What do you eat on monday mornings? Where do you want to eat it? How do you eat it?
How do you entertain? How can we create the space for you to help you entertain?
What kind of coffee do you drink? How do you make it? Do you drink it sitting down while reading the news or standing up watching the tv?
Don't want to take the time to get to know the client that well or bores you to death to examine the client with that level of detail? Pay me to do it, I'm an interior designer.
(Mansplaining is a portmanteau of the words man and explaining, defined as "to explain something to someone, typically a man to woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing.")
I can't understand why it's ridiculous to expect the concrete guys to cast recess slab boxes based on my in progress furniture layout. I know you're currently pouring, but how hard is it?
Also, full height (48 to 60") cubicle partition right against Windows (sill at 24") just because it works with work spaces. Also, this prime downtown corner space will be great for storing furniture for the meeting rooms (played in the center of the floor plate).
What is that, a nice glass atrium? Don't mind the back of my unfinished partition abutting into the glass. The contractor tells me they will use a clear silicone and it'll disappear.
To mansplain, technically the listener would need to know more about the topic than the 'splainer. Like, ODN would need to be an interior designer and us to be ignorant of all such things to mansplain to him.
Okay, I'll try this. Interior design is three things:
First, the large mid century architectural firms had much bigger manpower needs than they do today, primarily for the detailed, repetitive tasks that are necessary to correctly specify and manage large-scale building projects prior to the invention of the computer. Part of this work is making decisions about fixtures, finishes, fire resistant carpeting, textiles, the placement of switches, smoke detectors, doorknob schedules, and — well, you get the idea.
Because attitudes at that point in time were both sexist and anti-gay, these were two places where women and queer people could work in the architectural industry — “real" architects (white men) were happy to have someone else do this work. Since this is still the most racist, sexist, and homophobic profession in the industrialized world, interior design continues to be an area where non-white-non-males can find a supportive community in which to build a career. So when you're casually dismissing interior designers, you're engaged in mysogyny and queer bashing.
Second, keep in mind that the claims we currently make about architectural education and preparation for practice are obviously a lie. The majority of people who have architectural licenses have both a Bachelor and Masters degree, and it still takes an average of 14 years to complete a license subsequently. Becoming a certified interior designer (in the 16 jurisdictions that recognize that title) basically requires a year of work in a job. Teaching literature, math, sociology, or graphic design to interior design students qualifies as such a year of experience.
I'm not trying to claim that most interior designers don't know something about what they're doing, I'm trying to point out that you're complaining that people have a fraction of the knowledge that you do, some of whom barely got out of college, don't know what they're doing, ought to be pretty obvious. But if you think through the consequences of the first part, you ought to recognize that they don't have access to the social network that would allow them to understand the difference. My point is that you should be treating them with compassion and mentoring them, not abusing them with your disdain.
Third, a substantial part of our misperception of interior design at the moment is the result of business decisions made in two industries peripheral to architectural design and building construction. The first is the television industry, which figured out that there is that suburban Americans are particularly susceptible to televised advice about how they can either improve the investment value of their homes by engaging in cookie-cutter alterations according to the latest style, or resolve their relationship difficulties by feeling better about the tidiness of their spaces. I'm sure we all know the detrimental consequences of this very shallow thinking not merely on the work of building, but also on the places that we have to live as well. But we should recognize that HGTV doesn’t necessarily represent the hundred year old industry that preceeded it.
The other dimension that interior design has at the moment is that there are a fairly large number of rural state universities who have noticed that there is a demand among their undergraduates to major in "interior design.” Many of these institutions have a imperfectly run architecture school that is suffering from declining enrollments or poor alumni placement, or both, and see the addition of an Interior design program as a rescue for a failing department. Frequently, they have MBAs telling them where they can invest in a low-cost, high-yield, degree program.
