Mr. Sippican’s Top Ten Things Not to Do to Your House. I agree with all of them except #8 and #10:

10. Blue and Brown.
I’ve lived through this three times now. I’ve ripped all this stuff out twice with customers muttering “What were they thinking?” Powder Blue and Cocoa Brown DO NOT go together under any circumstances, anywhere. Except of course in every room on every show on television.

Chocolate brown and pale blue do go together decently well. Blue/brown overload is a different story.

8. Ceiling fans everywhere.
Do you all really think you live in Casablanca? If I go into another ranch house with a ceiling fan hanging down from a 7 foot 6 inch ceiling, I’m going to go postal. If I can’t stand up in the middle of the room without getting a bruise or a haircut, you’re doing it wrong. There is no stratification of air in a house. Doesn’t happen. You’re screwing a window boxfan sideways to your ceiling. Stop it. Your house has AC anyway. And you live in Wisconsin. Cut it out.

I do have a horrible stratification of air in my house–with a thermostat set to 71 degrees, the downstairs stays borderline cold and the upstairs stays borderline hot (or, in the winter, the downstairs stays borderline toasty and the upstairs stays borderline cold. Which is not so bad since I prefer to sleep with heavy covers). We’re looking at steps to fix this (I got tired of blocking the downstairs air vents with phone books to force more air upstairs), but meanwhile the ceiling fans in the bedrooms are highly efficient comfort-savers. And if you’d get a haircut from one of our ceiling fans, well … sorry, those of us who live here just aren’t that tall.

The morons who built our house with the sucky airflow also put the cooktop in the island, and like Mr. Sippican I hate hate hate it. We don’t even bother having seating on the other side of it.