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Showing posts from June, 2011

Small house Monserrat: From the top

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Some houses catch our eye with their unique form, some offer smart ecological solutions and some are simply pretty. This small house, with its simple, rectangular shape, clings from a mountainside, offering breathtaking views of the Monserrat mountains near Barcelona, Spain. Its location and the way it is positioned make it interesting and appealing. The house is supported by concrete struts, giving it the impression of floating above the mountain. It’s quite compact with a total space of 1,380 sq. ft., and serves as a family home to a couple and their two young children. Inside, the house is simply decorated – a house made to live in. On the first floor, the airy kitchen opens into the living room and beyond to the double-height studio, which offers striking views of the Mediterranean. A large glass door in the living room leads out to the rocky mountainside. The top floor has a wide hallway that doubles as the children’s playroom. Outside, there’s a 130-foot deck, built w

Home design ideas of the month - June 2011 Edition

Beautiful 1637 Sq. Ft Villa Plan and Elevation 2761 sq.feet semi circular shaped villa Home plan and elevation 2678 Sq. Ft 2200 sq.ft Villa with fine line elevation House plan and elevation 2165 Sq. Ft House Plan and Elevation - 2292 Sq. Ft. Single Floor House Plan and Elevation - 2400 Sq. F... Home plan and elevation 1431 Sq. Ft Home plan and elevation - 1789 Sq. Ft. Room colors ideas Cardboard Furnitures Creative Teapots Beautiful Home elevation 2250 Sq.Ft Home plan and elevation 2266 Sq. Ft 2563 Sq. Ft. Contemporary and Kerala Style Archite... Home plan and elevation 1800 Sq. Ft Home elevation design in 3D Home plan and elevation 2430 Sq. Ft Home plan and elevation 2000 Sq. Ft

Home design ideas of the month - June 2011 Edition

Beautiful 1637 Sq. Ft Villa Plan and Elevation 2761 sq.feet semi circular shaped villa Home plan and elevation 2678 Sq. Ft 2200 sq.ft Villa with fine line elevation House plan and elevation 2165 Sq. Ft House Plan and Elevation - 2292 Sq. Ft. Single Floor House Plan and Elevation - 2400 Sq. F... Home plan and elevation 1431 Sq. Ft Home plan and elevation - 1789 Sq. Ft. Room colors ideas Cardboard Furnitures Creative Teapots Beautiful Home elevation 2250 Sq.Ft Home plan and elevation 2266 Sq. Ft 2563 Sq. Ft. Contemporary and Kerala Style Archite... Home plan and elevation 1800 Sq. Ft Home elevation design in 3D Home plan and elevation 2430 Sq. Ft Home plan and elevation 2000 Sq. Ft

Shipping Container Tourism: Bayside Marina Hotel

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Shipping containers are a great solution for building a home. However, they can also serve as an office, a shop and even as a hotel. Take a look at the Bayside Marina Hotel, by Yasutaka Yoshimura Architects, in Kanagawa, Japan – It consists of 31 hotel guest rooms, which are made from 40 ft. steel shipping containers. In Japan the cost of labor and building material are quite expensive. The affordable solution is to import the buildings themselves, not the building material, resulting in low-cost transportation and a short period of construction. Based on that, in the Bayside Marina Hotel project, used containers were prefabricated in Thailand. Both interior and exterior of the guest rooms were completed at the factory, ready to be transported to Japan. “ISO Container is a format for transporting Architecture” * More info at ysmr

After Raised Bed Gardens

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After Raised Bed Gardens

Local food and thanks to farmers

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Fresh garlic needing to be cleaned I've been cleaning a lot of garlic, potatoes, and onions lately. Much is destined for fresh use in the next couple of weeks, rather than storage, but preparing vegetables for either requires work - removing dirt, extra foliage and roots, sorting out for drying, taking all of the clippings out to the compost pile, etc. I'm quite certain I didn't appreciate the effort required in producing a bag of onions in the grocery store before I started growing them myself. Maybe they bounce down a river of clean water in industrial agriculture, but someone still needs to trim their roots and stems and remove their tops (maybe this is a subject for a web search-- Hmm... check out this article about onion cleaning procedures on a small farm). Fresh onions are totally delicious, of course, being juicy and succulent when cooked.  Quite a different vegetable than the cured ones for long-term storage.  Ditto with garlic.  And fresh potatoes are exceptional

Labels: Bathroom Design

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Labels: Bathroom Design

Strike Day.

