Tag: value

Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Add A Second Bathroom To Your Home

Of all the fun things you probably want to add to your home (hot tub, bar, air hockey table) a second wash room is probably fairly low on the list. But they’re easy to add using cloakroom suites and could end up making your life better:

1. Free Up Your Main Bathroom. How many of us, especially in the morning when the adults are getting ready for work and the kids for school, wish we had more than one bathroom? You’re stood outside, waiting patiently to use the toilet or basin, and someone sprints in while you’re dancing around trying to hold in your wee. And you’re back to waiting another 20 minutes as they do their make up or take an overlong shower.

2. Add Value To Your House. While your neighbours spend their time and money creating feng shui gardens and hiring expensive interior designers in an effort to make their home more fashionable and try to sell it, the age-old technique of actually adding something practical will see your home become more attractive to potential buyers.

3. For Workmen. If you have someone working in your garden or doing some decorating, they’re probably going to be coated in a layer of grime and gunk and the last thing you want is them walking through your house and making it all dirty. If you have a washroom downstairs that they can use you will be able to keep your upstairs clean.

4. For Visitors. Similarly, if you have a guest around then it is much easier to direct them to a downstairs washroom should they need to use the loo and it means not wondering what they are up to when they wander round your private space upstairs. You probably don’t invite thieves into your home, but it will help you remove temptation from anyone.

5. To Make Cleaning Easier. If you’re cleaning downstairs, then having an additional sink to get water from and toilet to dispose of dirty water in would make life easier. Although jogging back and forth up the stairs will keep you fitter.

6. To Keep The Home Smelling Fresh. Having a toilet that someone can use rather than stinking out the room that has your shower in will make the home smell nicer and make bathing more pleasurable. Particularly if anyone in the house is keen on their spicy food.

7. To Prevent Mold. This is an odd one, but if you use the same bathroom a lot you will find that it tends to stay damper and you may end up with something resembling a furry mushroom patch growing in a corner. However, if you split the use across two (or more) bathrooms then they won’t be as damp and you won’t have mold growing in them. This works best if you have the space to consider a shower, or even one of the many shower bath suites available.

February 10, 2012
7 Reasons Pablo Picasso’s La Lecture Is Not Worth £25M

Last night, Pablo Picasso’s alleged masterpiece, La Lecture, sold at Sotherby’s for just over £25M. Twenty. Five. Million. Pounds. Now, I know art is subjective, but how?! There is so much wrong with it. So much. Let’s start with seven:

1. Lines. Seriously, if I had paid £25M for a painting I would at least expect the artist to be able to draw a straight line. I assume – which given the state of this picture is probably a dangerous thing to do – that the thing behind this girl is a chair. Well what the bloody hell is going on with the top of it? If you struggle to line things up get a ruler. And rulers did exist in 1932. I’ve checked.

2. Perspective. This picture would make much more sense if we could only see one half of the girl’s face. Instead of that we have something that clearly inspired the formation of gypsies.

3. Nose. Good gracious it’s a big one. Too big I would wager. The bridge of one’s nose usually ends in line with the eyes, this poor girl’s nose ends somewhere at the top of her forehead. Which raises two questions. One, is this an accurate portrayal of the young girl? Two, if it is why on earth wouldn’t Picasso have chosen someone better looking? You may think I am shallow for saying that, but paintings do not have personality. They simply don’t. And anyone who says, “I just adore the personality of this piece,” is a prick.

4. Neck. The last time I saw a neck like this, Gladstone Small was playing for England. I am beginning to wonder if Picasso really did like this girl? The big freak.

5. Breast. That’s right, just the one. At least I assume it’s supposed to be a breast. It might well be a ring doughnut. Or a bagel. Or perhaps the fire alarm fell off the wall. I know art is supposed to leave something to the imagination, but this takes the biscuit. Ooh, perhaps it’s a Jammie Dodger.