A handful recent architecture school graduates with little or no actual experience can be hired as adjuncts to teach the program, frequently for less than $2500 per course, and can put together a shallow imitation of an architectural education to be peddled as an interior design curriculum. Nobody really cares that it's not that good, because it doesn't need to be accredited. These not particularly demanding programs of study are an extension of the institutional misogyny of what used to be called “Miss" degrees – courses of study aggressively promoted to young women who largely imagine themselves to be going to college to find a spouse. Again, blaming the victims of these programs just shows that the claims that our current system of professional protectionism only protects white male privilege.
I am a straight white man with an Interior Design degree and an M.arch. The above is so true, what is strange is outside of the US, Interior Design is not seen as for Gay - Women field.
"When you Sit down, Keep your Feet firm and Even, without putting one on the other or Crossing them." George Washington - rules for civility. Founding father says no man spreading on the train.
mespellrong - nice post but I think you overlooked something. I don't think they like being called queer. I'm no expert as I really like the women but.....I think that queer is like calling little people midgets. I think it makes them mad and could be interpreted as anti gay. Someone with more experience correct me if I'm wrong but isn't saying queer equal to saying midget? I don't know anyone who is gay (that I know of, probably some in the closet) but wouldn't it be better to just say gay or homosexual? Or, if I might suggest, Homo American.
Obviously I know that midget and queer are two different things. I just mean that they both have been used in demeaning ways and it seams like they are not favorable terms.
Wow, thank you all for your supportive feedback! I'm thrilled to learn that this is still a forum where reasoned argument and thoughtful ideas can receive a fair hearing. It has ben absent of late.
JimBob, my mansplaining is outdone by your white male ignorance. *We* prefer to be called queer, because *we* reclaimed that term during the AIDS crisis. “We are here, we are queer, get used to it.”
the working man's crankiness levels reach an all time high on Thursdays. Just about everything out of a working man's mouth on a Thursday is a mainsplanation.....but Friday the crankiness deflates quickly with each passing hour until clockin' out time.
I'm meeting with some interior designers later today; I've been reading this to gear up for it. I normally have good interior designers to work with but the majority of them still see everything as just a color or texture and don't get that some of these finishes are systems that need more than just what they see on the surface.
Tile is my 'go to' example. It's more than just a tile. What about the grout color, the size of the grout joint, does that size joint work with the tile you've selected, what about the setting method and mortar materials, do you need waterproofing, what about a crack-isolation membrane, have you coordinated with the structural engineer to get the floor substrate right for flatness and deflection requirements, did you know that the tile manufacturer recommends that you do not install these tiles in a 1/2 offset bond pattern because it will accentuate the warpage in the tile, etc.?
When I get back to my computer and off my phone I'll post a good mansplaination on a tile topic. Too much to type on the app.
as to the rest, i've always kind of figured my job is to make other people's dreams come true. whatever they want, i'll make it happen for them, and if that means a slip joint or epoxy grout or cement backer board or anything like that, then it's on me to make their vision come true.
curtkram, 'should be' doesn't mean they actually are. As for the rest of the stuff. I can generally tell them what they need, but it would be nice to occasionally get a set of drawings where things are detailed correctly. This includes knowing what's going on below or behind and around the tile. And that brings us to today's mansplain ... mortar is not grout.
When you're detailing a transition or something with tile, please understand that grout is not the same as mortar. Mortar is the stuff you set the tiles into and grout is the stuff you put between the joints in the tile. You might know mortar by a different name ... thinset. While thinset is what you'll commonly hear on the job site and in Home Depot, the proper term is actually dry-set mortar.
But why is it called dry set when the mortar is wet, don't they mix it with water? Dry set refers to the ability to lay highly absorptive tiles using mortar that doesn't require you to wet the tile before setting it, it doesn't mean that the mortar is actually dry without any water. Don't confuse dry-set mortar with dry-pack mortar (and yes, dry-pack mortar is still mixed with water). You see, dry-set mortar is a mixture of Portland cement, sand, and water-retaining additives. The water retaining additives prevent the water in the mortar from being absorbed into the tiles too quickly.