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My whole blog just disappeared into the ether so here's a precis: sunny, teachers on strike, not me - can't afford to loose the pay. Rich privately educated government with personal fortunes, untouched generous pensions and fat consultancy fees to look forward to have decided to recoup some of the money lost by their banker pals by making public servants work until they are 68, pay more into their pensions and loose up to half the expected pension. Spent 5 hours sat at a PC in my classroom working on my reports. Nearly but not quite finished. Small cat spent day at vets being castrated. Happily playing at my feet now.

Pretty Henrietta Paint

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This is Henrietta, Annie Sloane's pinky purple colored chalk paint.  It hasn't been seen much around blogland but it is a color that I really like.  Henrietta is even on the cover of Veranda this month! I will admit I thought it was going to be more pink.  When I opened the can I was kind of surprised at how purpley it looked.  One of my upcoming projects is a non-paying job~ decorating my son Colin's college apartment. He asked me if I could decorate it using an oriental rug  and artwork he hopes to get from my mom's house, where he is living this summer.  He found a closet full of rugs and asian art from our world traveling days. Colin was excited to find all of these unused treasures,  and I thought it would make for a cool looking apartment.  First on the list was transforming this tv console  into something with a Moroccan vibe.  I created a template and got out Henrietta and started painting.  First I painted the drawers and the area on the end with the template. 

Label: Bedroom

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Label: Bedroom

Modern Small Bedroom

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modern small bedroom

Modern Bedroom Designs

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Modern bedroom designs

living room decorating ideas make you rich

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Apartment living room decorating ideas Contemporary living room decorating ideas Living room decorating ideas Living room wall decorating ideas Small living room decorating ideas

Bedroom Design Ideas | Bedroom

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Bedroom Design Ideas | Bedroom

dug out of a mountainside

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Wow, this house i s truly phenomenal! ‘One of the era’s modern masterpieces’ they call it, and they are absolutely right. This contemporary mountain cabin sits among wooden chalets deep in a narrow valley, at 4,100 feet, in the magnificent Swiss Alps. As opposed to the traditional Swiss style, this 1,700 sq. ft. villa features a more experimental, almost industrial feel combined with an approach of integrating architecture into the landscape. This unconventional form of building keeps the views open, without obstructing the landscape, while still providing privacy. The entrance to the villa is trough a traditional bi-level barn, which is connected to the house by a long concrete tunnel. “In preparing the site, local builders excavated 36 feet into the side of the hill and poured reinforced concrete retaining wall. They then built a simple shoe box, 52 feet wide, 26 feet deep, and two and a half stories high, and closed the volume with a concave front. This approach yielded a

Bonin Architects Hires Summer Architectural Intern

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: NEW LONDON, NH – The architectural firm of Bonin Architects & Associates, PLLC, New London announces the hiring of Christopher Presutti, of Webster, New Hampshire as an Intern Architect for the summer. Presutti, an architectural student at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, will start his third year in the Bachelor of Science degree program in Architecture this fall.  He is an honorary brother and co-head of the alumni committee of Phi Sigma Pi, a National Honors Fraternity based on the three ideals of Scholarship, Fellowship, and Leadership.  Christopher was selected for his impressive portfolio, outstanding scholastic record, and overall experience in the work environment.  Principal Architect Jeremy Bonin explains, “We’re very happy to have Chris join the Bonin team this summer – and personally, I’m excited to have an intern from my alma mater.  He is very talented and brings outstanding communication and artistic ability to the

Vegetable Garden Design

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Vegetable Garden Design

A newly emerged pipevine swallowtail

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pipevine swallowtail After noticing the chrysalises last week , I was delighted to see a newly emerged pipevine swallowtail this morning, hanging on the ledge outside the bathroom window (near the pipevine plant).  Its wings were already expanded, but it wasn't yet ready to fly.  It stayed there for maybe 45 minutes, then finally flew away.