What Can I Do With Left Over Fabric?

Do you have odd yards of fabric left over from miscellaneous projects such as reupholstering, window treatments, bedding or even clothing? Well, those odd pieces of fabrics might not be as hard to make use out of as you think! We all deserve to get our money’s worth out of our purchases. If you already bought the fabric, chances are that you most likely love it. Let’s find creative uses for it in your home.

Throw Pillows

A very simple project for your leftover fabric is to make throw pillows. You do not need a lot of fabric to make the pillows look great; even two different corresponding fabrics on each side can work.

Just head over to your local fabric store and buy filling or pillow forms and you will soon have a cost effective new throw pillow. In my personal opinion you can never have too many throw pillows. Sofas can hold a lot and they don’t all have to match!

Make sure the colors, patterns and sizes go well together. Nothing says relaxation more than fluffy pillows! If you are an experienced sewer, try adding a decorative trim around the edges for an added touch of elegance.

Upholstered Seats

Do you have upholstered seats on your dining room chairs? Small pieces of fabric can be utilized here as well. The seats do not have to match. The patterns just have to coordinate with the room. For example, do you have six dining room chairs? Why not try upholstering the two end chairs in one fabric pattern and the other four in another?

Reupholstering dining rooms can be an easy do-it yourself project if the chair has a square or rectangle seat. Here are some simple instructions:

1. Start by unscrewing the seat from the frame.
2. Wrap the fabric on top of the existing seat.
3. Staple gun it on the bottom
4. Screw the seat back on the frame.

Yes, it is that simple. You are sure to impress your next dinner guests!

Window Valance

How about utilizing the odd fabric pieces for a window valance? Small, simple windows in bedrooms, hallways or laundry rooms sometimes need just a touch of color. This doesn’t have to be anything elaborate. Here are another set of simple instructions:

1. Measure down from the top of the frame so that approximately the top third of the window is covered by the valance.
2. Tuck the sides of the fabric over.
3. Attach a white muslin fabric on the back
4. Sew on a rod pocket.

The valance rod that the fabric slips over is typically inexpensive and easy to install. For an added touch of elegance, try a decorative rod to accent the window.

What do you do with your leftover fabric? Any other suggestions?

Changing the Face of Medicine

We have all been to see doctors in cramped examination rooms with a bed, a chair and a small counter with a sink. When we have blood work done, we sit in what reminds me of school desks.

As we have more serious medical issues, we go from doctor to doctor. For a mother with small children, there is just not enough space for all of us. It almost feels like no one has ever thought about this issue. When mothers who have more than one child need to have medical issues addressed, the room is easily crowded. Patients are left feeling like part of the process. Well, design has addressed those issues and more.

Steelcase has developed a new line of products called Nurture. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic observed how consultations were done and felt that there was a disconnect between the doctor and patient created by the layout of offices and examination rooms.

The desk between the patient and the doctor minimized interaction and created a situation where it was difficult to see test results and images. Steelcase found that many of the doctors also felt disconnected and wanted an environment that engaged the patients more fully in the understanding and treatment options available to them.

As more information becomes available, patients are researching and coming in to the doctors with their information and looking for answers. The relationships between patient and doctor are more a give and take than in the past, when a doctor would prescribe medicine and walk out.

With this in mind, spaces are being created so there are work surfaces that protrude and create mini conference spaces. Test results can be viewed on a computer screen and papers can be put on the work surface. Designers at Steelcase believe that in the very near future patients will be bringing in their laptops to show their research to the doctor.

Have you seen any changes in medical facilities at your doctor’s office or labs? Do you perceive medical treatment more as a partnership than a dictatorship?

Rid Your Space of Lead – It’s the Law

A new federal law that took effect this month (April 2010) requires any contractor that is doing work on a home, child care facility or school that was built prior to 1978 must now be certified and follow specific work practices to prevent lead contamination.

When renovations or repairs are done in facilities where children are the primary occupants, the lead will be disturbed and could be transferred in dust to the inhabitants. Sanding, scraping, or even the burning of wood covered in lead based paint can lead to exposure. Lead-based paint was used in 87% of facilities built prior to 1940 and 69% of facilities built between 1940 and 1960. Between 1960 and 1978, only 24% of facilities built used lead based paint.

When the work begins, the contractor is required to seal off the area being worked on. No occupants or pets are allowed to have access to the area until all the work is complete. The forced air and air conditioning systems must be turned off because they can spread the lead contaminated dust throughout the facility.

To minimize the lead dust it is recommended that water be used to mist areas before sanding or scraping . Before boards are pried up or other materials are separated, paint should be scored with a knife to minimize dust and paint chips. When all the work is complete, a vacuum with a HEPA filter is used to clean up the dust and debris and then all surfaces are completely washed down. The key to this will be the constant use of clean rinse water.