If water is absorbed too quickly into an absorptive tile it will dry out the mortar at the interface between the tile and the mortar. Portland cement requires water in order to hydrate properly. Hydration is the chemical process which makes Portland cement harden ... it's the same process that makes concrete hard because concrete contains Portland cement. If the Portland cement at the interface between the tile and the mortar doesn't hydrate properly the mortar won't develop an appropriate bond strength and your tiles will pop off the wall. The same thing happens with bricks and mortar. If bricks are too absorptive, the mason will wet that brick before laying it to prevent the water in the mortar from getting absorbed into the brick too quickly. You might see masons putting drops of water on a brick to check for absorbency prior to laying them.
This particular type of mortar is primarily called thinset because it is used in thin-bed applications and is applied with a notched trowel with notches not more than 3/8 inch (note that the mortar bed will be reduced from 3/8 to 3/16 when the tiles are pressed into it). So for your tiled showers and other applications that require the tile be sloped to a drain or something this may not work for you. If your substrate is flat, you'll need to use a thick-bed method of setting the tile, either a cured-bed or a wet-set method so that you can slope the substrate. Note that even with a cured-bed method, you'll use a dry-set mortar over the cured mortar bed. You might also notice that some tile manufacturers recommend using a medium-bed mortar for setting their large-format tiles or heavier tiles. While medium-bed was started as a term to refer to mortars that had been developed to be applied with up to a 3/4 inch notched trowel, the term that the Tile Council of North America (TCNA) is adopting since the 2015 issuance of the TCNA Handbook is Large and Heavy Tile (LHT) mortar. The extra depth allows for better coverage and can better deal with lippage when setting large or heavy tiles ... as the name suggests. The LHT mortar is still technically a dry-set mortar, but it isn't thinset.
But I digress, so dry-set mortar is the name for the Portland cement mixture that holds the tile in place and it is not the same as the grout that gets placed in the joints between tiles. Please don't detail a transition or something and point to the stuff between tile joints and call it thinset. And please don't point to the stuff holding the tile to the wall or floor and call it grout. And never call anything 'thinset grout' because such a thing does not exist.
My meeting yesterday with the interior designers didn't even touch on tile. Instead it focused on the fact that their rigid design is barely achievable under the best of circumstances, and perhaps they should be prepared to redesign when the low-bid contractor tells them existing building is inevitably not level, plumb, or square.
It's either that, or silicone.
Meanwhile, the firm wonders why we can barely break even on some of these projects.
I'll be back later to explain how fang shui works, and why that color is wrong for "your" season, as soon as I explain to someone how they need to just bear down, instead of water birthing their twins.
All right, I should have said quite a bit more in my last response, but dammit, I was tired, and we shouldn’t have to explain to a group of supposedly educated professionals the consequences of public conduct. I value this community for the insights that it provides on the state of our profession, but sometimes, that insight, well, sucks. You all ought to know better. Not just because you are educated and part of a professional community, but because you are people who want to live in the kind of peaceable society where actual architecture can actually fucking happen.
Look at it this way. There is an approximately 29.1 percent chance that, if you are a first-world citizen, you self-identify as a cis-male heterosexual. If you have been asleep for the last three decades, that means three things: First, that you are unaware of (or refuse to acknowledge to yourself) the percentage of your parentage that is not of European descent. Second, that you were assigned male at birth by the attending physician at your birth, and you are happy with that judgment, possibly because it makes your life (considerably) easier. And finally, that your emotional development is only sophisticated enough to tolerate the vision of personal growth that Walt Disney gave to you when you were still watching cartoons.
Architecture, as a profession, is so unavoidably, massively, and corruptly, white, male, and heterosexual that we look like we are still living under rocks. There is no other professional community that so poorly represents other forms of self-identification. Not by a long-shot. Sure, there is a single homonormitive (google it) at most gatherings, probably the convener, and likely because he is paid for it. That’s what JimBob wants to offer as a corrective here, without explanation.
