With today’s houses being built from 10’ to 12’. The 8 ‘ ceilings look ridiculous in our opinion. My House in Florida has a 8’ ceiling and we hate it even though the house is nice and in a great area. Ceiling fans are too low. We’re always screaming “watch it” when someone lifts our baby in the air. All the fixtures look too low over the dining room area. Someone really tall comes over you can really see how small the house looks. Even the tall cabinet trend makes putting our appliances under them impossible. Our vitamix and Mixer just hangs out in the middle of nowhere, bcause they don’t fit under the cabinets. I personally think houses should be sold in cubic ft not square feet. It’s really not fair to have yesterday’s news gonin the same category as a new modern house with 12’ ceilings. Of course not till we sell our place. :) We just got a new metal roof and wish we didn’t to Raise our roof first. Probably cost a fortune so we’re probably going to have to live with it. I suppose if you don’t entertain or care about those things then anyone can live in an 8’ ceiling house. Knowing what I do now I look right over those houses now.

I wish that I could find the picture where a designer handled a situation like this. She actually installed something like a bamboo Roman shade at the same height as the curtain rood, and had the shade pulled own just to the top of the window glass. Then the curtain panels hung at either side of the window. It made it look like the entire window was that tall, as you couldn't see through the bamboo shade to see that there was wall behind it. FOUND IT! All of the below is from here - https://cotedetexas.blogspot.com/2009/08/top-ten-design-elements-4.html"A word about this curtain installation job. What looks like an easy job of hanging curtains was actually quite difficult. Suzanne Kasler’s thought process: The windows are short in this room. In order to camouflage the problem windows – Kasler places the rods as close to the molding as possible – yet the beam prohibits her from bringing them to the very top. The tops of curtains should always, if possible, all be at the same height. Therefore, all the rods are placed about 6 inches from the ceiling to be uniform. Then in order to make the windows appear taller, she brings the blinds to the top of the rods – hiding the wall space between the short windows and the curtain rod – making it appear the windows are taller and more elegant. Kasler thus creates a vertical line to the room by raising the eye up to the higher rods. Perfection! Hanging curtains is never an easy job and a good installer is worth his weight in gold. He is as important as the workroom." BELOW - DON’T: Real house: this is a problem window – the arched transom really adds nothing to the design of the window – I would have ordered just one long blind and put it right under the ceiling rod – and raised it just to the top of the door for access in and out. Instead, there is too much going on in this window. Too many different window sizes, too many little shades, and the curtains are just a tad too short – this should have been fixed during the installation – the drapery pins could have been moved up just a bit. It’s not easy folks! An open question to mass builders of Mac Mansions: Why do you install lots of little windows like these? What’s with the arched windows everywhere? I understand Palladian windows, but these sir, are no Palladian windows. Why bother pretending they are? Wouldn’t just a taller French door been so much prettier here than the short door given the Palladian treatment? Just a question. DON’T: Real house: the same designer as above almost gets it right this time. The blinds and drapes are placed perfectly – but, but, but – if you are going to lower your textured shades – add a lining to them so you don’t get the invisible shade look from the glare! And don’t put the shades down at all different heights. The designer could have bought just one long shade with a blackout lining – why buy three, unless it was to save the money of a custom shade. If possible – one shade is better than three little ones. And one more detail that should drive a good interior designer to distraction – notice how the two middle panels “break” at the floor – yet the right panel just barely meets the floor. Which was the intended length – the breaking length or the just barely touching length? A good installer might have been able to correct this. If not – it should have gone back to the workroom for correcting. I wonder, did the designer not notice this? And just one other detail – notice that the panel widths are not uniform – the width of the middle panels are doubled, yet the right and left are single. Why? The panels really should be the same width if at all possible otherwise it might look unbalanced.

