The Latest in Custom Electronics for Your Home

In the world of custom home entertainment, autumn officially arrives after the closing of the CEDIA Expo in early September.  The Custom Electronics Design and Integration Association (CEDIA) Expo is the place where electronics manufacturers that specialize in designing products that are integrated into the home all gather to show off their latest and coolest inventions. 

Truly Invisible In-Wall Speakers – Triad Loudspeakers has recently announced an in-wall speaker solution that is truly invisible- no trim ring, no grill, no evidence besides the sound that there are speakers in the room. The speakers are designed with a revolutionary vibrating soundboard that gets taped, mudded, textured, and painted just like sheetrock.  In addition to that, the sound generated by these speakers is much less directional than traditional speakers, so placement in the room is very flexible.

Reliable Wireless Lighting Control – Lutron has released their RadioRa2 radio-frequency lighting control system. This system allows its user to have all of the benefits of a lighting control system, at a much lower cost than retrofitting a traditional wired lighting-control system.  Having the ability to create a range of light levels throughout your home adds convenience, creates ambience, brings a “wow” factor, and saves energy.  The system is easily expandable, so you can do as many or as few rooms as you want.

Entry-level Home Automation – Prodigy, by Crestron, offers simplified control of entertainment, lighting, and thermostats at prices much lower than previously available.  The Prodigy system is built on a flexible, scalable platform- it can start as basic as a single easy-to-use remote control and expand to include up to 18 wireless light switches/dimmers, up to 12 zones of music, and up to three wireless thermostats.  Music systems can be controlled by your choice of basic keypads, touch-screen controllers with metadata feedback, or two-way wireless remote controls with metadata feedback.   With Prodigy, the entry point for home automation has gotten dramatically lower.

World’s First Remote with Haptic Feedback – Universal Remote Control showed off a revolutionary new remote control, the MX-5000.  The MX-5000 features built-in wi/fi communications, which allow the remote to display metadata information from the PSX-2 iPod dock, and real-time news, sports, weather, and stock information.  It also has narrow-band radio frequency communication, so adding lighting control is as simple as switching out an existing switch or dimmer for a Universal Remote Control radio-frequency dimmer or switch. A hybrid touch screen/standard remote control, the MX-5000 is the first remote control to deliver Haptic feedback- a vibration that confirms button presses.  It is obvious that they put a good amount of work into the ergonomics of the remote as well, as it feels great in your hand and is very simple to use.

Entry-level Home Automation – Prodigy, by Crestron, offers simplified control of entertainment, lighting, and thermostats at prices much lower than previously available.  The Prodigy system is built on a flexible, scalable platform- it can start as basic as a single easy-to-use remote control and expand to include up to 18 wireless light switches/dimmers, up to 12 zones of music, and up to three wireless thermostats.  Music systems can be controlled by your choice of basic keypads, touch-screen controllers with metadata feedback, or two-way wireless remote controls with metadata feedback.   With Prodigy, the entry point for home automation has gotten dramatically lower.

World’s First Remote with Haptic Feedback – Universal Remote Control showed off a revolutionary new remote control, the MX-5000.  The MX-5000 features built-in wi/fi communications, which allow the remote to display metadata information from the PSX-2 iPod dock, and real-time news, sports, weather, and stock information.  It also has narrow-band radio frequency communication, so adding lighting control is as simple as switching out an existing switch or dimmer for a Universal Remote Control radio-frequency dimmer or switch. A hybrid touch screen/standard remote control, the MX-5000 is the first remote control to deliver Haptic feedback- a vibration that confirms button presses.  It is obvious that they put a good amount of work into the ergonomics of the remote as well, as it feels great in your hand and is very simple to use.

Home Theater Projectors Shine  -  JVC, as has been the case the last few years, showed a series of new models that continued to improve on their existing product.   The most significant upgrade in this year’s models is the addition of 120hz Clear Motion Drive processing, which reduces motion blurring in fast-action scenes and delivers a much smoother image.  The HD-950 and HD-990 models feature THX Video Certification, which means they deliver incredibly accurate color.

For more information about any of these products visit www.goroomservice.com.

