There are three of us women living at home with my father who in the past months has grown physically weak. Recently, a light bulb burned out in the house and since the ceiling is high, none of us girls could reach it even with the help of a stepladder — well, the truth is, none of us tried to change it. I’m thinking of replacing the light source with a lamp instead of overhead lighting as this would be easier to replace in the future and it makes the room look nicer. Should I get a table lamp or floor lamp? Will it be enough to light up an entire room? What kind of bulb should it have – ordinary incandescent or halogen, and what consumes more power?
Chinggay
Let me start by paying you a compliment: You are probably a well educated, financially self-sufficient woman who has a good job and good taste when it comes to homes. But, honey, you are giving women a bad name. What do you mean you can’t change a light bulb? When I was single and living alone, I could change the spark plugs in my car, for God’s sake! Of course, I found out later that while it impressed my girl friends still living with their parents, my then boyfriend R. (also still living with his parents) found it intimidating that I could do it and he couldn’t. But that’s beside the point.
It’s only a matter of time before all the light bulbs in your house burn out. What are you going to do then? Start reading by candlelight? Bring the entire house back to the stone age and flick stones to light a bonfire? The neighbors will be gossiping that you’ve gone broke and can’t pay for the electricity.
There are two solutions to your problem: Buy a higher stepladder or hire a handyman to change the light bulb – and remove the cobwebs from the ceiling while he’s up there. These solutions won’t work only for two reasons: That all the women in the house have a fear of heights (like nine-foot heights), and that you live in such an unsafe neighborhood that you can’t trust any guy to come inside your house to do it.
Let’s assume that it’s a yes to both premises. Now we’re stuck with the lamp solution, which isn’t that bad really. Designers I’ve interviewed have always said that it’s better to have more than one light source in a room because it makes the room look warmer and prettier. I’ve seen many homes abroad that have no overhead lighting and are lit by several lamps. In fact, their light switches are connected to the lamps.
If your main concern is simply illumination and not ambience, I suggest you get a floor lamp. The rule of thumb is "uplights" (the shade is upturned, like a bowl) illuminate better because they cast light upward, toward the ceiling and it bounces off to light a bigger space. Uplights mostly come in frosted glass and floor lamps are put in a corner of the room. Table lamps, on the other hand, are usually for decorative purposes and shed localized lighting like for reading. Speaking of decoration, there are those beautiful sculptural floor lamps that have paper shade and cast soft light, but I suspect you want a more practical one.
I suggest you get two lamps – one floor lamp for general lighting and a table lamp for task lighting. If you just want one, get a lamp with heads that can swivel around like a pole-mounted floor lamp so it can be versatile and suit your different needs. The famous British designer Terence Conran reminds us in his book The Essential House Book that "rounded lamps are best suited to rounded shades, oval lamps to oval shades, square or rectangular lamps to paneled shades."
So which consumes more electricity? Halogen or incandescent? I read somewhere that it’s halogen but they do last longer than incandescent. (GE has a Q&A about halogen lights at www.gelighting.com/na/faq/faq_halogen.html.)
We’re in the process of building a house and have chosen granite for the flooring but can’t decide on the color. I asked our contractor which granite color is the hardest and he says they’re more or less the same. Is this true?
Cheryl
No, it’s not. According to Frederick M. Hueston in his book Stone Restoration and Maintenance, a troubleshooting manual for stones, all things being equal (like the type of granite and grade) black granites are "generally softer than others" – such as red granite or salt and pepper granite.
My kitchen countertop is black granite. The color is fading and the top has developed glass rings and stains. What can I do about it? And how do I clean granite?
Manuel
Still from Stone Restoration and Maintenance, Hueston says this is a common problem with black granite fabricated in India. "The tops are doctored by using wax, linseed oil, etc. As the counter is cleaned, the waxes and oil are being removed. The only solution is to polish the top. To verify that you are in fact dealing with a doctored top, simply take a white rag and a little acetone and wipe the counter top. If it has been waxed you should get a black residue on the rag. To repolish the granite top, you will need a special polishing powder designed for granite or you may need a lead and felt wheel."
The Internet page www.eshcoinc.com recommends cleaning granite with ordinary window cleaner. Another site, www.customstonesurfaces.com, recommends soap and warm water or ordinary household cleaners like glass cleaners. However, an expert I talked with says one should use only products made specifically for granite. One more thing, while acids in stone cleaners do not generally damage the granite surface, hydrofluoric acid (HF) will etch polished granite (HF is used in stone cleaners for sandstone exteriors but should not be used on polished stones). Try True Value, Handyman, Federal Hardware or Liberty Marble & Granite for such products and read the labels carefully.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: All natural stones are porous in different degrees. The trick is to wipe off the stain quickly before it is absorbed in the stone. There is really no one opinion on stones, especially granite. Depending on who you talk to (for instance, one who deals solely in granite as opposed to one that sells all sorts of stones), granite is either one of the hardest stones or it’s not.
Now, is anybody considering high-grade tiles which are non-porous?
Help! How do you remove muddy paw prints left by a dog? Since the rainy season began, our dog has been leaving his prints all over the light-colored sheets when he jumps up on the bed. I use a washing machine and sometimes not all the stains come off.
Mila
Ah, the annoyances that come with living with a dog! How cute and cuddly they are when they’re dry and clean, but how annoying they can be when they’re wet and muddy. It’s almost like being trapped on a plane with a baby with diarrhea, isn’t it?
Our dogs Freeway and Alley have the same habit. As soon as we get into the house, they race to the bed without a conscience. What we do is before we let them in, we wipe their paws with a damp towel to get the dirt off followed by a dry towel. Of course, we’re often too lazy to do that so we end up with stained bed sheets.
Before tossing the sheets into the machine, apply stain remover (available in grocery stores) on the stained part and work it into the sheet with your hands or a soft-bristle brush. Let it stay for a few minutes and then put it in the machine. If it doesn’t come off, soak it overnight with detergent.
Mr. Cruz rages about the Restore Four product which we mentioned – and made fun of for its infomercial. He texted that it "does not clean tiles the way you see on TV. I know this because I bought one before. Though it has a money-back guarantee, it takes a long time before they give it back and by then you would have forgotten about it."
People have also been texting about the solutions on ants, which we published several months ago, after a reader reacted to it recently.
I really don’t like repeating the column, but the gist of the homemade solution is this: Mix one part boric acid and nine parts sticky syrup such as honey or Karo, heat it and put it in a shallow jar and put a drop on the lid; if it’s a plastic container punch holes at the bottom for the ants to enter. They will take the mixture back to their nest and poison the rest of the colony. Another way is to mix boric acid with water and then paint it on the surface where the ants converge. Or use boric acid dust and sprinkle it in cracks on your floors or walls. Since boric acid is toxic, keep it away from children and pets.
Some websites also suggest using natural ingredients like orange-oil based products to get rid of ants like Orange Guard (orangeguard.com) and Orange Plus cleaner. Augarden.com suggests a spot of lavender oil. Another suggestion is to sprinkle cayenne pepper. The important thing is to find the entry point of the ants and attack it. For ants that walk on poles or wires to get inside your house, coat these with petroleum jelly.