commercial grade pre-rinse faucet JOY

HJUVIK FAUCET
Originally uploaded by jaremfan.

I was a Kansas U college student once in my life, not too long ago. As a student, I used to work down at Wescoe Terrace for slightly more than minimum wage, which helped me pay for coffee in the evenings on Mass St.

Occasionally, I would get my hands on one of these commercial grade pre-rinse sprays. And they are the most fun thing that has ever come to the dishwashing scene.

Now, I really enjoyed the deep sink, three sinks for multiple purposes (one for soap, one for bleach, and another for rinse), but it never came close to the spray.

It had almost every degree of freedom I could think of. And to think that it was available for homeowners like me was too much to contain.

At first glance, Ikea's Hjuvik faucet isn't so cheap at RM700 (for me, anyway), but try googling around for "pre-rinse commercial faucet" and you'll get a better picture.

This thing is selling for at least RM1000 in the United States. Don't ask me why. I guess it's just like a Big Mac isn't the same in different parts of the world.

This goes on my most wanted list for the new apartment.

inspirational sites for modern living

www.apartmenttherapy.com

I stumbled across Apartment Therapy the other day, through a LYN post for crying out loud. It showcases apartments from all over the place, and people can vote in to rate it. I like the fact that it isn't a interior decorator's glossy album of avantgarde locations. No, the apartments there are really within reach. Real apartments. Real people.

www.mocoloco.com

The other really cool place I dropped into was mocoloco... MOdern COntemporary, or whatever. There are tons of really cool looking stuff here, such as furniture, art, walls, chairs, tables, lamps, gadgets, books, art.... all to give your apartment that moco feel.

photos from flickr tagged with midcenturymodern

There's an huge set of photos on Flickr devoted to cool looking furniture and stuff. It's just overwhelming. Sometimes you just sit there and stare at it for hours. And sometimes you don't.

www.ikeafans.com

There was bound to be one...
IKEA Fans Website Home Page

This site grew out of specific IKEA threads from the immensely popular that home site forum.

There's not much commentary, but there's heaps of help and DIY advice. I so want my apartment now.

Ikea needs renovation? part 2

I agree:

article

Why Conran must think outside the shopping box
Ian Watson

DESIGN guru Sir Terence Conran thinks a trip to an Ikea store is about as appealing as a holiday in Baghdad. At Ikea, people suffer “horrible experiences”, he says. Poor Conran. Surely there are more important things to complain about than enduring a visit to Ikea, such as the state of London’s underground, the £5.9bn (E8.7bn, $10.4bn) overspend on defence equipment by MoD civil servants, or even the competence of Sir Iain Blair, head of the Metropolitan Police.

Never having ever been near an Ikea store, I’ll take Conran’s word for it that they’re very crowded and that there are long queues at the check-out desks, just as there are at our airports and railway stations.

Of course to people like Conran, and retailers like Stuart Rose of Marks & Spencer, shopping these days has to be more than just buying a new three-piece suite, a dress, or the week’s groceries. It has to be “an experience”. What tosh. People in their hundreds of thousands visit Ikea and come back again and again to buy furniture that is well designed and value for money. You don’t hear Tesco’s Terry Leahy wittering on about customers enjoying “the shopping experience” at his stores.

Some readers may remember Barbara Hulanicki’s huge Biba art deco emporium in Kensington, London, which was designed to give customers a shopping experience they would never forget. But they did forget the “magic and show business of retail”, as Hulanicki herself described it, and Biba folded in 1975. The toy store Hamleys is one of the most uncomfortable places in London to shop, but the reason it is successful and packed with shoppers is that it offers a range of toy products unmatched by any other store. So does Ikea.

Conran, who created the wonderful Habitat store (now part of Ikea), has written to Ikea’s founder, Invgar Kamprud, pleading with him to put up Ikea’s prices. This, he thinks, would stop ordinary folk going there, clogging up the stores, and leave more space for those of a more artistic bent to appreciate the aesthetics of flatpack furniture.

Ikea is one of the most successful retail concepts ever. Kamprad should write back telling Conran to stop being so silly.

