Phoenix City Living

Cockroaches and scorpions at least try to stay away from us

Ok, we all have to deal with life's little "what the freak is that thing on my leg". If we're lucky, most of the little things that bug us are either too small or spend most of their time hiding so we're blissfully unaware of the mini-lifestyles of the gross and creepy. But leeches! Big, fat, thick, sucking, land leeches that sneak into our house and head directly for our warm little bodies. Come on! EEEEEEEEUUUUUUUWWWWW! Leech invasion makes Japan residents see red.

Getting service for your home without the big effort

All of us could use a little help in the day-to-day of taking care of our homes. Sure, it's our little castle, but whether messed up by the kids, our pets, or just a victim of our busy lives, management of our home always seems to take up too much time. Whether fixing a problem, building a better home, or managing our daily responsibilities, we'd expect that maybe there may be a better way of getting things done. Maybe online. And simple. And cheap. That's where ServiceMagic and Homeminders comes into play.

ServiceMagic could be your one-stop-shop for almost any kind of home service provider. ServiceMagic is an online site matching the user with pre-screened and customer-rated contractors in a range of more than 500 different home service needs. Projects handled can range from the largest remodeling jobs down to a single broken faucet. There is no charge for homeowners using the service. There's also a good resource section offering tips, tools, guides, galleries and expert advice on home-related topics.

And separately, a strategic partner of ServiceMagic, Homeminders, helps homeowners create a customized online maintenance plans and schedule. The intent is to simplify the "job" of managing a home while providing archival storage for owner's manuals, warranty documents, receipts, and photo records. Email alerts are included for the small $29 annual fee.

Run, Roomba, Run!

When the Roomba first came out I scoffed at the silly little "sort of" robot. How could this little disk navigate obstacles, climb rugs, and deal with the flotsam and jetsam of my everyday life. And the big question: who would survive in a fight to the death with my two black labs. Would I find them cowering wide-eyed in the closet with bruises covering their legs? Or would I come home to a new abstract sculpture quivering in its final electrical rigor; my labs planted close by with wires hanging from their mouth? Surprisingly the little programmed vacuum introduced in 2002 has now sold over 2 million units and is going strong. While I still remain resistant to its allure (add cooking, making the bed, and doing laundry to its program and count me in big time!) the Roomba has upgraded almost every year now and 2007 is no exception. iRobot's new Roomba 560 gets a spin over at Salon. Check out life in the low lane:

Ikea this ain't. Chairs as an investment.

Chairs function throughout our lives mostly as a means to an end: table-high viewing for a nice hot dinner; a well-worn soft landing in front of a tv; a scratchy plastic nightmare in school or in meetings; an even worse nightmare when we realize this will be our rear-end's destiny in a small work cubicle in a noisy office. Yet, chairs designs have evolved and its functionality has developed so that even recent exquisite pieces can be treated as collection art. Products designed for the very necessary purpose of sitting encompass a wide range of fabrics, purpose, pricing, and artistic expression.  RealEstateJournal.com recently profiled buying chairs as art; a place where function takes a second place to form.

An armchair made of rope by Dutch designer Marcel Wanders sells for about $3,000 at design stores such as Unica Home in Las Vegas -- unless you want it in red. For that, you could pay $14,000 or more at Sotheby's. Cappellini, the company that manufactures Mr. Wanders's "Knotted Chair," produced a limited edition of 99 of the chairs in red last year. Now those chairs are collectors' items, selling at auction for more than four times their original price.

While mid-20th-century furniture continues to command huge sums, now much younger designs -- some just a few years old -- are increasingly seeing hefty premiums when resold at auction. Four steel "Tom Vac" chairs by designer Ron Arad sold for $19,200 at a Sotheby's auction in June; in 1997, when they were originally produced in a limited edition of 500, they sold for about $1,000 each. A "Lit Clos" bed from a 2002 edition of eight by designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec sold at Phillips de Pury last summer for $96,000, about double its original price. This spring, a 1987 Marc Newson cabinet sold for $1.05 million at Christie's, setting a record for a price paid for a work by a living designer.

The soaring prices are partly an outgrowth of the boom in contemporary art. But they also reflect the growing importance of limited editions in the furniture market. Increasingly, furniture designers and manufacturers are borrowing a strategy that has proved successful in collectors' markets from sneakers to watches -- producing small runs of furniture designs in order to create rare, collectible versions of widely owned objects. Now, art-market insiders say some collectors are buying new furniture pieces with an eye toward flipping them on the auction market in a year or two.

