Apartment living...almost by the rules

There are benefits to living in an apartment. You don't need to mow the lawn. Household repairs are free. You have plenty of neighbors to meet. You don't pay property taxes (at least directly).

You can even find a new place every six months if you want.

But what about dogs? Painted walls? Your choice of ceiling fans? In this way, apartment living can be somewhat limiting, but be encouraged. Most of us have been there.

THE DESIGN GUY AND HIS WIFE...THE EARLY YEARS.

I know this because my wife and I lived in an apartment for a few months after we got married. We could hear the neighbors music through the walls. We could hear loud conversations outside our windows. Our ceiling fan was plugged in by a cord that ran across the ceiling, down the wall, and into an outlet. Fun was had by all.

Eventually, we grew tired of the white/yellow stagnant walls and decided to find ways to give the place a little more flair. Wall coverings became the focus of our attention. We considered hanging curtains against the wall in our living room to change the flavor. Then we determined that this was a little too dramatic for our tastes. Next we moved into vegetation. The plants were beautiful for weeks at a time and really enlivened the living space. Unfortunately, they began to die as fast as we could replace them. Apparently, we lacked gardening skills.

Next we moved into artwork. We tried building pleasant, 1000 piece puzzles that we hoped to laminate and hang. Though pictures are worth a thousand words, they're worth a lot less with only 998 locatable pieces. Though we didn't think of it at the time, our idea might have worked even with the missing pieces. It would have been "deconstructive modernism."

My mom's paintings helped with some of the rooms but we weren't quite there.

Next we moved into a music theme. We took an old guitar case with orange velvet lining and took the cover off of it. Then we cut Plexiglas to match the shape of the case and bolted it in with 3/4 in thick bolts. After cutting a little space at the top of the Plexiglas we had ourselves a hangable guitar piggy bank...or donation jar, depending on the generosity of our company.

We matched this up with a pair of snare drums that we bought at a garage sale. We painted the face of one of the drums orange, then bought a cheap clock at Wal-Mart and pulled the hands, motor, and battery out of it. By piecing all the parts back together through the head of the drum, we had a groovy clock that we hung on our wall. The other drum we also painted and used as an end table.

My wife finished off the room with 40 vinyl records that she purchased from the thrift store to hang them around the room. Though the records didn't work out so well, we never had to worry about coasters again.

Just an anecdote: There is nothing new under the sun. Just when my wife and I congratulated ourselves on our cleverness, we found ourselves in a little bed and breakfast in a small town in Arizona called Strawberry (population: 42). While sitting in the lobby we noticed that both the coffee table and the clock on the wall were snare drums!

To finish off our office, we needed something that could hold a lot of books. We didn't just want shelves because the room was already pretty bland. Eventually, we found a Target that was selling off their red employee lockers for $40. I guess they do those kinds of things when they are going out of business (I had to restrain myself from buying a commercial-grade, soft-pretzel warmer).

Used Employee Lockers

Make Great Storage

After getting the lockers home and reassembling them, we began to hammer off random doors to expose empty cubbys. Eventually, it produced a neat storage space that added a lot of color to the room and covered up most of a wall. Unfortunately, the lockers were too much of a challenge to reassemble when we moved so I threw them away.

I am not sharing these ideas with you so that you would try them at home. That is not a good idea. Instead, I am trying to reveal that style takes time to develop and apartments are great places to start experimenting. The limitations put on you by your situation provide you a great opportunity to grow. Creativity takes practice and its affordable when you're finding ingredients from thrift stores and garage sales.

Don't worry about the bad ideas. We just gave all the really weird stuff away to our college aged neighbors who had even less furniture than we did.

Who wouldn't want to set their coffee mug on "Freddy and the Jets Greatest Hits Volume II"?

Feng Shui or Gumballs

At the risk of jeopardizing my credibility as a design consultant, or perhaps strengthening it, I would like to critique the increasingly trendy style of decorating known as Feng Shui (pronounced "fung shway").

