Interesting site. Although I am a lover of old houses, I am a greater lover of really good architecture and design no matter the period. Still, I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around that "transformed" Victorian in Australia though! What transformation? Hasn't the original house been completely demoed? Despite the truly fascinating, brilliant and beautiful house that has evolved (which might also be highly impractical, btw), I can't help but wonder what's happened to the original structure? Why even bother calling it a "transformation" if what you've got is a demo and rebuild? Don't mind me. I love historic houses and I love modern ones. But what I really hate is modern remuddling of great old houses. Although there's no evidence that the original Vic was a "great" one, nor am I clear as to whether Aussie and North American "Vics" are conceptually similar in design, I'm feeling a bit ruffled by competing tastes and values on this one.:-) That said, I think the kitchen in this house is rather amazing. According to the architects: "The kitchen, whilst prominent, is strategically modest. The clients, both caterers, were adamant that work need not be brought home. Conversely, having resigned to the fact kitchens get messy, the walk in pantry is relatively large in desire of keeping any mess out of sight. Beyond providing plenty of workspace, a lengthy island bench, breaching both original and new spaces, offers a linking element." You can check out it out, either on the Freshome site that Emily has provided (cursor down about 6 to "Surprising and Dynamic Transformation of a Victorian Residence") or go directly to the architect's own website for which I've posted a link below. Here is a link that might be useful: Victorian Turned Modern Australian House and Kitchen

In my local showroom, which is independent, they are pretty evenly split between paneled, white and stainless for fridges, with no black to speak of. But they deal mostly with the highest end and apartment grade with very little in between. The town where my parents live still shows predominantly white fridges in the local showroom. The suburban showrooms I have been in show essentially nothing but stainless or built in. There has to be a fair amount of regional variation. If you sampled the cars on the streets around me you would think that the car market was dominated by Honda and lower priced BMWs with a very weak showing of the Big Three.

Decolist Vinyl Wallcovering Warning! I cashed in my entire 401K to invest in Decolistic Vinyl to make our house a home. Sure, at first it looked yummy with all those pictures of leafless trees, wacky sunflowers, giraffes wearing sunglasses and antique trains on every wall, but thinking ahead to resale we decided to rip them down on the advice of our Realtor and every single person we spoke to. Easy? Ha! We tried wallpaper stripper, fabric softener, soy based paint stripper, pool cleaner. Nada. We tried sanding with a cheese grater. Steaming with a floor mop. A chisel. Lenten prayer. A flamethrower. Well, the flamethrower finally worked. Now we will have to repaint. Any color suggestions?

Despite the title of this thread, I think it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell one decade from another, in terms of design. In the 20th Century, it was fairly easy to identify styles from one decade to another, up through the 1980s, but ever since the 1990s, things have become a bit more blurred, for one reason or another. Younger people generally dictate design trends because the care about them more, but lately they have not been dictating much that is uniquely recognizable. Minimalism is somewhat popular now, but it was also popular in the 1950s when I think it reached its pinnacle in design terms, although it started in the 1920s or 1930s. I am reminded also of the Italian Futurists of the 1910s - we do not have movements like that any more. For me, decades have lost identities - they don't even have names any more since the 1990s. What do you call the first decade of the 21st Century, and what do you call the second decade? Do they even deserve names? How can things be dated if the dates don't have an identity, much less a name? Around 1900 people called their period the "turn of the century", but does anyone say "turn of the millenium" about the period around 2000? It is also the turn of a century, making the previous term ambiguous, but I don't hear it being called anything. I hear about generational names, but those do not apply to design styles, as generations last longer than design styles.