Ikea needs renovation?

article

Maybe Ikea has a predominantly western outlook, and most of the news I receive about it doesn't come from the East. We're much less bothered about whether Ikea is opening another outlet in the U.S. midwest than they are about global warming. But that's the point. Things aren't cheap here, even at "Ikea" prices. If this Conran guy is right, the Ikea concept of "starting with the price" will find it difficult to gain confidence amongst fans. Anyway, I doubt this will bite. The fact that there are mad crowds of people that stomp on each other to get into an Ikea sale isn't the fact that the service is lousy. Customer service is a management issue, not a pricing one. And it remains varied across the various outlets around the world. Getting a christmas card from Ingvar Kamprad doesn't make me a spokesman on Ikea matters. But then, I'm no Sir either.

where did that come from?

The chair from two posts back is an eames chair. Actually, it's an eames rocker. For more on "where did that come from?" chairs.... take a look at this. You'll need some spanish.

preparation thoughts

I just got back from a friend's BBQ cum housewarming. He has a really nice kitchen. Actually, he has a really nice house. It's not a flashy house. But it's nice. It's a place I could actually live in comfortably.

The living room isn't really my style, and the lighting and mood could've been improved, but it's got enough space, ambience, warmth... I'm actually really impressed that he thought through a lot of the things that went into how the house would turn out.

A few things I got from him confirmed my assumptions...

Whacking down walls cost a lot of money. It's referred to as "masonry". It's much cheaper to make a wall out of gypsum board instead of whacking an entire wall down.

Lighting is probably the most important part of the interior formula.

Nice things don't come cheap. Even if there are, they don't come easy. There's a lot of work involved in getting the best deal. And I'm overwhelmed that there are so many things to look into.

But it pays to think it through, because once it's all done, it's going to stay around for a long time.

styles: do they matter?

Rockr
Originally uploaded by Stebbi.

I didn't think I was that fussy about furniture. Almost everyone around here has large cane sets or faux leather couches, and veneered plywood tables, cupboards and cabinets. Marble, tiled and parquet flooring were common. After all, they were all from the 70s.

Then, it took 20 odd years for us to grow up. Now, everyone wants Italian-styled furniture and minimalist chic or balinese. Of course, to some others, a chair is a chair is a chair.

Does it matter?

I find it weird that throngs of people appear at shopping malls, and none other. There, you find some of the best interior design examples this decade has to offer, and the next. People dig this stuff.

For example, what's a good restaurant versus a bad restaurant, besides the food and service? Why are there still people hanging out at Starbucks even though their coffee is sub-par? It's about that damn couch in the middle of rubber-wood seats and tiny tables that looks so inviting. Not to mention the oval drop ceilings and bright spot lamps.

Ok, so maybe I'm a bit adamant about wanting to get my turn on the couch.

I reasoned, if people could make their homes more inviting, they wouldn't have to go to Starbucks and pine for a couch. I also reasoned that MOST people don't know jack about interiors and decorating them. That's why people WOULD pay thousands for an interior designer.

I don't know about other people, but I happen to love some styles and loathe others. This site has really helped me a lot, although I wish they'd use more hi-res photos. Here's a style glossary that I thought was absolutely indespensable for dumb, financially-challenged folks like me.

I'm all for scandinavian modern and a touch of scandinavian country. So what if it starts with a capital I.

prologue

The apartment isn't ready yet, and I am on another round of idle thoughts about how my new home will look like. My preface is a 27-year old male, married and employed, and currently living with my parents. I love my parents a lot, but the walls of my room are starting to close in on us. And even though I've been a college student for seven years of my life, clutter is not something I'm coping with very well these days.

Anyway, this blog is and isn't about Ikea. It started out with me wanting to build a commentary about the big blue-yellow company, but then I got lazy having realized that tons of people do that on a daily basis, and sometimes for no particular reason at all.... so I hogged this domain for a good 3 months.

Perhaps Ikea fits very well with my philosophy of living,... that well-designed, high-quality, and highly usable products can and should be affordable and available to the majority of people living on the face of the planet. Ok... maybe quality is slightly questionable. But then another philosophy of mine involves two hands and putting things together. That's one of the motivations for this blog.

Another motivation is that I wanted an avenue to explore my other side. I'm a software engineer most of the time. Otherwise, I just wanna hang out in a home that I really really enjoy being in. Some people go to the movies. Some travel the world. Some hang out at pubs. I just like staying home. It's my mom's fault.

So thank you, Vinton G. Cerf and Blogger, for giving me the freedom to blab. Incidentally, both of them belong to Google.