Feng Shui is a methodology of decorating living spaces and office settings. It attempts to balance the invisible energies that flow through rooms the way that wind and water would, which is how Feng Shui gets its name ("wind" and "water")

I think its Feng bunk.

The Design Guy Offers Alternative Explanations to Feng Shui

I agree that the decoration of a room can profoundly affect the mood of a room. I might even say that it can affect the energy of the room, but I don't mean the same kind of energy that Feng Shui is talking about. When I say energy, I am talking about physical energy. For example a dark blue/gray room will make you want to read books and take naps as opposed to working out and being creative. This is simply because blues and grays are very soothing colors.

When Feng Shui speaks of energy, it refers to the the moving of invisible life forces and spirits. For example, it suggests that you put mirrors on the ceilings above toilets so that your life energy doesn't get flushed away with the toilet paper. Supposedly life energy is always looking for a way to leak out. Feng Shui even suggests that you keep your sink drains closed to keep energy from sneaking out through the plumbing.

What really strikes me funny is Feng Shui's answer to bedroom design. According to the rules, the beds should never be situated with their feet facing the door. The concern is that this may tempt a person's spirit to make a premature departure for the afterlife.

Perhaps it's better that they sleep with their head towards the door so that their hair escapes during the night?

Regardless, the affects that Feng Shui attempts to achieve can be grasped without the help of astronomers and spiritual diviners.

One principle of Feng Shui is that energy flows through a room. Supposedly, a front door that opens into a room with windows is a bad idea because the energy/money/power that comes into your home will quickly leave through the windows. Based on this principal, homeless people who live in cardboard boxes should be extremely successful.

I won't comment on the money and power perks, but I do know why big rooms with windows seem fleeting. It's because the human mind desires to establish boundaries. The mind has developed a way to gauge distances, shapes, depth, and space based on visual and audio stimuli like perspective and acoustics. When a person walks into a room that does not have a defined space, perhaps because the eye is looking out into a back yard, it has a hard time comprehending the space it is in. The mind thus has to work extra hard to understand where it is. Often, this leads people to seek out another space in the house that is easier to figure out.

Feng Shui's answer to this puzzle is blocking the path, or at least the view of the windows, so the energy doesn't escape. The problem with this is that your room will become smaller if people can't see its far walls.

My suggestion is that you leave this aspect of the room alone. First of all, you have a backyard! That's fantastic. There are people all over the world who live in tiny condos with little balconies. I say you let them see what you got. Is that a barbeque? A pool? Oh...you have a dog? Why not?
Besides, who wants their guests to stand comfortably at the front door? It's probably better that they decide to move elsewhere in the house where they can relax.

What about the bathrooms that drain energy like leaky buckets?

It doesn't have anything to do with the plumbing. Bathrooms are generally just cold
environments for four reasons:

1. The floors are usually tile or some other type of hard , cold surface.
2. There is usually a lot of light (enough to light a room quadruple the size) which keeps you
alert.
3. There is usually some moisture hanging out, which makes it a little damp.
4. There is a large amount of cold porcelain on the toilet, sinks, and bathtub.

Putting a mirror on the ceiling and closing the sinks aren't going to change this. If we want a more comfortable bathroom setting we need to bring in warmer colors for the walls, thick floor rugs and towels for texture, and some candles for warm light.

Lastly, Feng Shui suggests using simple shapes for design. This goes along with what I explained earlier. Simple shapes for furniture and accessories do two things for you. Firstly, they keep the room from feeling cluttered because the design is simple and easy to navigate. Secondly, they keep the design simple for the human mind to figure out. Once it knows what to expect, it begins to feel comfortable. Until then, the mind will analyze its situation to make certain that it is safe.

I don't mean to mock Feng Shui. What I am really saying is that it isn't as magical as it sounds. My experience with it has been that it is expensive and after all the consultations are finished, the homeowner is left with a bunch of 25 cent mirrors stuck all around the house.

