Whether it’s your family message center, an ever-changing scrapbook page, your photo gallery, or a do-it-yourself collage of spontaneous artwork, the front of the refrigerator is one of the most important pieces of real estate inside your home.

Oh, but those stainless steel appliances that look so elegant and modern? They’re a problem. Because it’s true — and the sales guys won’t think to warn you — your magnets won’t stick to most stainless steel refrigerators.

Photo: DairDair

Designers and decorators and magazine editors don’t quite get it. And I guess the appliance makers don’t either.

They may think we should revel in a pure clean uncluttered fridge front, but guess what?

We don’t.

We don’t want to live with a blank-faced fridge.

We love our fridge magnets — the holiday souvenir magnets and giftshop impulse-buy magnets, the tacky ad magnets from the pizza take-out, magnetic note pads, plastic alphabets, and strange glue-smeared scraps of felt on magnetic tape, made by loving preschool hands — all of them!

Our magnets help us to organize and celebrate our family’s daily lives. Right there at eye level — right in the heart of the house.

What the home appliance manufacturers need to do is sit down in my kitchen for a cup of coffee and look around. Maybe in your kitchen, too. Definitely in my friend Kathy’s kitchen…

Then maybe they’d begin to understand why North America resounds with the wail — “My fridge magnets won’t work on stainless steel!” And then maybe they’d get their act together to give us the one feature in a refrigerator that’s needed above all others: the ability to decorate the front of it with magnets.

Does it matter?

I say, yes.

So I’ve looked into this stainless-steel-fridge-magnet issue a bit, and here’s what I’ve turned up: 7 solutions!

None of these alone is the one perfect solution to your stainless steel fridge art crisis, but there are enough ideas here that some sort of mix-and-match fix should be possible:

1. Different Fridge:

Not all stainless steel appliances are created equal, however. Okay, this is science stuff and makes my eyes glaze over, but it seems to have something to do with the different amounts of nickel in the metal alloy that’s used to face the appliances that we call “stainless steel” appliances.

The good news is, some stainless steel fridges will, in fact, work for fridge magnets — especially if the magnet is fairly strong. The most magnet-friendly appliances have a thin sheet of stainless steel as a decorative face over a metal core that’s more ferromagnetic — meaning a metal that magnets will stick to.

If you haven’t bought a fridge yet, take a few magnets to the store and test the attraction before you make a final buy.

2. Different Side:

Many “stainless steel” refrigerators are made differently on the front than they are on the sides. If your fridge magnets won’t stick to the door, try the side of it — if your kitchen arrangement allows easy access to it, of course.

3. Different Appliance:

Or try the dishwasher, or another convenient appliance. For some reason — perhaps because the smaller expanse of metal on the face doesn’t need to have the same strength as a whole big fridge door, your non-fridge stainless steel appliances seem to be more likely to want to play nice with the magnets.

This is great, if all you want is to put your plastic alphabet magnets out for the little kids to learn to spell while you’re making dinner… but it’s not a great solution for those of us who love the ever-changing eye-level Metropolitan Refrigerator of Art.

4. Different Surface:

You can get magnetic paint and make yourself a new magnet display place from a convenient cupboard door, or even a section of wall. I like this idea very much, and a painter pal tells me that the magnetic paint does work very well.

You might even get a can of blackboard paint, too, and paint yourself a half-and-half magnet board and chalk board.

The only problem there is, in a small kitchen, you might not have the blank wall space to spare.

Oh, and you’d still have a great big bare shiny cold medical-looking stainless steel fridge, just beggin for some crayon art and a souvenir magnet from Niagara Falls…

5. Same Fridge Only Different:

Instead of replacing your old, magnet-friendly fridge with the hip new stainless steel you crave, at the cost of your art display, consider a refinishing job.

A good cabinet shop may be able to fit a new stainless steel panel to the front of your existing fridge, depending on the model and its age. If the new face-panel is thin enough, your magnets should still be able to work.

Or there’s a liquid stainless steel brush-on coating that’s a heck of a lot cheaper than buying a new fridge if all you really need right now is a kitchen decor update.

It goes on a lot like paint, they say, but if that’s more of a do-it-yourself job than you’re keen to take on, I’ll bet the Yellow Pages can find you a professional painter or refinisher who’s done it a dozen times and can make your old fridge look like new stainless steel. For about $50 plus labor.

And your beloved magnets will still work on your fridge.

6. Different Sticky:

Some people say you should just use sticky tape, or reusable putty or clippers or chewing gum… well, something other than magnets, anyway, to post your photos and memo-notes on the fridge.

That’s not a bad idea, and it gives a great excuse to go browse in the office supplies store! The down side: you don’t get to use and display your magnet collection.

7. Different Metal:

So, if you go the tape-and-sticky-gum route for your fridge display, and you still want to show off your magnet collection — or if you’re bound and determined to use those magnets on the fridge, no other surface will do — there’s something called the Choopa Board that could be your fridge’s new best friend.

