I love this wall light,
designed by Blandine Dubos for Ligne Roset

should look great in my staircase hall..

costing 202€ here in Belgium it probably is cheaper to buy that to try and make yourself..
It will never be quite right anyway. Plus, I have no clue on how to start on this.

Since I’m in the middle of renovating the attic, the hall is getting damaged gradually.
(try to move wooden beams 4 meters in length trough a narrow starway without damaging it…and I just painted it last year.)
so redecorating might be in order anyway.

this is a book I picked up a few weeks ago, it feeds two of my main interests, design and technology.

the book features several well know brands and their design history.
Not so much a ‘book’ but more of a reference guide about the designs featured here..

and surprise… on page 18, Alessi is featured with their 1957 cocktail shaker,

which I happen to own.

looks like ideal reading for those lost moments.

In the coming summer I’m going to build a garden house, but obviously I hate the ‘tiroler’ type shed’s you can buy anywhere. I even hate those so called modern cabins.

I wanted something stylish and unique…then I found out about Zenkaya on mocoloco

an architectural masterpiece.
Based in South Africa the company offers beautiful one piece prefab’s.
I asked for pricing and delivery, but both were (as expected) a bit of a disappointment

can it be a disappointment if one was expecting
it??

delivery limited me to a size even smaller that the smallest unit on the website, but i wanted a cabin measuring 8 by 4 meters.. and the price… let’s not go into that.
The layout was also not very ideal for what I need, in fact, the only thing that was perfect was the look

so what does a man has to do?

Design It Yourself and get something like this: (gotta love google sketchup)

This will be the biggest project yet (apart from renovating my house) i measures 8 meters in length, and is 4,2 meters wide.
The outer shell will be constructed using a wooden frame, covered in OSB and finished with a few layers of polyester.
I’m currently still in the planning phase, in may, a concrete foundation will be poured, after this has set, the construction of the wooden frame can start.
expect lots of updates here..

A few years ago, I was searching for sattelite speakers.
being me, someone who hates run of the mill stuff, I was searching for that little something extra.
And, being me, it should be affordable..

In comes orbaudio, an American company that builds one speaker, a spherical one…

turns out they deliver to Belgium, but for weight issues they cannot include a subwoofer.
No worries, plenty of subs available in Belgium I figured.

A few weeks later the speakers arrived, beautiful white spheres, but still no sub. I was still searching for a sub that would match the speakers, very difficult when all subs are ugly and square.

after listening to the speakers for over a year (they sound incredible by the way..) without a sub… I designed it myself and got this:

A spherical subwoofer.
It took quite some planning, a lot of studying, reading forums like diyaudio, htforum, avsforum,
I learned about acoustics, calculating ‘box’ sizes (very cool stuff considering most software is using rectangular shapes). I had to learn how to use and apply polyester.
It took me several months to complete, but I now have a sub no one else has, and it kicks some serious a** too…

another pic together with the orb’s

do they look good or what??
never mind the Christmas light, it was, well…. Christmas..

I have a build log that will be posted in the near future.

What do you do if you like this:

but lack the funds (and the space)?
You Design It Yourself, and get this instead:

If people come visit, they keep asking me where i bought it, and then I have to say; the red cabinet is from ikea, the rest, I built myself…

The Cabinet is a EFFECTIV drawer cabinet i bought several years ago in an attempt to get my paperwork organized. (wich failed btw..)

I painted it red with a high gloss paint.
the green thingy on the right (not very obvious thanks to my incredible photographing skills) is a piece of MDF that functions as a brace for strenght, I glued a piece of foamcore on it and a good friend covered it with a thick piece of felt, giving me a place to pin messages on.

the desk itself is a piece of wood from the lokal DIY store, just glued it all together and here it is..
a comfortable small desk that I like working on..
and the paperwork is being managed a lot better now

Cost:

• EFFECTIV Drawer: 129€
• wood: 18€ (cutting it to size was free)
• the green thingy: 18€ for the felt, the rest was made from leftovers

165€ (okay, i forgot the paint, 5-ish €)