Honey, did you invite the microbial colony on to our bed?

Whow!  Like the last place I want to have anything gross on or near me is in my bed (insert obligatory jokes on your own).  Sure, go ahead, use my body as a infection playground while I'm comatose for 8 hours.  Have you ever woken up and exclaimed, "What the freak is this red bump on my leg".  Living in the desert adds new surprises such as the "Never think about the scorpion curled up inside your shoe as your sock now heads under the shoelaces".  Or the "So, cockroaches like the dark, and when I'm sleeping arguably the darkest room is my bedroom".  But, what about the invisible?  The skulking predator impossible to detect and lying in wait every night while you're passive and ripe for attack.  Yikes!

Now, various manufacturers have developed anti-microbial sheets which will battle the unknown while you drift off to Shangri La.  While the most obvious solutions such as taking a shower after playing a game of cow wrestling, washing your hands after feeding aliens, or washing sleepwear after purchase at "Bob's Sleepwear Boutique and Worm Farm" may be in order, some have different ideas to protect you in your sleep.  Silver, copper, or bamboo fibers can now be woven into sheets to give anti-microbial protection and longer freshness.  So check out the articles below for the up&down on the sheets that could be under&over you.

Check it out:
Anti-microbial Sheets Stop Germs While You Sleep
For Germ-a-Phobes, Anti-microbial Sheets

Neighborhood Improvement Workshop - February 15

Is your neighborhood beginning to lose its luster?  Then don't miss the upcoming workshop, "Put the Diamond Back in your Neighborhood."  This one of a series of seminars sponsored by the city of Phoenix Neighborhood Services Department that focuses on neighborhood improvement. 

You'll learn what to do to prevent blight and neighborhood preservation ordinance violations in your areas during a free workshop from 9 to 11:30 a.m. Thursday, February 15, at the Neighborhood Resource Center, 2405 E. Broadway Road. 

For more information....

It's Alive! Well....just barely.

You need a place to sit, the chair you have is cool enough but on its last "legs", or you're the cool one but you don't have enough money to buy your way to Nirvana.  Fake it like the pros and recover your chair.  A simple wood chair can be easily transformed into a statement as long as you have the right tools, a little time, and a concept of where you're going.  Take a look:

Sunset Magazine:  Transform a Chair

Living urban and getting small

Sometimes the urban lifestyle can suggest small unique spaces, closets too small to stand in, and adjusting to a thrifty sensibility to interior room storage and set up considerations.  Condos (especially conversions), historic homes, and urban in-fill projects all have to consider the trade-off between maximizing net living space vs. the size of the interior footprint.  Recent construction has benefited from years of design advancements and more approachable pricing for closet and kitchen storage design yet builders must be sensitive to the retail pricing of their homes and therefore can only include a selected number of standard upgrades.  Options can quickly add to the price, especially at a 35-100%+  markup.  And lets not even get started on storage issues in historic homes.  It becomes quickly apparent that past-Phoenicians didn't have nearly as much crap as we do.

Check out this recent article in Contact Magazine which, if you have not read this magazine yet, is a wonderful source of modern-living design, style, and decorating.

Design Details:  Small Favors

Much more than a number

Sunset Magazine has some great sources for house numbers.  Looking for a style addition to the house but can't afford the big job.  Looking for something that says you, but doesn't confuse the post office.  Hey, the first thing most people see when looking for your house are the 123's so don't let first impressions kill the love.

Source:
Sunset: Best House Numbers

Before starting that project on your historic home...

If you're an historic property owner in the City of Phoenix, you'll want to review the General Design Guidelines for historic properties and check-out these Bulletins from the Historic Preservation Office before starting a project.  These new Bulletins provide you technical guidance and "how to" on removing paint from masonry, cleaning and repointing masonry, repairing steel casement windows, and boarding windows and doors.

And remember if your house is designated as an historic property, EXTERIOR alterations, additions, and repairs require a Building Permit Review  by the Historic Preservation Office.  This includes alterations that do not require building permits.

While you do not need permission to change the color of paint on your home or if you're performing ordinary maintenance that does not change the existing materials or design...you'll save yourself potential future headaches by reviewing the various guidelines and information found at the Historic Preservation Office before you begin a project.