If you can do basic math, that means that a heteronormative (again, google it) cis-male caucasian community represents a fraction of the talent pool in which every other profession participates, but architecture is supposed to be the profession of talent. If you can reverse a fraction, 70.9 percent of the people who could be contributing to what we supposedly ant to see in the world are excluded, systematically, from contributing. I’ll add that in any other creative industry the reverse is true. That is why, in my opinion, architecture sucks.
The majority of the people who have responded to this thread are members who began being part of this online community before I did, eleven years ago. Even JimBob appears to be a registered architect. In other threads, you have humiliated people who came here looking for basic information about architectural projects that I don’t think any of you would take a meeting about. That is the knowledge gap we ought to be working on. There should be opportunities for interior designers, decorators, home designers, community college students, and even contractors to find a chance to make a living making the world a place in which we can live, and so they can learn and earn a chance to be a part of this community. You, archinect, should be making this possible.
This appears to be an anonymous forum. One, big, fucking, closet. Oh, by the way, when you make jokes about being in the closet, you are laughing at a cultural institution that causes incredible amounts of pain, suffering, harm, torture, mutilation, sexual assault, murder, and the godess alone knows what else. That is fucking offensive. You should stop doing that. Right now.
That is not mansplaining. With the possible exception of everyday intern, I don’t think most of you understand this concept of mansplaining. So let me explain it to you: it is explaining something, preferably in excessive detail, to someone who certainly ought to understand it. (possibly, they didn’t understand the tile problem. They might also just be a human being, and have made a mistake. Perhaps you could accept that oversights happen, and they too are underpaid, tired, hungry, pregnant, working with children, trying to figure out how to adult, addicted to drugs, or something, actually, bad. You could just ask them simply to correct the specification problems that are part of the normal work of doing business, and not be a dick about it?)
That is the conversation we are having – we need to decide if this is a community where anyone with a college education (only 32 percent of us) should be treated with the dignity of being considered a participant, with an equal share of the consequences of participation, or whether we are all the trolls that you keep slut-shaming.
Here is what I propose as atonement for this thread – everyone who has posted here, including me, will respond to the next naïve homeowner who asks for advice here with a real answer. Tell them, in detail, and at length, what your agenda would be for a first meeting, general fee structure, and what the actual problems are in your jurisdiction. Point them to the AIA standard contract documents (if you use them), or share a war story (code, politics, price-point, availability of contractor resources) relevant to their question. Stop being a dick. Field two emails if you have to, with more than two paragraphs, and then offer to assist them in finding an architect or a member of the allied professions who can actually service what they can afford.
some stats for USA- "White Americans are the racial majority. African Americans are the largest racial minority, amounting to 13.2% of the population. Hispanic and Latino Americans amount to 17% of the population, making up the largest ethnic minority. The White, non-Hispanic or Latino population make up 62.6% of the nation's total, with the total White population (including White Hispanics and Latinos) being 77%"........approx. 49% male....this means approx. 31% of this profession to be reflective of the current USA make-up should be 31% white male, according to once source about 2% may be part of the LGBT community and possibly up to 6% depending on poll (this stst I would suggest in unreliable even in anonymous polling condotions). so rounding down the percentage to 30% straight white males make up the USA.
I just had a building envelop consultant try to mansplain condensation to me... The catch is, it's a she. I just had to kinda jump in a remind her that in fact, I am well aware of what causes condensation.
mansplain interior design to me
go.
where are you going to put your tupperware?
What do you eat on monday mornings? Where do you want to eat it? How do you eat it?
How do you entertain? How can we create the space for you to help you entertain?
What kind of coffee do you drink? How do you make it? Do you drink it sitting down while reading the news or standing up watching the tv?
Don't want to take the time to get to know the client that well or bores you to death to examine the client with that level of detail? Pay me to do it, I'm an interior designer.
(Mansplaining is a portmanteau of the words man and explaining, defined as "to explain something to someone, typically a man to woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing.")
Did you just mansplain mansplaining?
Also, full height (48 to 60") cubicle partition right against Windows (sill at 24") just because it works with work spaces. Also, this prime downtown corner space will be great for storing furniture for the meeting rooms (played in the center of the floor plate).