6. Time + Materials. I think that is a fair way to establish how much a painting is worth. So let’s have a look at La Lecture. These are only rough calculations, but I would guess the following: Time spent painting = eight minutes. Cost of crayons = £3.49. A brilliant artist could probably get away with charging £2,500/hour. Judging by the above, I would say Picasso could get away with charging £2.50/hour. So I reckon La Lecture is probably worth about £3.82. That’s about £25M less than it sold for. It’s a difficult one to explain to the wife.

7. Morals. I question the morality of the buyer here. This painting depicts the image of Marie-Therese Walter, Picasso’s 17 year old extramarital lover. That’s not right. In fact it’s wrong. If Picasso wanted to get his end away with a teenage girl he could at least have had the decency to divorce his wife first. There is no excuse for sleeping behind people’s backs. And, judging by the expression on Walter’s face that is exactly what had happened about five minutes before Picasso whipped out the crayons. By allowing the sale of this painting for £25M what are we saying? It’s okay to sleep around so long as you produce a bunch of distorted lines afterwards? Sad times.

February 9, 2011
7 Reasons foursquare And I Are Over

If you have been a reader of 7 Reasons for a while now, you may remember that at the beginning of August, I (that’s me, Jon) decided to sign up to the new social media kid on the block that is foursquare. It didn’t start too well and as you may recall I predicted foursquare and I were going to have a tricky relationship. Now, I’m sure you’ve been wondering how on earth we are getting on. Well, seven weeks on, we catch up with myself and foursquare to find out.

1. Neglect. To be fair, there has been little contact or indeed effort from either party. I haven’t logged into my foursquare account once since I joined and foursquare hasn’t once bothered emailing me to ask why I have not logged into my account since I joined. Evidently we both have better things to do with our time. I certainly do. Playing with my hair etc.

2. Affair. We both had one. In fact, for the past seven weeks I have been having regular threesomes with twitter and facebook. They seem to like it and I feel strangely clean about the whole thing, so it’s win win. You may have a different point of view, but before you judge me and accuse me of being dirty, may I remind you that foursquare has three million users plugged into her. Potentially all at the same time.

3. Financial Resentment. It’s not that fact that I mind foursquare being worth $80 million – which on latest calculations is just quite a way over $79 million more than I am – it’s the fact that they flaunt it. ‘Woohoo!’ they shout. ‘Come and invest in me!’ There is just no need for it. I don’t go running up and down the street shouting, ‘Woohoo! Come and pay off my student loan!’ do I? No, I don’t. I’d get some very funny looks from some very funny looking cats.

4. Bullying. This one is on me. I put the foursquare app into my iPhone social media folder – yes, I have one of those because I am a hipster – and then I teased it. By this I don’t mean I played hide and seek with it – although I suppose I did in a way everytime I put my phone in my pocket – but I kept hovering my finger over it and then chose twitter or facebook instead. Did I feel bad? Not really. The foursquare icon never said, ‘Touch me baby’. Aesthetically speaking.*

5. Nagging. Not by me. But by foursquare. It forever wanted to know where I was. ‘What are you doing? Where are you doing it? Why are you doing it? How are you doing it? Oooh, I wouldn’t have done it like that’. Just shut up and go away. This is my life and I will do whatever I like, where I like it, for seven of my own reasons, in a manner I feel happy with. Unless my girlfriend or my mum tell me otherwise.

6. Sexual Incompatibility. I won’t go into this too much, but I was rubbish. To be honest, my heart wasn’t in it. And, if it was, I’d have been doing it very, very wrong indeed. I know that much.

7. Realisation. Mark Zuckerburg. You know the guy, he created that facebook thing. Last week his company opened up the world of ‘places’ for all facebook users. So now we can tell all of our ‘friends’ just where we are. As a result I now know when friend A is at work, when friend B is on the platform at a certain train station and when friend C is on the toilet. Quite frankly, this is all too much information. And it is exactly the kind of thing foursquare specializes in. As disappointing as this will sound, the truth is, I really don’t care where you are or what you’re doing – unless you owe me a lot of money. And to be honest, I only have time not to care once. Consequently I have decided not to care via the medium of facebook and thus shall be shutting my foursquare account down with immediate effect.

*My finest oxymoron yet.

September 23, 2010