When creating a contract for this type of work, make sure that a lead-free test is part of the work included. An EPA recognized lead testing site will send a sampling kit to you. You can collect the samples and return the kit for analysis. Because the facility can fail the test and may need to be cleaned again, it is important to make the contractor responsible for any re-cleaning that may be necessary.

Lead can affect our children’s brains and developing nervous systems (especially those under the age of 6), causing reduced IQ, learning disabilities and behavioral problems. Lead can also have negative affects on adults causing high blood pressure and hypertension.

Have you been involved in renovation work that involved lead paint? Does your home contain lead-based paint? If so, have you ever thought about replacing it?

Starting from the Bottom Up: Green Design

When construction begins on a facility we rarely think about the foundation work. After all, it basically gets buried on the outside by the earth. And on the inside, we turn it into a recreation room with drywall or paneling. A new foam wall system has improved foundation. It uses two layers of foam with reinforcements and the cement is poured between the layers. Before this system, the forms would be pulled away from the concrete wall. Now we leave the foam in place as additional insulation to the lower level of our facilities.

Nudura is a new product that moves this technology from the lower level of homes through the entire building. In locations that are prone to hurricanes and tornadoes, this technology may save lives and prevent
property damage. The walls can withstand winds up to 250 mph and have hurricane anchor systems suitable for roofs. The anchoring elements are surrounded by cement in the concrete walls, so the roof will not break away from the home.

The basis of their product uses foam walls with one concrete wall between to form the foundation all walls within the home. Because the walls are made of highly insulated concrete, they reduce air infiltration that can occur in traditional wood stud homes and reduce sound transfer into the home. They also increase the fire protection over wood built walls for up to 3-4 hours. Concrete would not allow for moisture to get caught between the walls. Once they are cured, they are impervious to moisture and molds caused by moisture forming in the walls.

The wall systems are manufactured with recycled material and produce little waste during the construction phase. Most of the waste during the construction phase of buildings goes directly into landfills. The foam forms are non-toxic and do not emit CFC’s or HCFC’s. They are able to design their forms with 45-degree angles or curved walls so the building materials do not hamper the design. This means a precise layout, reducing costs on labor to layout. Another reduction on costs is in the delivery of the forms because they are able to be shipped flat, so almost twice as many can be shipped on one truck transportation costs and fuel usage is reduced.

In areas of high humidity, winds and termites, the Nudura product would be a logical building material. What do you think? Is your home built with this material? How does it hold up to traditional foundations?

Crown Molding! The Decorative Benefit

One of my biggest pet peeves in newer home construction is the lack of detail in the design of the interior. More often than not there is no crown molding, baseboard, base shoe, or even a simple chair rail throughout the home.

It is something that I have overlooked, as it was a common feature in my home. I never really appreciated it until I had the experience of seeing so many homes that lacked this character. For those of you who live in homes that lack this woodwork, charm, and dose of character, read on to learn how simple it can be to install!

Why bother? What will it do for you? It will never have a structural impact – only decorative. Most of your friends and family probably won’t even notice it, but it will give you a sense of completion. You’ll be left with well appointed rooms that introduce a sense of charm and help make your house a home. Today’s crown molding can be traced to the late Renaissance, when designers adapted elements of Greek and Roman architecture to ornamental plaster and wood cornices used to disguise and beautify the juncture of ceiling and wall.

Installing crown is only slightly more complicated than running baseboard. The variety of different joints and saw cuts, including a coped corner joint, an outside miter, a square cut, and a scarf joint, are best done with a coping saw and power miter saw. With practice, you should be able to make tight, long-lasting joints. Start measuring.

1. Determine how much molding to buy, measure each wall, round up to the next foot, and mark those measurements on a plain-view sketch of the room you’re working in. If one wall measures within a few inches of the length of a full piece of crown, buy the next longer length.
2. You will want to find a Miter board – or make it (ask about this at your hardware store). You will begin to get into some geometry and this tool will help save you time and a lot of unnecessary cuts when you are trying to fill a corner of a room.
3. The first piece will be square-cut on each end. Each piece will typically have one end that is square cut and another end that is coped or mitered. In some cases, the end opposite the cope will have to be mitered to help make an outside corner. When a length of molding is coped on one end, cut the coped end first. When you find that the coped end fits tightly, mark and cut the opposite end (whether it’s a miter or a square cut). Think of it as cutting an angle on a pretty piece of ribbon – what is left on the roll is now an exact mirror image of the piece that you just cut. This is exactly what will happen to your wood.
4. Place a length of crown upside down on the miter saw so that the molding’s bottom edge (the edge that will sit on the wall) rests against the fence, and the top edge (the one that goes on the ceiling) rests against the table.
5. To create a snug-fitting joint, hold a coping saw at a 5-degree angle away from the face of the molding and carefully cut along the pencil-marked edge. Check for a tight fit by bringing the molding to the wall and sliding it into place. To measure a coped piece of molding that ends at an outside corner, make a mock-up of the corner from two 12-inch-long molding scraps.
6. Repeat this process for the second scrap piece, but rotate the saw blade to the opposite 45-degree angle.
7. Glue and nail the pieces ends together.
8. Hold the mock-up in place and mark the ceiling where the two pieces of molding come together. Then measure for and cut the butt end.
9. Align the piece on the wall, spread glue on the surfaces of the miter, and nail the molding into place.
10. If the ceiling height changes and the molding must end in the middle of a wall, cap it with a return.

