Bright White
Check out this great kitchen and eating nook reno we just finished in Vancouver. The client – a busy family – wanted a bright and stylish space with timeless qualities that fit seamlessly within their 80+ year old home. This is achieved in part by adding french doors onto the deck, using reclaimed wood flooring, and installing face frame, shaker cabinets GCB custom built right here in Vancouver. The photos below don’t show the final tile work, but should give you a sense of how nice the project turned out.
Looking from the kitchen into the nook, and the deck beyond.GCB custom drawers, microwave cupboard and wine rack.
The design mixes open shelving with traditional shaker cabinetry.
Ceiling pot lights and under cabinet puck lighting help warm and brighten the space.
Large built-in cabinets, shelves and a small desk occupy one wall of the eating nook.
Custom dishwasher face.
Zero Waste Cabinets
Owen, Sam and Anne-Marie took a little field trip last week to visit one of our partners-in-cabinetmaking-crime. They make custom cabinet doors at a zero waste facility right here in Metro Vancouver. By using uber-smart technology, they can plan out cuts so that almost no material is wasted. Any leftovers are either cataloged and stored for future use or, if too teeny tiny to be reused, recycled. This trip gave us lots of ideas of how to improve our own cabinet shop, and made us happy to be collaborating with such a cool operation!
The facility.
The field trippers, Owen and Anne-Marie.
Check-out this efficient use of one board!
A Bathroom to Brag About
Here are some photos from a master bath we finished last week as part of a large scale full home renovation project. Some of the luxury features that will be make the homeowners’ friends beg to house sit: heated tile floors, zero transition tiled shower with rain shower head, custom double sink vanity, built-in shower seat, vaulted ceiling with skylight and a wall-hung toilet.
GCB was the General Contractor for the whole renovation projec. The vanity and storage cabinet were built from reclaimed hardwood in our custom cabinet shop right here in Vancouver. The bathroom was designed by One Seed Design and the tile was installed by our pals at Absolute Tile. Take a look!
This luxurious master bath features vaulted ceilings, a wall-hung toilet, and custom cabinets and double vanity constructed in our very own cabinetry shop.
The large, zero-transition shower includes a rain shower head, a built-in bench and shelving and custom tile work.
We are really pleased with how nicely this double vanity turned-out.
We custom made the vanity at our shop, using beautiful reclaimed hardwoods that would otherwise be considered scrap at a local mill.
Delighting in the Details
We recently completed a home addition project in Port Moody for a couple who were expecting (and now are the proud parents of) their first baby. The scope of the work included reinforcing the existing foundation, creating two ground level additions to increase the floor area, installing a living roof, and revamping the finishes throughout the house. Design-minded and very interested in making their house uniquely their own, the clients were great to work with. They wanted to include a lot of recycled and sustainable materials, and design elements that reflected their love of nature. Below are some photos that show the completed project and some of the details that make this home so special to this family. Massive kudos to our site manager Doug for shepherding this renovation along so successfully!
The new master bathroom features custom tilework representing a waterfall and river. This is a nice tie-in to the neighbourhood setting which is characterized by streams and pathways.
The waterfall tilework flows down from the top of the shower, and then continues over the edge of the tub.
Also in the master bath is a custom vanity we created in our cabinet shop. The gorgeous striped pattern is created by lamenating strips of different woods together into solid panels. What's even more fabulous is that this is all waste wood from a local mill... so, instead of ending up in a dumpster or as wood chips, this wood gets a second life.
A closer look at the sustainable vanity.
We also exposed the brick chimney on both the upper and lower level for aesthetics and improved heat distribution.
The new dining room features reclaimed fir floors, a vaulted ceiling, lots of natural light, and a custom designed and fabricated accent window.
The bird detail of this window was designed by the clients and cut by one of their neighbours before being sandwiched and sealed in glass by a window maker.
Imaginative Reuse
GCB was recently approached by Naomi at the Vancouver Storytelling Society to see if we could lend a hand in creating a community storytelling cob bench in Robson Park (near 13th Ave and St.George Street). Her great idea was to reuse some waste material from one of our projects in Mt.Pleasant as an urbanite foundation for the bench to rest on. We were eager to be involved in such an inspiring community project. Kenny dropped off the material to Naomi and now we are looking forward to the outcome of the cob building workshops they are holding this fall.
Below is the rough design for the bench, which is meant to portray mountains and a river.
Getting Inspired on Pender Island…
Last weekend, Sam and Elizabeth were invited to make a presentation on Living Roofs at the Pender Island Eco Homes Network’s Eco Building Symposium. It was a great weekend of sharing ideas and experiences, checking out absolutely inspiring custom built, eco-minded structures, and enjoying the local hospitality and landscape.
Some photos from the Eco Homes Tour are included below for your viewing pleasure. Hopefully you will also be inspired by the craftsmanship, creativity, ingenuity and collaboration that went into these works of art!