What is that, a nice glass atrium? Don't mind the back of my unfinished partition abutting into the glass. The contractor tells me they will use a clear silicone and it'll disappear.
All true stories... All from the same project.
do not paint the wall red. its feng shui, see the specs.
quote: "interior design is like a cocker spaniel puppy nuzzling and bumping its head all over the place"
"i got a dwell subscription and was able to lay off my entire interior design team. No one notices the difference"
"I choose my outfit today to match the sample boards I'm presenting to the client"
.
still no mansplaining, maybe it can't be done?
Honey, Architects design, Interior designers just go shopping.
To mansplain, technically the listener would need to know more about the topic than the 'splainer. Like, ODN would need to be an interior designer and us to be ignorant of all such things to mansplain to him.
Like, listen babe, let me tell you how vaginas work...? Like that?
16 posts into it I think we are getting there. tinnt sets it up and beta gave a good analogy.
Okay, I'll try this. Interior design is three things:
First, the large mid century architectural firms had much bigger manpower needs than they do today, primarily for the detailed, repetitive tasks that are necessary to correctly specify and manage large-scale building projects prior to the invention of the computer. Part of this work is making decisions about fixtures, finishes, fire resistant carpeting, textiles, the placement of switches, smoke detectors, doorknob schedules, and — well, you get the idea.
Because attitudes at that point in time were both sexist and anti-gay, these were two places where women and queer people could work in the architectural industry — “real" architects (white men) were happy to have someone else do this work. Since this is still the most racist, sexist, and homophobic profession in the industrialized world, interior design continues to be an area where non-white-non-males can find a supportive community in which to build a career. So when you're casually dismissing interior designers, you're engaged in mysogyny and queer bashing.
Second, keep in mind that the claims we currently make about architectural education and preparation for practice are obviously a lie. The majority of people who have architectural licenses have both a Bachelor and Masters degree, and it still takes an average of 14 years to complete a license subsequently. Becoming a certified interior designer (in the 16 jurisdictions that recognize that title) basically requires a year of work in a job. Teaching literature, math, sociology, or graphic design to interior design students qualifies as such a year of experience.
I'm not trying to claim that most interior designers don't know something about what they're doing, I'm trying to point out that you're complaining that people have a fraction of the knowledge that you do, some of whom barely got out of college, don't know what they're doing, ought to be pretty obvious. But if you think through the consequences of the first part, you ought to recognize that they don't have access to the social network that would allow them to understand the difference. My point is that you should be treating them with compassion and mentoring them, not abusing them with your disdain.
Third, a substantial part of our misperception of interior design at the moment is the result of business decisions made in two industries peripheral to architectural design and building construction. The first is the television industry, which figured out that there is that suburban Americans are particularly susceptible to televised advice about how they can either improve the investment value of their homes by engaging in cookie-cutter alterations according to the latest style, or resolve their relationship difficulties by feeling better about the tidiness of their spaces. I'm sure we all know the detrimental consequences of this very shallow thinking not merely on the work of building, but also on the places that we have to live as well. But we should recognize that HGTV doesn’t necessarily represent the hundred year old industry that preceeded it.
The other dimension that interior design has at the moment is that there are a fairly large number of rural state universities who have noticed that there is a demand among their undergraduates to major in "interior design.” Many of these institutions have a imperfectly run architecture school that is suffering from declining enrollments or poor alumni placement, or both, and see the addition of an Interior design program as a rescue for a failing department. Frequently, they have MBAs telling them where they can invest in a low-cost, high-yield, degree program.
A handful recent architecture school graduates with little or no actual experience can be hired as adjuncts to teach the program, frequently for less than $2500 per course, and can put together a shallow imitation of an architectural education to be peddled as an interior design curriculum. Nobody really cares that it's not that good, because it doesn't need to be accredited. These not particularly demanding programs of study are an extension of the institutional misogyny of what used to be called “Miss" degrees – courses of study aggressively promoted to young women who largely imagine themselves to be going to college to find a spouse. Again, blaming the victims of these programs just shows that the claims that our current system of professional protectionism only protects white male privilege.
mespellrong, thanks for great read.
