onephatcow's Profile

Riiiight...because it's so much easier to find that album you've been looking for since it's on a tiny piece of plastic...in your media/living room...under godknowswhat surface it happens to be stuck to.

I have the 'watermelon' one. Definitely changes the focal point of a room, and it's 'neutral' enough that you can build a lot of looks around it.

It doesn't look vintage to me. There's been a lot of similar designs coming out of China for the past few years. Many variations of this sputnik theme - some with multi coloured crystals.

It's vintage Chromcraft. I've yet to have mine restored though.

It's a brilliant site - especially for their 'plan your room' stuff - you can upload your pictures of any space you want to furnish, and then within a day or 2, actually decorate the space with real retail items, not just placeholder-type items. You can also do the same with customized room dimensions, or just play with the templates they provide you with. Hours of endless fun! Only bad part is that their tie-ups are with British retailers, so it's not as easy to source the same items for use elsewhere. Nevertheless, very useful features on their site, not to mention good galleries and articles as well. Highly recommended.

Love the base/legs, but if you've seen any of the Trollsta items in person, they're much less attractive. Cheap particleboard (even by their standards) ruins what could have been some really interesting items. Oh, and the usual IKEA sag would most likely happen with these units too. That being said, the most succesful of the 3 items I've seen so far in this range (side table, sideboard, and a taller tv cabinet) would be the tv cabinet. And even then I'd probably go to great lengths to hack it in some way to hide the truly horrendous particleboard.

I would LOVE for a Platner collection of furniture to mysteriously appear in my driveway...

I'd be more concerned the kitty is trying to use that as a litterbox...LOL

Bar the time CFLs take to get to full brightness (under 20secs for newly installed bulbs, to around 40-50secs for bulbs which have been in use for at least a few years and are nearing the end of their lifecycle), I really don't see the massive differences people are reporting. I generally use 'warm white' all around the house anyway, as I hate bright white.

Unless the CFLs you guys are getting in the US (or elsewhere for that matter) are vastly different to the Osram/Philips/IKEA/generic ones being sold over here, I can't believe the statements about flicker being that big of an issue. Are you all using CFLs as bare bulb lighting or what? While it's true that the first gen CFLs were quite terrible, I'm beginning to suspect this is just a case of not wanting to let go of pre-conceived notions of the drawbacks of CFLs. As for light levels, they do sell 25W ones right? Yeah those ones that are roughly the equivalent of a 100w incandescent bulb. If these aren't bright enough, folks must be living with 20ft high ceilings or like skin-searing spotlight-level lighting in close proximity? CFLs over here (Malaysia) come in 3 colour temperatures - Cool Daylight, Daylight, and Warm White. Again, kind of hard to imagine that with such choices, people can't find one that works?

Not trying to preach or anything, as I'm hardly the eco-warrior type, but can't people even consider using them around the home where it's more ambient lighting than task lighting? Even if just a few more lamps per home made the switch, that wouldn't be a bad thing right?

nothing like a little floor fashion to bring out the self-righteous. I'll make sure I craft protest placards made out of organic tofu skins.