For that kind of money, I think I would prefer to have some gumballs.

Don't Be Fooled By a Model

New homes can look pretty tempting when builders begin to offer discounts and incentives.

The models look so good, it's easy to imagine yourelf living there. The problem is that you probably won't be.

I am often asked to help home buyers decorate their homes while they are still being built. We make this work by using the model home to pick the colors and the spacial design. But the model homes are tricky.

Model Homes Need a Disclaimer

For example, the rooms are often smaller than they appear. My measurements never seemed to look right, which puzzled me up until the day that I measured the bed. It was a MINI bed!

It appears that sometimes, builders use undersized or small furniture to make the rooms look bigger. This little detail is easy to miss when you are imagining all the wonderful details of your new home.










Custom landscapes are not included
with most new homes.

The models also maximize space by including all the upgrades. If you have 16-inch floor tiles, your room will look more sprawed out than if you have linoleum. If you have sprawling window curtains hanging from the ceiling to the floor, two-feet beyond your windows, your windows will look bigger. Smaller ceiling fans in small rooms can also cause them to look larger. Choosing to install stair railings with spindles instead of having sheetrocked walls can also increase the amount of visible space, and having four-foot-tall kitchen cabinets increases the apparent height of the kitchen.

By now we have added around $15,000 in upgrades...but there's more.

Models can also have an extra foot or two added to the dimensions of the rooms. If you wanted to have the same look, this would cost you hundreds of dollars per square foot to do.

You should also note that the paint in the model homes is much better than the paint that they will most likely be using on your home. The paint in the model is of high quality. The paint most builders use is of a contractor grade, five steps down from top notch. If you want a better paint...you're going to have to pay extra...and even the better paint is pretty bad.

Lastly, you should note that the models are being cleaned almost daily which means they are usually sparkling. Doesn't everyone want to live in a spotless house?

I am not suggesting you should avoid buying a new home. I just want you to know what you are buying.


Don't forget to check the first model's refrigerator for a free soda,
The Design Guy

Your Life in a Shoe Box: Modular Living

Don't have the finances to own a penthouse suite? Loftcube.

For around $100,000 you can own a piece of what looks like deconstructed tupperware big enough to live in.


The view into the familty room of Aisslinger's housing concept.

Though I joke, I must admit that Werner Aisslinger is on to something. He is marketing a new kind of living to a generation that loves things that are disposable. His recent project, known as the Loftcube, takes a stylish prefabricated loft and airlifts it onto the rooftop of an urban skyscraper. Why not?

The fun thing about motor homes is that they can be taken wherever you may want to go...well almost anywhere at least. For those hard to reach places, like the top of sears tower, you need something a little more agile.

The Design Guy Orders Takeout and a Loftcube

I like the fact that it has a lot of windows. They can potentially increase the size of a room to double or triple its actual size when left open to the outside view. I would imagine that this effect would increase drastically if one had 360-degree views of the surrounding city.

I also think it's neat that loftcubes offer the privacy of a rooftop from which one can relax. The interior designs are sleek and versatile, allowing for faucets to swivel between the bathrooms and kitchen for reduced plumbing requirements.

But before I get one...I have just a couple of questions.

1. What about strong winds? It seems like a good gust of wind might turn your home into a
loft-curse as it spirals to the city streets below. It looks pretty aerodynamic if you ask me.

2. Air conditioning and heating? It appears that the main climate controls for the structure are air vents slatted into the siding.

3. What about pigeons? Yard work would be a mess...and it would not be pleasant if they invited themselves into your living room. Their presence as guests may be unavoidable if the structure doesn't come with doors.

4. What about access? Finding a parking space at a condo complex is one thing, but having to find a service ladder onto the roof after a 5-minute elevator ride up 30 flights would get a little straining after a while.