Nice mansplaining misogyny, mespellwrong. FTW, bro!
Excellent post, mespellwrong, digging into the history of part of our field. Thank you for that.
I am a straight white man with an Interior Design degree and an M.arch. The above is so true, what is strange is outside of the US, Interior Design is not seen as for Gay - Women field.
I don't thing I've ever read that long of a post here and actually learned/enjoyed it!
I think I've only ever meet one male interior designer, super gay, also super good.
i'm manspreading right now
"When you Sit down, Keep your Feet firm and Even, without putting one on the other or Crossing them." George Washington - rules for civility. Founding father says no man spreading on the train.
mespellrong - nice post but I think you overlooked something. I don't think they like being called queer. I'm no expert as I really like the women but.....I think that queer is like calling little people midgets. I think it makes them mad and could be interpreted as anti gay. Someone with more experience correct me if I'm wrong but isn't saying queer equal to saying midget? I don't know anyone who is gay (that I know of, probably some in the closet) but wouldn't it be better to just say gay or homosexual? Or, if I might suggest, Homo American.
Obviously I know that midget and queer are two different things. I just mean that they both have been used in demeaning ways and it seams like they are not favorable terms.
Wow, thank you all for your supportive feedback! I'm thrilled to learn that this is still a forum where reasoned argument and thoughtful ideas can receive a fair hearing. It has ben absent of late.
JimBob, my mansplaining is outdone by your white male ignorance. *We* prefer to be called queer, because *we* reclaimed that term during the AIDS crisis. “We are here, we are queer, get used to it.”
mespellrong, it was challenge and you delivered. much appreciated....its Sexist Thursday - mainsplain something today! hehehe
the working man's crankiness levels reach an all time high on Thursdays. Just about everything out of a working man's mouth on a Thursday is a mainsplanation.....but Friday the crankiness deflates quickly with each passing hour until clockin' out time.
Tile is my 'go to' example. It's more than just a tile. What about the grout color, the size of the grout joint, does that size joint work with the tile you've selected, what about the setting method and mortar materials, do you need waterproofing, what about a crack-isolation membrane, have you coordinated with the structural engineer to get the floor substrate right for flatness and deflection requirements, did you know that the tile manufacturer recommends that you do not install these tiles in a 1/2 offset bond pattern because it will accentuate the warpage in the tile, etc.?
When I get back to my computer and off my phone I'll post a good mansplaination on a tile topic. Too much to type on the app.
They should be picking grout color as well.
as to the rest, i've always kind of figured my job is to make other people's dreams come true. whatever they want, i'll make it happen for them, and if that means a slip joint or epoxy grout or cement backer board or anything like that, then it's on me to make their vision come true.
curtkram, 'should be' doesn't mean they actually are. As for the rest of the stuff. I can generally tell them what they need, but it would be nice to occasionally get a set of drawings where things are detailed correctly. This includes knowing what's going on below or behind and around the tile. And that brings us to today's mansplain ... mortar is not grout.
When you're detailing a transition or something with tile, please understand that grout is not the same as mortar. Mortar is the stuff you set the tiles into and grout is the stuff you put between the joints in the tile. You might know mortar by a different name ... thinset. While thinset is what you'll commonly hear on the job site and in Home Depot, the proper term is actually dry-set mortar.
But why is it called dry set when the mortar is wet, don't they mix it with water? Dry set refers to the ability to lay highly absorptive tiles using mortar that doesn't require you to wet the tile before setting it, it doesn't mean that the mortar is actually dry without any water. Don't confuse dry-set mortar with dry-pack mortar (and yes, dry-pack mortar is still mixed with water). You see, dry-set mortar is a mixture of Portland cement, sand, and water-retaining additives. The water retaining additives prevent the water in the mortar from being absorbed into the tiles too quickly.
