Moda Bed

We went today to Room & Board to see this Moda bed for kids.

They had only the bunk bed on display and that looked nice, and we actually liked several of the Moda products.


But I was hoping to get the twin bed now and make it a bunk bed later. Well, it's not modular, so we'll keep looking for the modern kid bed ...

Bamboo Flooring?

So we've got samples from Smith & Fong Plyboo.

And here are our 4 choices:

1. Edge Grain Natural: this is the bamboo floor we've seen and liked.


2. Edge Grain Amber: now that I've seen the sample, I like this too.


3. Strand Prefinished Honey: I think this is supposed to be the closest match to 1 or 2, but for some reason I don't like the color&pattern of this at all!


4. Strand Prefinished Dark: I like this way better than 3, but we didn't want a dark or chocolate floor ...

And yes, we did the dent test, the standard bamboo floor gets dents from everything, so unfortunately we cannot afford the look we like (1&2) ...

The strand is better, no dents but it will still scratch they say, but that will happen with all hardwood... But how would that dark floor go with our small bedrooms and light, bright and open living areas? Hmmmm ...

Vancouver, or there’s a much more sensitive market to well-designed objects than to well-designed buildings. ...

Just checked the Dwell Magazine website and found this Vancouver story.

And since I've always had mixed feelings about Vancouver (I love the natural Vancouver and always find the built city not up to its natural surroundings) and have quite a few friends living in or longing for this city, I'm adding this post here too.

QT: from a ranch house to prefab

6 years ago we've tried to find a nice, simple, modern house in Bay Area and we gave up.

We thought about buying land and building a Kids Town (that will become our QT story) with a group of friends.

4 years ago we've searched one more time for a house, but I guess the plan was ready, buy whatever in a nice location and remodel/rebuild it modern. Whatever meant a 50s ranch house (a Blackfield in Mountain View), ~600K for ~1000sf at that time ...

First remodelling plan in 2003 failed because the architect plans for ~200K turned out to be more like 400K when we've talked to contractors.

And so we've heard about Glidehouse (probably from Dwell Magazine), a prefab from Michelle Kaufmann Designs...

The Silicon Valley Paradox

One would think that Silicon Valley ought to be modern.
It's at the forefront of technology for the past many years.
There are more young&smart people and money here than in so many other places.
But look around, does this place look fresh or modern?
I found that modern here means mid-century modern, which is absolutely wonderful, but what about the end of the century or next century modern?
What is the missing ingredient here?

Bamboo Flooring

We have decided a while ago that we like bamboo flooring and we've choosed something like the vertical grain natural bamboo. Now that we're getting closer to the actual building process we've started to finish some research on old design ideas and for bamboo flooring we found these LiveModern threads that made us a bit nervous about the bamboo flooring (we don't have pets, but we have kids)
Plyboo bamboo flooring
Bamboo, comments from people who have it...

So next step is to schedule a visit to Smith & Fong Plyboo in South San Francisco, check the Plyboo strand too and decide if this is the right option for us, at least for the living area, the bedrooms will have the nice&green bamboo floors for sure!

Geologica & Florim

I wanted to see if anyone had actually installed Geologica tiles and asked this question in of LiveModern's forums.

And someone mentioned a similar italian product, Floor Gres:
I've never seen the graniti fiandre geolociga product but it sounds similar to this stuff:
http://www.floorgres.it/home.asp?l=E

we use the "Globe" series on a number of very high end jobs even though you can get the stuff for $7-9/sqft depending on the stock/ format. It's indestiguishable from natural stone and indestructible.

Fiandre in general makes a great product so I think you'd be very happy.

These tiles are also so stable that you can lay it over Schluter Ditra matt so the build up will match up with your wood floors without having to do all sorts of padding and furring to make the two match. (as opposed tp laying it over a concrete backer board).

http://www.schluter.com/english/products/2002/sectionf/ditra/601-index.html

Floor-eka!

We've visited Geologica's San Francisco showroom and found quite a few options, although we haven't decided on the overall color scheme yet. We know we like the light yellowish bamboo and so we need a tile color that's not too close to the bamboo.
We've talked to Nicole and here are some options we've considered for the entry, hallway and kitchen and possibly the rest of the living areas:
- First choice was this New Stone Ardesia Blue. Nicole recommeded us to see it installed in the new showroom of House of European Design. It looked beautiful but dirty, not at all easy to maintain, out of our list it goes.
- We've looked at 2 New Stone greys, pietra di bedona and pietra serena. We liked pietra serena better because it had a more uniform pattern and a lighter hue.
So the pietra serena is our number one choice so far, it's neutral to let us bring other colors, hopefully easier to maintain than Ardesia Blue and should go nicely with the bamboo, what do you think?
- We've also checked the New Ground earth-tone, lighter colors and we kept coming back to this grey ground with a hint a green. But these tiles are porcelain, and for some reason we liked the engineered stone better. Still on our list.

We'd love to hear comments on our choices so far!

And here's some more quick info on Geologica stones:
The Geologica products are recreations of rare, exotic, extinct and technically limited marbles, granites, limestones, quartzites, slates and travertines and are available in a large variety of colors, sizes and finishes. Geologica stone is made of 100% natural minerals and is manufactured for durability -- it is frostproof, and extremely resistant to stains, scratches, UV rays and chemicals. Since Geologica is a non-porous material, it is extremely easy to care for and maintain. Cleaning with water and a neutral cleaner is all that is requred -- sealers, polishes or waxes are not needed. Please call us for a brochure, samples or more detailed product information.