5. How about a refrigerator? Washer and dryer? A pantry? A closet?

Maybe they're upgrades.

At the asking price, they should be included.

The Design Guy

The fall and rise of a Phoenix I knew

No backyard. Fivel walls shared with neighbors. One 400 square foot living space with a joined bathroom. An elevator. A parking garage. A lobby. Asking price: $1 million dollars plus everything that made Arizona charming.

I don't quite know what to say about this one.

I remember thinking two-story houses were fascinating because they were semi-rare. When I think of the 40+ urban loft projects being constructed throughout Phoenix, Arizona I find myself a bit speechless.

The design guy critiques the style of his hometown.

The architecture coming to the valley of the sun is no doubt, world class. The gourmet blends of steel and brick, stucco and stone, and rust and copper can really catch the attention of investors and urbanites who are paying three times more for the same amount of space in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Portland, Seattle, and Chicago.

I don't have a problem with the interior and exterior design aspects of the new construction. I think it's all just swell. What I want to redesign is the attitude that's coming with it.

We used to have a theme park known as "Rawhide" where visitors could watch gunfights, eat rattlesnake, pan for gold, and take horse drawn wagons deep into the desert to watch Native American Indian dances. The property that "Rawhide" was on eventually became so valuable that the owners of the park sold the land to developers. There are now just a few remnants of the park staged like museum exhibits at a casino ten miles outside of town.

I understand that things change, but it's tragic when the change is purley money driven. I remember when a local freeway was being built. Homeowners, some of whom had lived in their homes for decades, were forced to sell their houses to the city and relocate. Then, the city enacted a policy called "imminent domain" in which developers could pressure public officials to condemn the property on which one's business lie if the person did not want to sell their business. Buy condemning the property, the value of the property would decrease, pushing the business owner to sell his land cheaply to the government or the investor looking to come in. This was originally meant to be for the development of legitimate city needs, like the building of a power plant or a water treatment facility. Now, it's being done to make way for shopping centers.

A statement is made when the city planners tell you that your home or your business is no longer worthy to remain as it is. It means that the city is growing colder. The life in it is is becoming as mechanized as the automatic checkout counters at the grocery store. What used to be a ranch is now a 500-home, cookie cutter community strategically dropped next to a Safeway, a video store, and a Starbucks. Is this all a city needs? Though I can now find almost anything by driving three minutes in any direction, it is rare that I find any real community. It is only when my job leads me to 55+ communities that I find someome who knows their neighbors well enough to invite them over for dinner.

Perhaps this is because the neighborhoods are being filled by people that have moved here because of the low prices, yet plan on selling again as soon as the market is right. Phoenix is becoming like seat neighbors on an airplane; pleasant and short lived relationships come and go as people make their way to new destinations.

Now, when I look at the skyscrapers being built, I am starting to wonder what portion of Arizona was torn down in order to build that tower of steel.

There is a good reason why Phoenix was able to last as long as it did while other cities have gone this way long ago. No doubt, this is because it was harder to push people around when they had a pistol on their hip.

Why I Don't Watch Design Shows

"Don't try this at home."

"Objects in video may be more costly than they appear."

"Scenes containing images of stress, anxiety, frustration, and disagreement have been edited from this film to make home remodelling look easy."

Any one of these disclaimers would make home design and remodelling shows more believable to me.

Tearing down walls, painting perfect faux finishes, adding built in entertainment centers, and re-upholstering furniture all looks like a breeze when the show presents the project as being completed for free in less than 30 minutes. This is not reality.

I painted a small, one-bedroom condo after a general contractor did some remodelling. Similar to what you might see on one of these shows, the builder cut back a wall, added a small bathroom, added some cabinets and some lighting, changed some doors and trim and then painted. The project took over two months, cost over $150,000, and the house was unlivable during the time of the construction. This is what should be expected when having work done.

