The fad trap in home improvement

[Puget Sounder]

"You wash your hands in a vessel sink, pull a bottle of New Zealand sauvignon blanc from a brushed-steel refrigerator and place it on a gleaming granite countertop.

As you stand on an ecologically correct bamboo floor, you fill your wineglass (stemless, of course) and sit back to savor your of-the-moment style."

"Enjoy it now, because it may not last. In 2016, your home may well scream "2006.""...

..."Take granite countertops. We might be hitting a saturation point that makes them seem ho-hum.

"My wife and I just built a home, and we got so tired of seeing granite countertops," says Jack Beduhn, academic director of interior design at the Art Institute of California in San Diego. In their new Southern California home, they chose a countertop of Avonite, another solid-surface product that doesn't look like all the rest.

"It doesn't look like granite," he says. "It's just got a texture and a translucency to it that's very interesting."

Turpin says you can count on the color wheel to keep spinning.

"Of all the things that are trendy, the color palette is the most vulnerable," he says. But the move away from beige on beige is a plus, he says, even if it makes it hard to keep up.

"We're in a culture right now that appreciates color, and that's good," Turpin says.

In the what's-old-is-new department, the latest color combo is robin's-egg blue with white and dark brown. Sounds new, but it was also big in the '70s.

And hold on to your guacamole: Avocado, olive and other muted greens are back on the scene.

"Harvest gold and olive are coming back," Eberle says. "There are only so many colors under the rainbow."

If being at the pinnacle of hip domestic design is essential to your happiness, you're doomed.

"Some people might have more of a desire to be absolutely fashionable at the moment, and those people are always going to be pulling their hair out," Turpin says.

Long-term style contentment requires learning to live above the fray of fashion.

"It is about finding things that make your living environment comfortable and meaningful to you," Turpin says. "You pick the things you want.""

I predict that granite countertops and stainless steel appliances are going to be the Formica and avocado-colored appliances of the 1970s. They are overly identified with a certain time period.

Thoughts?

[T, V & Mr. B.]

I agree 100%. I am already so sick of seeing granite countertops and give me a 1950 O'Keefe and Merritt stove over stainless steel any day. Where is the soul in these new kitchens? In my housei n San Diego, I had restored the afore metioned stove and when I sold my house that was a Big, Big issue. The buyers wanted it to stay, I wanted to take it with me. I had worked quite hard at restoring this thing. It was beautiful. I had offered to buy a brand new stove and put it in there. The buying wife pleaded with me to leave it as she said there was no way she could ever get her husband to do the same thing if they bought one. I eventually aquiessed. It was an actual selling point to the house.

Hey, here is a question...If you scruff up the granite counter top, can you then use that as a backer-board sub-strate for tile?

[Eleua]