Interior Color and Trend Predictions for 2011

From the Oregonian, by Bridgett A. Otto

Michelle Lamb, popular trend forecaster in the design and retail world and editorial director of The Trend Curve, sent this information about color trends for 2011. Yes, I know 2010 hasn’t even breached the horizon. Nonetheless, here’s Lamb’s look ahead.

Here are some highlights:

• Neon could not be newer! So don’t forget to include it in everything from the brightest yellow to purplish blue.
• Don’t be shy with corals — they’ll be taking reds and pinks to all-new levels.

To think forward, go back. These rich time periods will be informing trends, as well as new colors:

• Tudor (through Elizabethan) England will bring back voluminous velvets, tapestry accents and tear-drop pearls.
• The 1940s will again inspire features in light maple, pecan and walnut, as well as seersucker, jersey and cable knits.
• Mayan, Incan and Hopi tribal influences will give us geometric florals, trapezoids and primitive portrayals of the sun.

Lamb is co-founder and chairman of Minneapolis-based Marketing Directions Inc. Established in 1987, Marketing Directions specializes in home furnishings color and trend forecasting, working extensively with clients to provide individual direction and color specification.

Marketing Directions publishes The Trend Curve, which forecasts trends in color, pattern and design for manufacturers, interior designers and retailers.

Designer Tips

Viewing carpet samples: When shopping for carpet, make sure you look at it on the floor. In the store, it’s convenient to have samples at waist height, but you need to see how it will look when installed. To truly visualize how your carpet will look, always view samples on the floor.

Best Carpet Choice for Families: If you have children and pets, patterned carpet may be your best choice, because the pattern helps hide spills and stains.

Carpet makes the room: It is often said that carpet “makes the room”. After all, carpet can account for 50% of the visual impact of a room. Carpet can be a neutral backdrop for your furnishings, or it can anchor the room and reinforce your color statement. Either way, you cannot ignore it. Old, shabby carpet will bring the rest of the room down. If you’ve got to cut the budget, scrimp on the ceiling!”

Tell Us Your Best Toilet Story

American Standard is sponsoring a unique contest, the “Tell Us Your Best Toilet Story” contest, with submissions being accepted on Facebook.

Whose idea was this contest?

“I guess that would be me,” Ms. Nora DePalma,  a publicist for American Standardsaid. “All of us who have worked in plumbing, people tell us these stories. It’s like being a doctor at a cocktail party and everyone tells you about their aches.”

The grand prize of a Champion 4 toilet, complete with installation and the Champion 4 Slow Close toilet seat will be awarded to the story that receives the highest number of “thumbs up” from readers. Four additional top vote getters will be awarded a free Champion(R) 4 toilet with Champion 4 Slow Close toilet seat.

“The most common toilet stories we hear are about cats and toilets,” Ms. DePalma said. “They leap up to greet their owners, and don’t realize the seat is up, and fall in. Then there are all kinds of embarrassing dating stories.”

Most of them are not, as she tells them, for the fainthearted. But press on: what else does she have?

There’s also an entry from a father who took his child into a hardware store and permitted him to wander off, Ms. DePalma said, during which time the child used one of the display toilets.

What did the father do?

“He took his son’s hand and left the store immediately.” (Yucko)

There’s No Place Like Home

From www.homeyet.com

In today’s unpredictable economy, experts say there has been a recent cultural shift from house “flipping” to “nesting,” and “staycations” are more prevalent now than ever before. Because families are spending more time at home, they want to enjoy the time they spend there, so they are refocusing their attention to how they can refresh their home environment – even in the smallest ways. It is important to recognize that it’s the littlest things that matter when you’re making enhancements to your home. Simple touches of a new sofa or end table, rug or even a decorative lamp shade will create a different look and feel to a room or space. This is a small lifestyle change, and not an unobtainable luxury.

Here are some quick, yet stylish suggestions home furnishings industry experts have put together on how to rejuvenate your home:

Calm Yourself
Living with a neutral interior palette is like being enveloped by a cloud. Get the look by blanketing rooms in the softest neutral shades: cream, mocha and, most especially (and perhaps surprisingly), gray. A dash of a neutral metallic accent, such as silver, adds a welcome sparkle and resembles sunlight peeking through the clouds.