If water is absorbed too quickly into an absorptive tile it will dry out the mortar at the interface between the tile and the mortar. Portland cement requires water in order to hydrate properly. Hydration is the chemical process which makes Portland cement harden ... it's the same process that makes concrete hard because concrete contains Portland cement. If the Portland cement at the interface between the tile and the mortar doesn't hydrate properly the mortar won't develop an appropriate bond strength and your tiles will pop off the wall. The same thing happens with bricks and mortar. If bricks are too absorptive, the mason will wet that brick before laying it to prevent the water in the mortar from getting absorbed into the brick too quickly. You might see masons putting drops of water on a brick to check for absorbency prior to laying them.
This particular type of mortar is primarily called thinset because it is used in thin-bed applications and is applied with a notched trowel with notches not more than 3/8 inch (note that the mortar bed will be reduced from 3/8 to 3/16 when the tiles are pressed into it). So for your tiled showers and other applications that require the tile be sloped to a drain or something this may not work for you. If your substrate is flat, you'll need to use a thick-bed method of setting the tile, either a cured-bed or a wet-set method so that you can slope the substrate. Note that even with a cured-bed method, you'll use a dry-set mortar over the cured mortar bed. You might also notice that some tile manufacturers recommend using a medium-bed mortar for setting their large-format tiles or heavier tiles. While medium-bed was started as a term to refer to mortars that had been developed to be applied with up to a 3/4 inch notched trowel, the term that the Tile Council of North America (TCNA) is adopting since the 2015 issuance of the TCNA Handbook is Large and Heavy Tile (LHT) mortar. The extra depth allows for better coverage and can better deal with lippage when setting large or heavy tiles ... as the name suggests. The LHT mortar is still technically a dry-set mortar, but it isn't thinset.
But I digress, so dry-set mortar is the name for the Portland cement mixture that holds the tile in place and it is not the same as the grout that gets placed in the joints between tiles. Please don't detail a transition or something and point to the stuff between tile joints and call it thinset. And please don't point to the stuff holding the tile to the wall or floor and call it grout. And never call anything 'thinset grout' because such a thing does not exist.
- Closets are for clothes, not for people not sure if that is on the ARE or not, it's been too long.
- Lippage, when the inconsistent height of tile becomes too obvious
do you count a water closet as a closet?
it's spelled t-o-n. g'damn maple leafs...
closets.
My meeting yesterday with the interior designers didn't even touch on tile. Instead it focused on the fact that their rigid design is barely achievable under the best of circumstances, and perhaps they should be prepared to redesign when the low-bid contractor tells them existing building is inevitably not level, plumb, or square.
It's either that, or silicone.
Meanwhile, the firm wonders why we can barely break even on some of these projects.
I'll be back later to explain how fang shui works, and why that color is wrong for "your" season, as soon as I explain to someone how they need to just bear down, instead of water birthing their twins.
who's water-boarding twins?
c sections are for pu....
Interior design is the profession with the most sex appeal for women. Therefore, it's all about sex, no surprise.
All right, I should have said quite a bit more in my last response, but dammit, I was tired, and we shouldn’t have to explain to a group of supposedly educated professionals the consequences of public conduct. I value this community for the insights that it provides on the state of our profession, but sometimes, that insight, well, sucks. You all ought to know better. Not just because you are educated and part of a professional community, but because you are people who want to live in the kind of peaceable society where actual architecture can actually fucking happen.
Look at it this way. There is an approximately 29.1 percent chance that, if you are a first-world citizen, you self-identify as a cis-male heterosexual. If you have been asleep for the last three decades, that means three things: First, that you are unaware of (or refuse to acknowledge to yourself) the percentage of your parentage that is not of European descent. Second, that you were assigned male at birth by the attending physician at your birth, and you are happy with that judgment, possibly because it makes your life (considerably) easier. And finally, that your emotional development is only sophisticated enough to tolerate the vision of personal growth that Walt Disney gave to you when you were still watching cartoons.
