B is for back-yard.

Now that spring is here, and the snow melted away, we can’t continue to ignore the disaster that is our back yard. Years of neglect combine with us using it as a staging for the construction waste bin, our poor back yard is in need of some major TLC. the first step was raking up as much ouf the left over debri as possible one Sunday afternoon, one beer, 2 bags of yard waste and we are almost done. Although the finer bits will always be there. At some point, we are going to construct a fence to enclose the back yard and make it more secure and private. Then, setting up a small herb garden. Hayley’s goal is to have a salsa garden, we will have to look into that since we are both horrible at taking care of plants. Start small.

postcarden by A Studio for Design

Designed by London designer Aimée Furnival of A Studio for Design, the postcarden is just awe-inspiring.  You simply open, grow, and admire.  I didn’t think anything can make pop-up cards better, I stand corrected.

via Dezeen

overdue updated pics

Earlier this month, I took some pictures of the house in preparation for a presentation I was doing at work.  I meant to post it on here, but it slipped through the cracks.  Better late than never.  What do you think of our “peacock feather” wall?

upstairs hallway

living/dinning room

washroom

master bedroom

patching up holes

It has been a while since we last posted. That’s because it’s been a while since we’ve done anything significant on our house. There’s been a lot of waiting game. Just a couple of minor things to share:
-The electrical is done as dinner. That means that we finally have a cook top and oven, in fact, last night Hayley baked for the very first time in our home.
-we are still waiting for the rest of the kitchen to be hooked up and finished. Hopefully, next week we will have a working kitchen sink with running water, a dishwasher and working washer and dryer.
-we have been slowly patching up the floors. The main floor was done with the help of my dad. The floor was not level between the old hallway and dinning/living area, and since we took down the separating wall, it took a lot of work to patch it up. There was a lot of shims and magazine pages sacrificed to make it work. Now, I’m trying to patch up the upstairs hallway floor.

please don’t let us down countertop man

Fingers crossed.

Today, our elusive countertop is finally coming.  I am actually quite nervous about it.  Will it fit? Did they do what we wanted them to do?  Will they show up?  Questions are all I have.  Let’s hope for the best.

architecture porn + CGI porn = instant love

Yes, architecture is my field, and yes, I am a self profess CGI nerd.  Even if you are not, I am sure you will be in awe in this short film by Alex Roman.  For a while there, I was getting bored with the generic semi-realistic CGIs coming out of the architecture community.  This is the first film of this genre that in a long time that made me gasp with pure amazement.

Make sure you go to the video source and watch it in its full HD glory.

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

wish i’d thought of that – kitchen utensils

“The Elevate™ range of kitchen tools are designed to improve hygiene and minimize the mess made by placing mucky utensils onto kitchen surfaces.

An innovative weighted handle with an integrated tool rest ensures that when an Elevate™ utensil is placed down, the head is always raised off the work surface.

The Elevate™ range comprises of 6 essential tools, available individually or as a boxed gift set.”

Joseph Joseph via Holycool.net

it’s prime time!

We can see the light at the end of this home renovation tunnel, and it is as white as primer. On Saturday, with pizzas and beers in hand, we lured our friends over to our “pint primer paint pizza party.” With their help, we were able to prime our whole house in just one day. With its walls whitewashed, it is finally starting to look like a house and less like a construction site. Thanks to Thuy, Cathy, BJ, Jenia, Alex, Linh, and Alan for your company and your helping hands.

origami holidays

Here’s the card that our firm is sending out this year.  I decided to go analogue this year and stray away from my usual digital fare.  The origami reindeer (instruction by Peter Engel) is probably one of the most complicated model I have ever completed, and it was also the first time I folded in years.   Probably not the best idea at the time.   The reindeer is made from an 18″ square mylar paper, and took me 3 hours to complete.  Anyone who has work with mylar can tell you that it is not one of the quieter paper when folded.  Hayley kicked me out of the bedroom because it was too noisy, then my mom kick me out of the living room and into the basement because she can hear me from her bedroom.  Anyways, it was fun, and it definitely help rekindle my love of origami.

deconstructive architects

Over the weekend, we finally did what we wanted to do ever since we got the house – we knocked down the mudroom in the back. We had some room left in the waste bin and the first snow storm was just around the corner so we knew it was now or never. With BJ’s help, we took turn and tool it down in no time. As it turns out, destroying something is a lot more fun than constructing something. We think Hayley just found a new calling in life. She sure knows how to handle a crowbar. A side note, we finished mudding and started sanding the upstairs bedroom. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.