that the lights are not broken and all parts are in place. And yes, I did make that mistake and now the electrician has to come back for the rest of the installations.

In the mean time, I finally have the I-Club light and the Flos L Hide wall lamp installed in the living room. The I-Club light provides warm surrounding light through a layer of veneer. The L Hide Wall light serves as an illuminating shelf of LED lights. You may be surprised that they are installed at different heights, that's kind of classic Jessica, the girl loves asymmetry. There's also a practical element, the L Hide Wall lamp needs to be lower than the opening of the door in the shelf next to it.

Flos L Hide Wall Lamp and I-Club Wall Lamp

For the master bedroom I have the Jielde Signal Arm Wall Sconce by the bed side, and of course there are 2 colors, pastel blue and water green. This light has been around since 1950, made by cast metal and painted. The arm is adjustable in all directions.

Aren't they the cutest?

Water Green

Pastel Blue

I also have 2 different ceiling LED lights. One single light to serve as spot light to the closet. One 2 lamp ones for the hallway. They both are capable of 360 degrees rotation.

Hallway Phillips Ledino 360

Spot light for master closet.

Of course there are the recessed lighting in the kitchen, they are standard pin based fluorescent.

Broken

The Glo-Ball Light Series designed by Jasper Morrison is more than a light fixture, it's an elegant statement of diffused light. This ethereal design is made of an externally acid-etched, hand blown, flashed opaline glass in a simple ellipsoid. I like it better than the perfect globe used in the original Eichler houses but it is still a design reminiscent of many 60s lighting fixtures with the simple form of the sphere.

I still wasn't quite sure until I saw a real life one in London at John Lewis.

I found the right model for the dining room and it didn't take that long for it to be shipped. But when the electrician came to install, we found a box of shattered glasses instead.

It's really kind of sad but I guess that's the problem with breakables. it's amazing that they don't put more effort in packaging considering the consequences. Lumens.com is quite nice though, they immediately agreed to ship a new one before Christmas. All the paper work of sending back the broken pieces also went smoothly. So at least I'll eventually have an intact one. I wonder who is going to pay for this? UPS? lumens.com? manufacturer?

On the other hand, I don't have as much luck with another broken item we discovered today. The IH stove was purchased way back in July when Peter asked me to buy all the appliances and have them ready in the garage. I gladly obliged but none of them get installed until 5 months later and low and behold, the stove top is chipped in one corner. I got it at AJMadison but the warranty for returns is only for 30 days, this of course is way past that and now I have to live with having a broken stove before even using it.

Now the question is who chipped it?  The box was first opened by Noor to get the right dimensions. And then the stove top was fitted to cut a hole for the quartz counter top by the stone guy. The packaging was very thoroughly done (unlike the Glo Ball) and if it was chipped when it was opened, I'm sure I would have been told. The fact that I wasn't forewarned at all made it quite clear that one of them has to be the culprit. Yet another Noor problem.

Not so Happy 5th Mensiversary

5 months have passed and my world is now tainted by the Noir (Noor) Cloud. All was more or less fine until he dropped the noir bomb. My original reaction was shock, followed by pain, then immediately turned to anger which lasted for 10 days. Eventually now I'm just exhausted and quite depressed with the whole situation. Nothing has been resolved for over 2 weeks now. I'm swinging back to anger. Wait, why am I going through the stages of grief, maybe I'm mourning over my disappointment with the whole human race? I am still trying to understand the situation, am I dealing with some cultural misunderstandings? I suppose it's actually harder to do business in this big melting pot of United States. I'm still waiting to move to the acceptance and hopeful stages... so on this day of the 5th month, saying Happy Mensiversary is really quite a stretch.

Enough with my rants as today the plumber, Dennis, is here. I have been waiting for the faucets and toilets to be installed for the longest time. They were all purchased since the beginning of August, to tell you the truth, I'm starting to forget what I bought. Anyway I got a call and apparently one set of faucets were missing. After over an hour of sorting through dust, debris and boxes in the garage, luckily I located them. There is a second surprise, Dennis confessed that he had never installed these kind of faucets and toilets before. Should I be alarmed? Sigh!! No pictures at this time as they are still all scurrying around dealing with the more than 20 parts to a faucet. Some of the parts are so tiny that I'm quite nervous that they will get lost in the midst of stuff. Let's keep our fingers and toes crossed.