It’s a metal board that comes in three different sizes (and two colour options: white or stainless steel) with suction cups on the back. You stick one to the front of the fridge, then stick your magnets on the Choopa Board.
Problem solved!

It can be all too easy to get stuck in a “decorating rut” and do the same old comfortable thing each time you redecorate a room… or in any other visually creative activity, for that matter.

The best way I’ve found to jolt yourself out of that comfort zone, to open up to new ideas and new looks? Play with colours!

More specifically, put together an idea board of images in a colour (or group of colours) that you don’t see very much, when you look around your home or into your closet…

Chocolate and lime, for example, is not a colour combination you’ll find in my old house.

But today — inspired by the cover of John Loecke’s new book on Grosgrain Style — I’m going for it, seeking out inspiring images in that trendy chocolate brown and lime green combo, and putting them up on my idea board to see how it feels…

One interesting thing you’ll notice is highlighted by this little creative exercise — “lime green” can be interpreted in a great many different ways.

From an eye-popping bright fluorescent green…

To a pleasant mid-range green with a yellow tint…

To the colour of the striking Gia lime table lamp (with chocolate brown lampshade, above) — now, what do you say? Maybe more of a Benjamin Moore key lime colour there, almost a celadon?

We can all agree on the particular deep rich brown that’s reminiscent of a dark true chocolate — more or less — but what colour do you see in your mind’s eye, when someone says “lime green”?

Technorati Tags: colors, decorating, ideas

The half-bath off my kitchen is due for a new flush, and I can’t begin to tell you how badly I want to wander into that otherwise uninspiring small room to see this wild-coloured Majolica / Talavera style toilet and tank — oh, sure, and that matching sink, too, while we’re bathroom-dreaming in technicolor fixtures!

I’ve got a few sort-of-matching coffee cups (from Oaxaca, central Mexico), so how perfect would that be?
Coffee in… coffee out!!

For the wonderful traditional art, and the quality of craftsmanship involved in producing these porcelain beauties, the prices I’ve found online (in the $600 – $900 range, for the toilet and tank) are not insane — but it’s the shipping of such a heavy (and relatively fragile) object that would get you in the wallet.

Okay, okay, wait, let’s see now…

Can I paint my fantasy patterns on a plain porcelain flush from Home Depot?

Ah, no, that won’t work.

When you paint on porcelain, you use special china paints that are more like a pottery glaze, and the piece has to be fired in a kiln after the painting. I’m sure I could get the necessary supplies, paint my flush, and make arrangements to haul it into the local art school for firing, but that gets complicated… and it would probably end up costing more than if I just bought a genuine Mexican toilet.

(I can’t see getting much cooperation from He Who Hogs The Power Tools, either… he’s a bit on the conservative side, bless his heart.)

To satisfy my deep-seated conviction that a powder room is meant to be decorated in ways you wouldn’t quite dare to try in a larger, more public room… maybe a wild-and-colourful south-of-the-border wall mural?

Ordinary latex paints will do the trick for that — in a dazzling array of colours. Luckily, many high-quality paint brands are now putting out small sample pots of various colours so you can try without committing to a whole gallon — perfect for the thrifty and experimental bathroom mural painter!

And for Mexican-style inspiration? Find all kinds of gorgeous Talavera at TheFind.com, check out Majolica House on eBay and the glorious Tierra y Fuego showcase, for Mexican decorative ceramics for the home, from toilets to Talavera tiles…

You know how a successful room decor can be based around one perfect object or piece of furniture? When I saw this little fire truck desk, it struck me as the only significant investment you’d need to make to create the popular firefighter theme for a little boy’s bedroom.

The fire truck activity desk is quite a practical piece, for all its character and whimsy — it incorporates book shelves and storage bench, with a nice flat surface for playing games and coloring with crayons. The rest can be done with paint, and a few imaginative accessories.

Match that fire-engine-red paint at any good home-improvement store, for example, and update the nursery bedside table to match. When your little guy moves up to a youth bed, you might paint it a shiny lacquer-black: it’ll fits in fine with the firehouse theme, for now, but won’t restrict your choices when it’s time to redecorate as his interests change.

Use a metal “fire bucket” for a wastebasket, and cover the curtain rail in a piece of that formed-foam pipe insultation (it’s a black tube with a slit down one side, made to slip over a water pipe) to simulate a fireman’s hose…

Fire stations don’t have those slide-down poles anymore, do they? But it’s still part of the traditional image, so we’ll want one!

You can easily create the effect of a pole with a floor-to-ceiling length of sono-tube, painted up in one of the convincing new metallic paints to look like shiny brass and attached to the ceiling or wall with L-brackets. But do set it in a corner of the room to discourage climbing attempts!

Or, if that’s too ambitious, you can always just tape off a vertical stripe of the wall and paint a trompe-l’oeil pole. If you tape off a narrower stripe along one edge, and fill that in with a slightly darker tone, it’ll help to give a rounded effect.

Don’t forget Spot, the fire dog! A big soft stuffed dalmation to wait at the foot of the bed…