It is a great idea to sort of mock up the pieces and join at least two sides creating a corner together before you attempt to hang them. It will help in the frustration department. Trust me.

If this isn’t for you, make sure you hire a professional. Try to find someone in a local lumbar yard. They will probably know someone, if not themselves, to help you.

Do you have a crown molding? Are you a do-it-yourselfer? Tell us your story!

Art and Environmentally Conscious – Lumicor

Design solutions come about in unexpected ways. That was the case when I discovered Lumicor. The company creates innovative translucent materials encapsulating textiles, metals, papers, foliage, and imagination. I became aware of Lumicor when choosing wall scones for a client’s office. Lumicor products blend handmade paper with two sheets of resin to creat what the client described as “glowing art.”

They create from what we discard. The elements in architectural resin panels are made from recycled glass, organic and recycled fabrics, and botanicals harvested from sustainable crops.

The Lumiclear product has the same translucency as glass but is half the weight as the same size panel and has 10 times the impact strength. It can be formed into unique and complex shapes. So instead of using the same old 2 x 4 lighting fixtures, consider a luminous ceiling with the color and textures that reflect your style.

Or perhaps you can use panels between areas in your facility that allow the light to meander through the panels, creating subtle divisions that also have texture and color. By adding decorative elements, you can create a phenomenal countertop for a kitchen that is durable, non-porous and resistant to UV damage.

In their creation of architectural resin panels, Lumicor has also established a reuse protocol that saves more than 21 million gallons of fresh water each year by using a closed loop system. They also reuse the heat created in the manufacturing of their products to heat their facility.

Beyond all of this, Lumicor has developed a network of recycling facilities around the United States. When I look for companies that push the envelope of innovative products, it is nice to know that some care about our resources and are as innovative in their manufacturing processes as they are with their materials.

Would you consider using this product as a countertop? Have you found a company that is innovative in design and regarding resources?

This House Is In the Water, Intentionally

Somewhere in the middle of January I began thinking about warm, sunny locations to visit. I think it is an instinctive reaction to Midwestern cold and snowy winters, but Ageatic blue green water brings joy to my heart and serenity to my being.

When looking for a retreat, most of us look for a house on the beach so we are just a few feet from the water’s edge. For some of us, San Diego, Naples or the Carolina’s may be our destinations; others of us like to travel to islands of the Caribbean.

Two Polish architects, Jedrzej Lewandowski and Lukasz Skirzynski, of FORMDesign, an architectural and interior design firm, have taken their new design right into the water. Their project may be an eco-tourist destination. They have designed a single-family rental unit that is going to be located in the Ionian Sea off the coast of Zante Island in Greece.

This house is designed to have a counterweighted system that also utilizes seabed pilings and will be powered by solar panels on the roof (110 of them). The architects have used Corian as the white finish on this minimalist project that has a concrete and steel structural core. The white the surface of the Corian will allow light to bounce within the structure to create a feeling of illumination without using any energy. The vertical lines of the rails on the exterior are for another amenity – the shading system that is computer driven in addition to the radiation-reducing filters in the curtain glass walls.

The design will also be utilizing bouncing lighting from the exterior and underwater lights, which will be refracted through the water to reflect into the interior for evening lighting. LEDs and CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps) will be used minimally for interior lighting throughout the project. Another aspect they have considered is having an interior garden. Whether it be green plants or vegetables, it will provide purification of the air within the structure as well as aesthetic beauty.

The project is said to have “eco-friendly features like the water desalination, energy accumulation, ventilation methods, water recycling, and tidal and solar energy systems.”

Would this be a destination of choice for you? What do you think of this design?