Thank you! Here's the response we got from the manufacturer...along with a PDF that is well over 5 years old. Please see the attachment. This will explain why they are seeing the haze with in the IGU's. I just got off of the phone with my Sales manager and QC manager and there is nothing we can do to remove this. It's what happens to the glass once it is coated. The haziness goes away when the sunlight shifts and The awning is apparently the cause. This is all explained in the document. Call me if you have any other questions. (We do not have an awning) The following is the information contained in the PDF... Pilkington North America, Inc. 811 Madison Avenue, Toledo, Ohio 43604-5684 Telephone 800 221 0444 Fax 419 247 451 Technical Bulletin ATS-137-4 2013-01-15 NEW IMPROVEMENTS IN THE APPEARANCE OF INSTALLED Pilkington Energy Advantage™ Low-E Glass Pilkington Energy Advantage™ is made of an extremely fine polycrystalline hard material that cannot be seen under most lighting and viewing conditions. It is possible to discern the presence of the coating under certain lighting conditions, such as when bright sunlight shines directly onto partly shaded, coated glass and there is deep shade on both sides of the glass. P a g e 2 Using extreme lighting conditions for the reflected images of a typical window, the residual haze of the older (2010 and earlier) product can be seen in the left hand IG unit of the following photo. A studio spotlight simulates direct sunlight (with the same set-up as in the photo above), and eliminating (with black velvet) the distracting transmitted and reflected images of a typical window, the residual haze of the older (2010 and earlier) product can be seen in the left hand IG unit of the following photo. The IG unit on the right hand side of the original photo below barely shows the miniscule amount of haze that can be found in 2011 production of 2.5, 3.0 and 4.0 mm thick Pilkington Energy Advantage™. Pilkington Energy Advantage™ pyrolytic coatings are made by the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process, creating a hard polycrystalline layer of tin oxide over color suppression underlayers. In an electron microscope picture, the polycrystalline structure of the surface of the tin oxide top coat can be seen as a layer of closely packed grains. Daylight can easily pass, with less than 1% scattering, through this coating because each grain is actually smaller than the wavelength of visible light. The illustration below shows the surface of the coating magnified 20,000 times. P a g e 3 Fig.1. Typical grain structure, magnified 20,000 times. The extremely small size of the grains makes them invisible in most lighting conditions. The following electron microscope image shows a cross-section through the Pilkington Energy Advantage™ coating. The polycrystalline nature of the coating contrasts with the non-crystalline ‘super-cooled liquid’ nature of the solid glass underneath the coating. Fig.2. Cross-section showing coating uniformity, magnified 50,000 times. ← Air ← Low-E Coating ← Glass P a g e 4 It is possible to discern the presence of the coating under certain lighting conditions, such as when bright sunlight shines directly onto partly shaded, Low-E coated glass and there is deep shade on both sides of the glass. When looking out through the glass towards a deeply shaded background, the short wavelength component (blue) of the sunlight appears slightly scattered. This gives the coating a uniform, very faint blue appearance visible in the sunlit area. Longer wavelength red light is less scattered. In the 2003 photo below the haze was made more noticeable by the complete lack of any visible haze in any contrasting glass shaded areas, such as in the diagonal shadow on the glass. Since this product was first made in 1988 there have been continual manufacturing improvements to its properties. The coating was first made thicker to further lower the emissivity by about 33% from its initial value. At the same time the initial haze of just over 1% was cut in half. Recent (2010) developments have cut this haze value in half again. It is now reduced to a level where it is difficult to perceive under typical installation conditions. In conjunction with significantly reduced haze, its once noticeable blue tint has been eliminated. This results in the final coating being even less perceptible to the human eye. Haze only becomes visible when its brightness is significant relative to that of the transmitted and reflected images viewed in the glass at the same time. The worst case is when 0.5% of the sun’s light (say 10,000 lumens) = 50 lumens, is scattered if the sun is shining through the glass, almost directly into the viewer’s eye. This could be easily noticed when compared to the dim light coming from a deeply shaded area, say about 1/1000 as bright as sunlight or 10 lumens. It should be noted that the light scattering (haze) from normal dirt, on an average window before cleaning, is around 1% to 2%, so haze from dirt is far more visible than from the coating, even in the worst case lighting condition described above. Haze is only visible when direct sunlight shines on the glass. With typical lighting on most Low-E coated windows, and for the greater part of the day, there is no haze visible. The following photo is an example with no visible haze, even in the sunlit Pilkington Energy Advantage™ Low-E Glass (pre 2011 production), because there is no deep shade beyond the glass. P a g e 5 Before a light of low-e coated glass is glazed into a frame, sunlight, or a bright light, shining directly onto the glass cut edge can internally reflect within the body of the glass and produce a series of faint parallel lines a few inches from the glass edge where some reflected light is scattered by the coating. The photo below shows these lines. They are more visible on the left hand side of the glass where there is a dark background behind the glass. This effect completely disappears when the glass edges are shaded by being glazed into a normal sash or frame. Fig.3. Temporary or Transient Lines caused by sunlight on an exposed glass edge P a g e 6 An alternate way to achieve the very high thermal insulation provided by the pyrolytic ‘hard’ Low-E coating in a double glazed unit, is to use a ‘soft’ sputtered coating produced off-line in a vacuum chamber. Such coatings must be protected from humidity by being sealed into an IG unit. The sputtered coating is typically removed or ground off at the perimeter to allow effective insulating glass sealant adhesion. Sputter coatings usually have some reflected color as seen in the left hand glass (1). Sputter coat IG reflected color of a grey sky. The same sky reflected in adjacent clear glass IG Viewed in transmission, in the photo below, the top IG unit (1) is sputter coated low-e, the lower left unit (2) is Pilkington Energy Advantage™, and the lower right IG unit (3) is clear glass with no low-e. (1) (2) (3) P a g e 7 The use of three lites of plain glass in a triple glazed unit can also give insulation values similar to a double glazed unit with a low-e coating. But this involves a thicker and heavier window unit, with increased reflectivity, and more distortion in the reflected images when weather changes cause greater expansion and contraction of the wider total air space. There is an increased risk of breakage with improperly balanced air spaces, compared to sealed double glazing. The information contained in this bulletin is offered for assistance in the application of Pilkington North America Inc. flat glass products, but IT DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Actual performance may vary in particular applications.

I like the last 3 - though still not what I'd do. Too much going on in them, and we tend to have too much clutter to add business to the walls. I wish I could keep things cleaner but we're fairly useless. Hopefully with these movements we'll be able to shed some crap. But I've been pretty bold lately... pained one room white (mascarpone) and teal... and we have a living room painted in mascarpone and cayenne, and the dining room is mascarpone and Adriatic (if I'm remembering properly - it's a deep blue). I think if we do something interesting with the closet doors (with color) then I'll leave the small wall white - but otherwise, I may paint. I'll leave the glass bricks open - that's the only "natural" light that comes into the bathroom.