Things I Want For My Dream Home #4.

The dear, put-upon house is still one great big labyrinth of furniture and stuff. There’s no logic to where Hubby has deposited things: sideboard in a bedroom and the drawers stacked up in another; cake stand and martini glasses in Munchkin’s now-redundant crib (now one less martini glass after Munchkin and friend tried to lift [...]

500-pound Tucson woman airlifted from her own house

There’s a piano in my kitchen. A sofa sits on its side in my office. The frame of a coffee table is upturned in the living room, and the top of it is in my bedroom, leaning against a sideboard that usually takes residence in the entryway. We’re baa-ack! Back from our travels, back to [...]

Less is more (more or less)

Small is the new big. ‘Just big enough’ is the new sizing label. It’s happened with cars and appliances. I wonder if it will happen with homes. Already in America we’re seeing builders of new homes foregoing the formal living rooms that people used two days a year if that. Cathedral ceilings are making way [...]

Clear skies in Berlin

  There’s a quote in the movie Greenberg, and apologies to Focus Features and Noah Baumberg if I’m paraphrasing, but it goes something like this: Rhys Ifans’ character, Ivan, desperately trying to be a grown-up but having a hard time doing it at the not-so-tender age of 40, tells his friend, Greenberg: “Do you have [...]

Warts (and cat pee) and all

I’ve blogged before about the downsides of writing about interesting and beautiful homes: that it tends to make you shine a very critical spotlight on your own. Ah, but there’s an upside to that too: when it comes time to do some work on my own abode, having spent the last several years viewing the [...]