Distressed to Impress
Modern Country is ageless and exudes a comforting charm that takes imperfection to new heights. Natural finishes, heavily distressed surfaces, reclaimed woods, rattan, wicker and other natural textures are livable finishes for busy families. And the look fits farmhouse style or urban loft with equal ease.

Ethnic Inspiration
Far-reaching global influences are no longer far flung. Ethnic-inspired fabrics are turning up all over in American homes. The organic patterns, vibrant color palettes and handcrafted looks create an aura of sophisticated warmth. What to look for: motifs inspired by traditional African design; susani patterns from Central Asia; ikats and batiks from Indonesia; and handblocked woodprints from India.

Power Play
Smaller footprint, lighter weight and better performance are important purchase considerations when buying a new laptop. The same things matter when buying home office furniture. As laptops have become the most popular home computing choice among consumers, so, too, have writing tables and petite desks moved to the fore. Unlike their executive suite predecessors, these modestly scaled workstations don’t take up an entire room. Instead, they slip easily into most interiors, providing needed workspace without taking up too much space – or too much money.

Seeing Black and White
The go-to item in your closet may be the little black (or white, depending on season) dress. In home furnishings, it’s the combination of the two that offers the most impact. It’s twice the look in one great product, and it never goes out of style. Consider making a statement with a black and white combo in bedding ensembles, window treatments, wallpaper or upholstery fabric.

Builders’ Surplus Sale offers homeowners great loot at low prices

Thinking of doing a fall home improvement project? Then the Builders’ Surplus Sale at the Portland Fall Home & Garden Show is the place to be. This annual event, put on by the Home Builders Association of Metro Portland’s Professional Remodelers Organization, features new and used surplus merchandise from local building industry professionals at amazingly low prices.

“This is a wonderful opportunity for the do-it-yourselfer to get quality materials at great prices,” said Hallie Gentry, manager of the Professional Remodelers Organization.  “We have such an incredible selection of items including home lighting, paint, tile and a large selection of doors and windows. There really is something here for everyone.”

Items left at the end of the show will be donated to The Rebuilding Center, the largest non-profit used building materials resource in North America.

 

WHO: The HBAMP’s Professional Remodelers Organization

WHAT: A garage-sale type of event featuring Portland-area builders and remodelers’ surplus windows, doors, appliances, tile, cabinets, etc.

WHEN: Sept. 10-13 (11 a.m.-8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 11 a.m.-6 p.m. on Sunday)

WHERE: In the Portland Fall Home & Garden Show (Portland Expo Center, 2060 N Marine Drive, Portland, OR 97217)

COST: Free with entrance to the Portland Fall Home and Garden Show. Tickets for the Portland Fall Home & Garden Show are $10 and also gain attendees access to the Fall RV and Van Show and the Fall Boat Sale.  Get discount coupons here.

Your leftover paints are turning into bright recycling success

by Eric Mortenson, The Oregonian

Let’s say you painted your daughter’s bedroom a couple years ago. A lovely sea green, or whatever. The job didn’t take the full gallon you bought, so you stored the can in the shed or garage and it’s been sitting there ever since, along with the remnants from other painting projects.

Your half-empty cans are part of a huge national story. An estimated 10 percent of 750 million gallons of architectural paint sold in the U.S. each year doesn’t get used, according to the Product Stewardship Institute. Leftover paint is by far the largest single component of hazardous household waste, making up 40 to 60 percent of the waste stream nationally, by one estimate.

You and your neighbors deliver about 200,000 gallons of old paint a year to Metro, with thousands of collected cans arriving at the agency’s Swan Island plant. Oil-based paints are sorted out at the receiving end; they can’t be recycled and instead are shipped to such destinations as cement kilns, which burn it for fuel.

About 25 percent of the remaining latex paint is moldy, contaminated or dried up and can’t be re-used. It is mixed with solidifying agents and trucked to a landfill. The rest goes to the madcap paint sorting room, where the fun begins.

The 14 sorting sinks drain into 300-gallon batch tanks. Shades of greens, browns, blues, reds and other colors join forces to create MetroPaint’s 15 standard colors, which range from Barn Red and Mountain Snow white to a dark blue Crater Lake, Forest green, Carnation pink and a dark brown Espresso.

