saradc's Profile

As someone with a shellfish allergy I appreciated adding oysters, shrimp and crab to this list for the health reasons at least, even if they weren't listed in the article. It is extremely frustrating going to a wedding with shrimp and crab based appetizers and entrees. And many times the waiter staff is not involved in food prep and does not even know what is in an h'orderve let alone how to handle it safely so as not to harm someone. I now have my husband taste anything I am offered first after several waiters misidentified the food they serve.

Regard bmorebent's question on how house tours are submitted, I know when I was a finalist for the dc blogger position the first time around, it was very much a question of who in my personal network will do this? Even worse it was who in my person network is available in the 7 days I have been given for this assignment and is willing to clean thier house in time.

I think I read in a couple of the house tours that the owners submitted the place up for coverage. Other than that its probably who is willing to put thier place up for review.

It seems a little catch 22 because some of the more "designed" spaces get criticised for being too big, expensive and not representative of AT's mission, but people who live in small spaces may not be in the position to throw out their perfectly acceptable furniture and buy new furniture that fits the scale of the room better, especially for a rental that is not intended to be permanent.

I lived in a great group house in Arlington for a few years. It actually worked out really well, we had an upstairs and downstairs kitchen, 3 bathrooms for 5 rooms. All was well until a new guy moved into the room that shared a bathroom with me who didn't believe in closing the door when using the bathroom or showering.

I think group houses much past your mid-20s can be a bad idea, but if your whole house is older and past the frat house stage it can be alright.

I love this. I think my number one design rule is if you are going to have a home office, place your desk in front of a window. It helps so much with inspiration to be able to see what is happening in the world around you. This is a really fun and interesting play on that.

It seems like there are two claims that you are upset about here.

The first being the "one of a kind" claim. As previous posters have commented, the hand carving does technically make each panel "one of a kind." From the Viva Terra website: "Each piece is truly unique; variations in wood color and carving will occur." I could see that you understood that to mean that the design of panels themselves were unique, not just the minute variations in the hand carving. This is a misunderstanding and not something I would argue with the sellers. These types of panels are all one of a kind. That is the nature of hand carvings. The design itself really is readily available in stores across the country. Coincidentally, I just saw similar panels in a store in Baltimore called Eclectic Elements last week.

The more complicated issue is the question of whether or not the piece is “antique.” I would talk to the sellers and ask them where they procured the piece. See if they had any reason to make that particular claim. Just because the piece is similar to the Viva Terra panel, does not mean that it couldn’t also be an older, “antique” panel. If the sellers did get the piece from a distributor then they had no basis for the antique claim and you should be able to discuss returning the piece or dropping the price on that basis alone.

This is a great post! I can't wait to check this place out. Good job Caroline.

I'm sure that Baltimore would be covered on the DC blog. Thier are a ton of shops in Fell's Point alone would be good to cover.

My father is a political pin collector and he stores his collection in an antique oak blueprint cabinet. The flat drawers are perfect for displaying the pins and they don't clutter up the walls of his office. This solution would probably be better for major collectors who have enough of the things to fill a whole cabinet though.