Inside a stray bail home with exposed large timber wood framing, clay walls and cork floors. This home has been owner-built over time with lots of donated labour from their friends, family and neighbours.
A living roof is planted on top of the straw bail home. The owners created the roof using EPDM as the waterproofing membrane, reclaimed carpet as the root barrier, and soil and plants from the property. Awesome!
Here is another living roof assembled with a similar EPDM-Reclaimed Carpet-Local Soil and Plants approach. This one is part of a larger custom green house project that will has the plants planted directly into soil installed directly onto the engineered green house floor.
A beautiful and functional joint detail.
More stunning timber framing and custom woodwork. Most the projects we toured used wood either reclaimed from elsewhere or harvested locally, often on the building site.
Here is the beautiful greenhouse with the plumbing in place for hydra-radiant floors.
A very unique shower surround built by hand with aluminum cans, clay and coloured glass bottles.
The quaint 100 sq. ft. seaside cabin designed and built by Sam and Elizabeth's host, designer Ken Rempel. http://kenrempel.ca
Sam works through some ideas on the Etch n Sketch.
Second Time Around.
All summer, we have been working on a not-so-average home addition project in Port Moody. Lucky for us – and the environment – the homeowners are very eco-minded and wanted to include as many green features as their budget allowed. In particular, they were drawn to recycled materials as they re-envisioned the entire home to make room for their growing family. Some of our favourite features are the rubber shake eco-roofing (from recycled tires), reclaimed cherry and fir wood flooring, denim insulation and a gabled living roof.
A close-up of the rubber shake eco roof. This is made from recycled tires.
Here are the refinished, reclaimed fir floors before the trim and other finishes goes up.
The rear addition will feature a gabled vegetated green roof. Here you can see the prep work completed so far. The LiveRoof modules will arrive pre-grown in a few months.
The project includes two ground floor additions (one to the side and one to the rear), and reconfiguration and refinishing of portions of existing house. Doug has been guiding this project along steadily and we are excited to be closing-in on completion. check back soon for more images!
Getting Cozy with Blue Jeans.
Sam and Doug recently finished the day covered in blue fuzz. The culprit? Ultra Touch Natural Cotton Fiber Insulation. This is a non-toxic home insulation alternative made with denim from recycled blue jeans.
PROS: Denim insulation has a high enough R-value to meet code and is not at all dangerous to work with and live near. No adverse health risks or physical discomforts as can be the case with more typical fiberglass insulation. This is a recycled material that has way less manufacturing-related environmental impacts, and the denim can be more easily and responsibly disposed of if/when walls/ceilings are demolished.
CONS: It is more expensive than fiberglass insulation, is very messy to install (hence men in blue fuzz), and hard to cut.
We are hoping this product continues to improve and be used more widely.
This is an in-progress view of the insulation being installed. All the gaps, nooks and crannies were filled with the insulation before the sheet rock was hung.
The Goods: Ultra Touch Natural Cotton Fiber Insulation
Let It Grow!
We recently put some additional finishing touches on this shed-to-office conversion. To enhance the charm and character, provide weather protection, and highlight the vegetated LiveRoof, we added a shed roof over the office entry. The entry itself evolved from basic barn doors (which worked great for a shed but not an office) to nice salvaged glass doors. Combined with the skylights and vaulted ceiling, the big glass doors let in lots of light. And it looks pretty darn cute, don’t you think?
Before...
After with green roof, and oh-so cute.
Polished Concrete Floors!
As part of a project to convert an unused basement into a secondary suite, we poured a new concrete floor with the intention of grinding and polishing it. This is a great idea for high quality, durable and affordable flooring. Nowadays there are a zillion options for finishing concrete – it can be stained just about any colour, finished in any sheen, texturized, accented with stone or tile, mixed with decorative aggregates, and so on. For this particular project, our client was keen to include recycled coloured glass. This was carefully included during the pour to ensure that the glass was close enough to the surface to be successfully revealed in the grinding, polishing and staining steps. We will post photos of the finish floor once the lighting is installed to show you the final look.
Rinsing the floor after grinding it down.
The recycled glass is visible after polishing. Awesome!
The Beauty of the Reclaimed
View of Living Room from Kitchen
Sounds like the title of some epic romantic novel, right? It is also what we beheld at the completion of a recent project for clients whose enthusiasm for reclaimed wood matches ours. The project included a complete renovation of the kitchen and bathroom in the primary residence, as well as some updates to the living room and secondary suite. Check out the photos so see the great cabinetry and countertops in the kitchen, and stonework around the fireplace. And, of course, check out the gorgeous reclaimed beam and posts between the kitchen and living room, and the custom shelving flanking the mantel. Owen designed and constructed the shelves from timber salvaged from the Odyssey Club in Vancouver. Oh, the things that wood has seen!
Custom Shelving Constructed with Reclaimed Wood