Frankly, over my dead body:
- Glass dining tables. We have one now, in our rented flat, and it’s a nightmare to keep clean.
- Leather tables. We have one of those too, a little coffee table, and it’s also a nightmare to keep clean.
- Slate place mats or work surfaces. Slate just sucks up grease and water and is, yes you guessed it, a nightmare to keep clean.
- Granite work surfaces. Always look dirty and seem to oddly soak up liquids in the cracks in the crystals. Look nice from a distance, but hideous in day-to-day use.
- Small windows. Lots of light is important, otherwise winter just gets miserable.
thanks for the tip! I shall have to start a booklist for such recommendations as I’m sure that I’m not the only person trying to figure out which of the myriad books out there are worth getting. I have been given The Green Self-Build Book already by a friend, but haven’t had a chance to get started on it yet!
Small windows are definitely bad, but small panes are good. Alexander et al have lots of good things to say about light in A Pattern Language. Good starting patterns are 108. Wings of Light, 128. Indoor Sunlight, 159. Light on Two Sides of Every Room, 239. Small Panes and… well, pretty much the whole book.
Rather splendidly, the book is Searchable on Amazon, so you can read those patterns before you buy.