I should also mention that contractors are rarely young, attractive and fit, which is in contrast to how they are depicted on these types of shows. It should also not be assumed that the people producing the work are going to be able to speak the same language as you, depending on the hiring practices of the company you've hired.

Let's briefly examine the behind the scenes of this design video to see if the project really is as easy and desirable as it looks. When watching it, keep in mind a couple of questions:

1. How many couches are there at the beginning and ending of the program?
2. Where is the dining room?
3. How did the designer use light to show the room...and will the light always be this way?
4. What is the fate of the brick fireplace?
5. How much would it cost to faux finish a whole room, build-out a counter, and re-upholster some pillows if you were to have someone else do it?

Did you watch it?

You might have noticed that there are no longer two couches, but one. This automatically makes the room look bigger, but it likely means that the homeowners no longer have enough space to sit. They had two couches for a reason. Unfortunately, the missing couch didn't fit with the motif, so it was deleted. Notice how crammed the actors look sitting on it at the end of the show. Imagine your company sitting on it like this...with your spouse having to lie on the rug for lack of room.

I thought it was interesting to note the dining room is permanently dark red. Can you imagine eating a bowl of cheerios in the corner of a dark red room? It will look great at night, but during the day, it isn't going to be very functional.

The room also looked fantastic when the room was dark and lit with manmade light. But this is not the way that the family lived. We know this because the beginning of the project showed the windows open, looking out into the neighborhood. What will the room look like if the window shade is back up? It will probably look different and may feel kind of dark and stuffy in comparison to the bright contrast of the outside.

What also looked nice was the fireplace in contrast to the dark red walls. Unfortunately, painting brick is a one-way road. Once it's painted, it will have to be painted again and again. The question should then be whether or not the customer liked having real brick in the room. Though brick can later be repainted to look as if it was not painted, it just isn't the same.

The cost should be considered to give us an idea of what a project of this magnitude might take. Faux finishinng typically costs between $4.00 and $6.00 per square foot. The room in the video had approximantely 700 square feet. This would bring the cost of the painting between $2,800 and $5,600. The wooden mantelpiece addition would typically cost at least a few hundred dollars for the labor depending on the comlexity of the design as well as the cost of materials. Designer stitching can cost between $12 and $100 per hour. Fabrics and materials can also be expensive when using custom fabrics and leathers. I have heard seen 4 chairs be re-upholstered with scraps of leather for close to $1,200.

Lastly, it may be interesting to note how long a project like this would really take. The painters would probably take 2-3 days. The carpenter would take most of a day, and this would create a lot of dust. Thus the carpenter should come before the painter. The pillows would probably be completed off site so they would not be too much of an inconvenience.

This means that realistically, this free 30 minute design showcase filled with attractive and competent contractors is actually a 4-5 day, $6,000 project that will produce a fashionable but slightly non-functional living space.

It's just how it works.

The Design Guy

Find the right contractor...

If you are considering contracting work out for your home or office, the following advice might save you thousands of dollars.

I would like begin this posting with a picture of what can happen if you make a poor contracting decision.

I have seen Saltillo thin-set to a floor, then left without grout… indefinitely.

Another customer once asked me to take a look at staining some of his interior doors. While walking up the driveway, I noticed that all the paint on the outside of his stucco home was peeling off. When I asked about it, he explained to me that he had hired a painter who agreed to paint his house for a great price. The painter convinced the customer that hosing the house off was as good as pressure washing it.

…The cost to repair the walls for that customer will now be three times what it should have cost to paint the house the first time.

A few months ago a general contractor was hired to add a playroom on to a customer’s house. The contractor completed about half the job, then told the homeowner that he ran out of money. It appears that he spent their materials budget paying his personal bills and didn’t have anything left over to continue with the project.

A month before that, a customer paid to have a 12 foot by 12 foot arts and crafts room added onto her house. Instead, the general contractor built her a 10 foot by 10 foot room, and then disappeared. She lost almost 50 square feet.