Metro, the regional government, has been taking in leftover paint as part of its hazardous waste collection program since 1992. It’s a huge part of the waste stream — paint makes up 40 percent of the region’s hazardous household waste — which led to Metro beginning to remix and sell latex paint in 1999. Since then, Metro has sold more than 900,000 gallons, and its brand, MetroPaint, now accounts for an estimated 4 percent of sales in the Portland market.

Read More…

Black Rhino Test Carpet for Durability and Stain Resistance

Funny PR stunt that caught my eye…

Mohawk Industries (Mohawk) has teamed with The Birmingham Zoo to put its SmartStrand® with DuPont™ Sorona® (SmartStrand) carpet to the mightiest of durability and stain resistance tests. On August 14, Mohawk installed SmartStrand triexta carpet in the indoor enclosure of The Birmingham Zoo’s only Eastern Black Rhinoceros, leaving it there for two weeks.

“Ricko the Rhino” – not your typical 12-year-old! – is a bold opponent for the SmartStrand Challenge. Once the carpet has been installed, Ricko will live as usual in his enclosure, eating, sleeping, rolling his ball around and doing things that just come naturally to a 2,800-pound rhinoceros. All on Mohawk’s SmartStrand carpet!

Webcams will be strategically placed throughout the enclosure, including a night-vision webcam, to capture his life on the carpet. The public is invited to check in on Ricko throughout the SmartStrand Challenge via its website: www.smartstrandchallenge.com. Watch Ricko as he romps and tromps around in his enclosure, giving SmartStrand carpet a run for its money.

“We feel so confident about the Mohawk SmartStrand carpet with triexta fiber that we wanted the public to be able to check in on the ultimate test anytime, day or night,” said David Duncan, Mohawk’s Vice President of Marketing. “This will be the perfect demonstration of its durability…if SmartStrand can stand up to this wildlife, it can certainly stand up to your wild life.”

Visitors to The Birmingham Zoo and the SmartStrand Challenge website will have the opportunity to purchase t-shirts or plush rhinos created specifically for this event. Profits will be used to support both The Birmingham Zoo and the International Rhinoceros Foundation (IRF).

SmartStrand triexta carpet made with DuPont Sorona is a sustainable flooring option that is also luxuriously soft. Bio-PDO®, which is made from corn sugar and is a renewable resource, makes up 37 percent of DuPont Sorona. Additionally, SmartStrand with DuPont Sorona provides superior stain resistance due to the way it’s engineered. Stain protectors are built-in the carpet fiber and will never wear or wash off. It will even resist discoloration from bleach.

Room by Room Remodeling Fair

Room by Room is hosting a Remodeling Fair in thier huge showroom in the Pearl.

• Manufacturer’s Reps and Surface Specialist to share their tips and buying advice.
• Design assistance from professional designers
• “Ask the Builder” – Speak directly with an expert to answer your questions.
• Hundreds of samples of tile, carpet, lighting, stone, hardwood, bamboo & cork.
• Valuable lighting and accessories giveaways every 2 hours!
• Refreshments to keep your energy up at the Street of Dreams.

Saturday, August 22nd 10am – 6pm at the Room by Room showroom 735 NW 16th Ave at Johnson Street.

NW Neighbors Partner Program

The NW Neighbors Partner Program offers discounts to the customers of partnering local companies and encourages consumers to shop locally and support Portland area businesses. To be included in the program, participating companies offer products suitable for new home construction or remodeling and they must be headquartered in Oregon and operate in the local Portland area. Each participating business promotes the partner businesses by offering discount cards for their products and services to their customers.  The NW Neighbor’s Discount Cards offer $10 to $150 off purchases from the participating local companies.

The idea was developed by Parr Lumber in response to the many inquires they get each day for various products and services.

“Homeowners have become accustomed to shopping the big warehouse stores where they can find everything under one roof. Most local companies specialize in specific product categories—providing focused expertise. Rather than sending customers away (likely headed to the big-warehouse store), we’d prefer to offer them a local alternative with an incentive to support local companies. In return, the program offers us the opportunity to receive referrals from other program partners,” said Jennifer Swick, Director of Marketing for Parr Lumber. “Referrals are the most reliable form of marketing, especially when it comes from a trusted source like a long-time local company,” Swick added.