Architecture, as a profession, is so unavoidably, massively, and corruptly, white, male, and heterosexual that we look like we are still living under rocks. There is no other professional community that so poorly represents other forms of self-identification. Not by a long-shot. Sure, there is a single homonormitive (google it) at most gatherings, probably the convener, and likely because he is paid for it. That’s what JimBob wants to offer as a corrective here, without explanation.
If you can do basic math, that means that a heteronormative (again, google it) cis-male caucasian community represents a fraction of the talent pool in which every other profession participates, but architecture is supposed to be the profession of talent. If you can reverse a fraction, 70.9 percent of the people who could be contributing to what we supposedly ant to see in the world are excluded, systematically, from contributing. I’ll add that in any other creative industry the reverse is true. That is why, in my opinion, architecture sucks.
The majority of the people who have responded to this thread are members who began being part of this online community before I did, eleven years ago. Even JimBob appears to be a registered architect. In other threads, you have humiliated people who came here looking for basic information about architectural projects that I don’t think any of you would take a meeting about. That is the knowledge gap we ought to be working on. There should be opportunities for interior designers, decorators, home designers, community college students, and even contractors to find a chance to make a living making the world a place in which we can live, and so they can learn and earn a chance to be a part of this community. You, archinect, should be making this possible.
This appears to be an anonymous forum. One, big, fucking, closet. Oh, by the way, when you make jokes about being in the closet, you are laughing at a cultural institution that causes incredible amounts of pain, suffering, harm, torture, mutilation, sexual assault, murder, and the godess alone knows what else. That is fucking offensive. You should stop doing that. Right now.
That is not mansplaining. With the possible exception of everyday intern, I don’t think most of you understand this concept of mansplaining. So let me explain it to you: it is explaining something, preferably in excessive detail, to someone who certainly ought to understand it. (possibly, they didn’t understand the tile problem. They might also just be a human being, and have made a mistake. Perhaps you could accept that oversights happen, and they too are underpaid, tired, hungry, pregnant, working with children, trying to figure out how to adult, addicted to drugs, or something, actually, bad. You could just ask them simply to correct the specification problems that are part of the normal work of doing business, and not be a dick about it?)
That is the conversation we are having – we need to decide if this is a community where anyone with a college education (only 32 percent of us) should be treated with the dignity of being considered a participant, with an equal share of the consequences of participation, or whether we are all the trolls that you keep slut-shaming.
Here is what I propose as atonement for this thread – everyone who has posted here, including me, will respond to the next naïve homeowner who asks for advice here with a real answer. Tell them, in detail, and at length, what your agenda would be for a first meeting, general fee structure, and what the actual problems are in your jurisdiction. Point them to the AIA standard contract documents (if you use them), or share a war story (code, politics, price-point, availability of contractor resources) relevant to their question. Stop being a dick. Field two emails if you have to, with more than two paragraphs, and then offer to assist them in finding an architect or a member of the allied professions who can actually service what they can afford.
some stats for USA- "White Americans are the racial majority. African Americans are the largest racial minority, amounting to 13.2% of the population. Hispanic and Latino Americans amount to 17% of the population, making up the largest ethnic minority. The White, non-Hispanic or Latino population make up 62.6% of the nation's total, with the total White population (including White Hispanics and Latinos) being 77%"........approx. 49% male....this means approx. 31% of this profession to be reflective of the current USA make-up should be 31% white male, according to once source about 2% may be part of the LGBT community and possibly up to 6% depending on poll (this stst I would suggest in unreliable even in anonymous polling condotions). so rounding down the percentage to 30% straight white males make up the USA.
disparities - 15% female licensed architects vs 51% female population.......1% black licensed architects vs 13% black population. source. http://www.architectmagazine.com/practice/best-practices/making-progress-with-diversity-in-architecture_o
so basically we should not be dick's to non-architects?
I accept that challenge.
/\ winner.
I just had a building envelop consultant try to mansplain condensation to me... The catch is, it's a she. I just had to kinda jump in a remind her that in fact, I am well aware of what causes condensation.
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