One last example: Today, a customer told me about an experience he had with a landscaper who was supposed to redesign his yard. The landscaper asked for a 50 percent deposit so that he could buy the materials. He then brought a meager pile of supplies to the customer’s house and never returned.

You can avoid the ugly side of contracting by following some simple advice.

5 Ways to Escape Cruddy Contractors:

1. Get estimates from licensed, bonded, and insured companies.

Licensed companies have a paper trail on file with the Better Business Bureau. A five minute check-up on the BBB’s website can tell you how long the company has been in business and if it has had any complaints. A company that hasn’t been in business for over a year should not be seriously considered unless they can prove that they have a track record of quality.

When a contractor has his or her license revoked for shoddy craftsmanship, they can choose to: 1) find a new profession, 2) try to continue working without a license, or 3) change their company’s name and get another license. Fairly often, contractors will begin working again with a new name, thus their license will reflect that they are a new company. It is better to find someone who has been around for a few years.

Insured companies also tend to be more trustworthy for two reasons. Firstly, if something goes terrible awry, there is a decent chance that insurance money will pay for the damages. Secondly, insurance can add a substantial cost to the operations of a company. A company that can manage the cost of the overhead is likely to be better run than one that can’t.


2. Don’t take the risk of hiring cheap labor.

Most of us enjoy bargain shopping. Our thought is “why pay full price when you can get it for less?” Unfortunately the contracting industry is different that your normal desk lamp.

Good contractors know their worth. They charge what they know they can. If someone is cheaper than everyone else we have to ask why.

3. Find out what you are getting.

I am stunned sometimes when customers don't take the time to ask questions. I went to a home recently to estimate the cost of a painting project. It seemed as though the customer was anxious to have me leaving the moment I stepped into the house. I don't mind being brief but I feel sorry for the customer. There was much that I wanted to share with him but he didn't provide me the opportunity. All he wanted to know was the price. Unfortunately, the guy with the best price is not usually the guy who will do the best job.

Also, keep in mind the difference between a quote or an estimate and a price. Sometimes contractors will get halfway into a project only to come back asking for more money to complete the job. The customer is suprised that this is even possible, but then the contractor reminds her that what he gave to her in writing was "an estimate," not a price.

The vet surprised my wife and I in this way when we had a potentially cancerous lump removed from our dog's chest. Our final bill was double what we were told that the operation would cost. It turns out that we had been given a quote...and a bad one at that.

4. Don't be too price conscious.

Price matters, but it is deceptive. Often times people will step on their own toes by getting a good deal in the short run. The other day a lady cheerfully told me she had the outside of her house painted for $1,000. It sounds like a pretty good deal right? She then began to shyly ask me if it was normal for paint to start peeling within a couple of months. I didn't want to tell her, but she likely made a mistake when she hired that painter. If the walls weren't pressure washed, all the paint on her walls is going to start cracking and falling off like scotch tape on a chaulk board. To fix this, her next paint job is going to cost between $4000 and $6500. It would have been cheaper and less frustrating to just let a quality company do it the first time.

5. Get it in writing.

What contractor X says and what contractor X does are not always the same. I would even say that if it is not in writing, it wasn't said. One thing I have found is that people have funny and imperfect memories. A roofing contractor shared with me a time when he almost had to repave someone's driveway because the customer insisted that his roofing truck broke her concrete. It was only after he was able to show her before and after pictures of her roof, including the grass that was growing out the cracked driveway in both pictures, that the customer realized her mistake. Though the customer immediately began to apologize, it shows the importance of having something tangible behind the negotiating beyond our recollection.

Written proposals also allow you as the customer to make fair comparisons. Some things to get in writing include: the scope of the work to be done, the brands and product lines of the materials that are going to be used (if available), any guarantees and warranties that are included in the proposal, and the license number of the contractor. These things will also provide you recourse in the event that the contractor does not do what is proposed.