Trilogy Partner forms Haitian Orphans Charity

Michael Rath, a Trilogy Partner, has co-founded The Haiti Orphan Rescue Program (HORP) to build permanent adequate shelter for Haitian orphaned and abandoned children. Joined by builders Mike Mahon and Andrea DeLuca of sustainable building company Adaptive Building Solutions in Ann Arbor, Michigan, HORP will raise funds and assist Haitian labor to construct multiple orphanage projects over the coming years. Haiti’s “children without family” receive no aid from their government, and Mike M and his family have years of experience in Haiti helping these most vulnerable Haitians and their caregivers with support and medical aid. The earthquake of January 12, 2010 left more than 500,000 children without family or government support, spurring the two Mikes and Andrea to establish HORP as a non-profit 501(c) charitable organization. The next project commences mid April when members of HORP will travel to Haiti to refurbish a damaged orphanage housing 20 children more than half with disabilities. Visit HORP to learn more about this worthy cause and to contribute through programs like the “Adopt an Orphanage” and “HORP Ambassadors.”

Issues When Relighting History

When working on historic projects, there are many considerations for a designer. Lighting design for exterior work in historic areas is complicated by new laws that talk about light trespassing. Light trespassing means that if you live in an apartment or loft over a store, the lighting for the sidewalks or the store entrance is not to “trespass” into your loft. In years past, homes near a car lot might have trouble telling the difference between day and night because of the amount of light that would “trespass” beyond the lot and into the homes and yards.

When working in Regensburg, Germany, the concerns were the same. They wanted to keep their historical fixtures that had been present since the medieval days, but they wanted to be able to control the light so it did not “trespass” into the spaces above the fixtures. Though the existing lamps (Mercury Vapor) were efficient, there were issues and the designers wanted to replace the lamps with LED lighting, which would improve energy efficiency.

There was also the issue that mercury vapor globes were used in the street lights. Mercury vapor has numerous potential issues. First, there is mercury in the lamp so when they burn out, they must go to a hazardous waste site. The larger problem is that to create light, mercury vapor lamps also create ultraviolet radiation. These lamps are encased in an outer envelope that filters out the wavelength containing the ultraviolet radiation, but if the outer envelope is broken, so is the protection. The mercury vapor lamps also do not give the same color quality as LED’s because they cast light in the blue/green spectrum.

The designers had Germany’s national electrical codes, which stated that in retrofitting existing lighting fixtures you cannot use the original socket in the fixture. Everything had to be rewired . Using a great deal of creativity, they put the ballasts in the roof of the fixture. They had the wires hidden in the metal brackets holding the fixture. 48 LED’s were used, allowing for great control of the light distribution pattern. 4-6 LED’s were used for the street lighting, creating a soft ambient light. The LED’s were lensed, non-lensed, dimmed or used at 100% to light the building’s facades and architectural details.

In addition to creating a beautiful streetscape, the LED lighting increased efficiency so each fixture uses 40W less of power. By careful positioning of the LED’s there is no light trespassing into the spaces above the street level.

Lighting Portrays History and Artistic Collaboration

So many times we hear about downtown area falling into neglect. We hear of abandoned buildings not transformed and given a second life, but destroyed for something new to be build where an architectural relic once stood. That the dirty gritty industrial sites that are located next to waterways are not the type of sites that can be reborn.

While the city of Buffalo abandoned grain elevators stood empty, Quebec City used their elevator complex as a giant video screen. In celebration of their 400th anniversary, they told their history in a unique and special way. As part of their celebration, they created a light and image show that was forty minutes in length and was projected onto the surfaces of their grain elevators in the Port of Quebec. .

There are 81 grain elevators in the Port of Quebec. The elevators measure 600 meters long by 30 meters tall. The technical sheets says it took twenty seven video projectors, 329 speakers, 574 lighting fixtures using LED’s, 2 lighting boards operating in redundancy, 1.4 kilometers of fiber optic cables, 6 km of DMX cables and 4km of power cables in addition to 160 aluminum supports fused to the membrane of the roof of the grain elevators. It created what has been described as a sensory experience with an animated mosaic that will include engravings, paintings, photos and videos. This visual work of art was divided into four time frames representing the four centuries of Quebec’s history including the waterways, the age of exploration and discovery, road building, clearing and developing the land, the railroad and industrial expansion, and the age of air travel and the development of communications

The men that made this phenomenal project come together were René Lussier, who composed the soundtrack, Robert Lepage and Ex Machina, whose theatrical work is world renown and includes a permanent Cirque du Soleil show in Las Vegas, and Martin Gagnon’s lighting firm Ambiances Lighting and Visual Design, established in 2006. The firm believes that lighting is essential in human perception of their surrounding environment and their experience. It was the close collaboration of these three and hundreds of designers, technicians and work crews that made the science of lighting become art for approximately 5,000 people a night.

A permanent lighting installation, the Aurora Borealis, is in place and again utilizes the old port grain elevators. This show is a movement of light reflecting the beauty of nature inspired by the aurora borealis. The show will run every night from dusk until 11:30pm from now until 2013. Would you attend a show like this if it were in or near your city? What do you think of the use of architectural buildings for this kind of artistic presentation?

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