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Have you ever wondered how are your lights wired above your ceiling? It is actually a rather complicated and time consuming process to thread the wirings through your walls and joists such that the lights can be set up at your desired spots within the house. Where you see the bundles of wires right now will be the new home to each of our future spotlights in the living room.
Have you ever looked at a bathtub from the bottom? This is how it looks like.
With all the renovations happening in the house, it gets extremely dusty on a day-to-day basis. Like I mentioned earlier, our current living condition is close enough to one of a "construction site". Rather than seeing beautiful blankets of white snow, what we see are blankets of gray dust on every possible surface within the house.
Here it is! As I promised in an earlier post, this is the kitchen sink and faucet which we have purchased at an incredibly good deal.
The ambiguous space between our kitchen and our living room had finally been knocked down. Additional supports had been added over the opening to widen up this passageway up to its maximum width possible. It already feels so much nicer now to walk through from one room to the other. For your information, the doorway used to be half the size of what it appears in the above photograph.
The expanded ensuite bathroom to our master bedroom is slowly approaching completion. With the new shower base installed, faucets and water pipes set in place ready to be used, waterproof drywalls fastened securely to the studs, it is now time to let the newly laid marble tiles dry over night to get ready for their final touche-ups. The new sink to this bathroom had already been picked, it is only a matter of when it will arrive at our door. Thank you for your patience, more pictures coming soon.
For some reason, everytime I see insulations, they always remind me of cotton candies.
The corridor on our second floor used to be excessively large for its given purpose architecturally. As a way to make better use of this circulation space, we have decided to shift the doors to the master bedroom (far left) and the studies (far right) forward by a few inches to allow for the insert of new wall cabinets. These are built with layered maple wood which will later be varnished simply with a gloss finish. Et voila, the new home for my Coke collection. For those who don't know, I am a huge Coca-Cola collector. I had been collecting coke items, anything from bottles to toys, since junior high school. But due to lack of display space in my old house, I have stopped adding new items to my collection in recent years. But thanks to my dear cousin, two new bottles from this year's Vancouver Winter Olympic special editions had just been added to the family over Christmas.
Over lunch today, there was a great discussion about the edge details to our new closet doors, some cheap metallic panels which we have found in the AS-IS section from IKEA about a month ago. The connection details which I want to achieve for our new steel rails was also brought up. A sample will be made soon, so please stay tuned. Afterall, I guess you know you are an architect when you begin doodling during lunch on your napkins...or at least that's what I strive to become.
Today, we have also accidentally discovered a wholesale store which sells unique kitchen sinks and faucets at 30% of retail price. They carry the designs which I always dream about when flipping through my design magazines; clean cuts, rectilinear, sharp, durable. I am absolutely happy with the sink which we have picked, as well as the other equipments that come along with it. Pictures of it coming soon, I promise.
The ceiling in our living room had finally been taken off. Beyond the plaster finish, this is what you see.
New support had been added to an existing opening in our basement to allow for an enlargement to the doorway. The unfinished touch of the steel over the concrete blocks is actually quite beautiful, don't you agree?
New idea for switches. It might actually be featured in next year's interior design show!
A pair of crow bars found resting peacefully over an old wooden door, while gently conversing about the next steps of the project.
The different water supply pipes, drainage pipes, electrical wires, furnace duct work, cables, and telephone lines appear as if they are all stuck in a traffic jam beneath the floor of the house.
Knob-and-Tube wiring. These are the most interesting type of old fashioned wiring I have ever seen since my architectural education career. Instead of plastic, this type of wire uses cloth for its outer protective layer.
Now that my application for MArch is finally complete, it is time for something new. Although I know that my heart will not be fully stress-free until I know about my result in about two months or so, there is nothing I can do about it. So fingers crossed, hoping for the best!
Over the past month, we had been quite busy replacing all the old systems of the house to more current ones. When everyone around us, including our relatives, continously comment on our craziness to be able to live in a construction-site as such, we in fact felt very rewarding to be able to see things improve day after day. I can't believe that we have been living here for over a month now. It already, up to this point, looks so different from how it was when we first purchased the property.
As a way to document the progress of the house, as well as to build up my photography skills, I had been determined to start a 365 project. Cheezy? Perhaps. But I think this is the best way to get myself to actually learn the full potential of my camera and perhaps exploring an alternative career path in the future...because office work is really not my thing!
