Here are a few videos that show us BuildDirect types in our natural environments - eating, drinking, and trying to win prizes. This was all to benefit the Movember men’s health charity, which involves sponsored mustache-growing for fundraising and awareness-raising too for protate cancer, and other related men’s health issues.
Take a look!
Excuse the mustache. It’s for charity!
I show off the lunch spread, and a few of the dodgy mustaches we’ve got going here which are not to be outdone by my own, of course.
I show off some of the prizes, later won by Rob Banks (our Co-founder) and Deidre in Logistics.
James in the laminate flooring department explains how he’s raising money without growing an embarassing mustache:
The Grand Prize Winner is announced: Tom Froh (one of the authors on this very blog!) wins an all-expenses paid night on the town, and a couple of grace days to recover thrown in as donated by James.
In recent years, we’ve had troubles here in British Columbia with the pine beetle. Due to the warmer winter months thanks to global climate change, the population of pine beetles has exploded. The results are devastating, with acres and acres of pine forest decimated.
Similarly in the Midwest United States, another species of beetle - the emerald ash borer beetle - is wreaking similar havoc, feasting on the ash trees in Michigan and Illinois at an incredible rate, including in urban areas. The adult beetles eat the leaves of the trees - no problem. But, the larva of the beetle burrows into the wood, which is what endangers the health of the tree. It’s getting to the point that no ash tree in the region remains completely untouched.
The short-term answer to the problem in urban areas has been to take the trees down, and turn the wood into mulch. But, furniture makers, designers, and architects have other ideas about how best to utilize ash wood so as to make best use of the resource.
Here’s an article about urban trees in the Midwest. Wood taken from unhealthy ash trees is still perfectly suited for use as building materials and furniture. Since the emerald ash bore beetle only burrows one-quarter inch into the wood, the rest of the wood is re-usable. And because urban trees are pruned frequently, the knots in the wood make for distinctive patterns which furniture makers and designers are looking for.
The efforts are now centered on marketing the new lines of products made from salvaged ash hardwood. After all, without visibility, there’s no demand, no sales, and no alternate means of reusing the wood, which is otherwise hearty enough for any application you can name. To address this, the CFDA (Chiago Furniture Designers Association) have organised a campaign along with a number of other local sponsers surrounding the promotion of these relatively new goods on the market. It’s called, cleverly, Rising From the Ashes.
I think this is a fantastic idea, since the trees in question would otherwise be removed anyway. In this sense, Midwest ash can be counted as reclaimed hardwood, with the potential to add LEED points to building projects too. Of course, thinking on a grander scale in terms of global climate change, one would hope that the rising populations of beetles is also a problem that can be solved by thinking of ways to curb climate changing factors such as pollution. I wonder how the populations of beetles correspond with warmer winters in that region, for instance.
Cheers!
Rob.
Emerald ash borer beetle image courtesy of Benimoto. This one is called “Emmy”. This kind of beetle-mania, we can do without.
Large scale renovations are an art form. And as with every art form, subtlety and a certain level of respect is required – respect for the space as much as respect for what you’re putting into it.
This is idea is what I picked up from this article about renovation from the Boston Globe. In that part of the world, a certain architectural tradition has made itself a characteristic of the region. And where everyone has their own idea of what makes for a successful transformation (which is what a renovation is, really), the idea put forward in the article by professional renovators Maryann and Daniel Little is that the key to success is updating a look is about modernizing it, while also staying true to the origins and general feel of the property. So, in more traditional spaces, it makes sense to have materials which are complementary.
Luckily in this particular context, it’s mostly about correcting the design atrocities of the past. And when I say past, of course I mean the 1970s. This seems to have been a time when some kind of gas was released - possibly by aliens - and taste went out the window in a flurry of avocado green and golden harvest carpeting. And of course even in the English Tudor,Georgian, and Colonial traditions and other architectural traditions in New England, wood flooring is a popular choice to make these sorts of changes.
In this case too, the designers turned to restoring the wood flooring and wall paneling, once the design ‘wrongs’ were righted. Wood surfaces allow for an attractive visual update without dampening the spirit of those traditions, or the general feel of the individual home. The same goes for stone surfaces, which match the exterior of the property. Basically, the surfaces they chose - the wood flooring, the stone tile - aren’t there because they’re trendy, but because they work with the whole property, and are in many ways timeless too.
I’m no renovation expert, of course. But if I was, the basic philosophy I’d start off with wouldn’t be too far away from this one –
Ask myself if the changes made will complement the rest of the property that isn’t being changed,
Get great materials that look good and will last, and
Use my imagination accordingly.
In theory, I think I’d make a great renovator! Well, in theory…
Cheers!
Rob.
Georgian home in New England image courtesy of ilovebutter.
Moving furniture around is a pretty common activity, particularly before Thanksgiving and in the Yuletide season too. And during these times of shifting objects around on a wood floor, it’s also pretty common to get the sinking feeling that things have gone horribly wrong too.
When a chair leg or shelving unit suddenly judders across the surface of a solid wood floor and you can almost feel the gash opening up, you know you’re going to have to take some extra steps to making your interior ready for company. It’s a real “uh-oh…” moment
I found this article about ways to make minor repairs to your wood floors. One of the points the article makes is that it’s always a good idea to actually see to the repair rather than attempting to cover it up. The article talks about the potential embarrassment of having to answer the question of ‘why didn’t you repair it?’ if attempts to hide the scratch with a throw-rug aren’t successful. But, I think another reason is that a scratch can make the floor more vulnerable to moisture, which can cause even more long-term damage to the floor as a whole.
Anyway, I hope you’ll find the tips in the article as useful as I do.
At this time of year, particularly around here in Vancouver where it rains an awful lot in the winter time, moisture can become a problem for solid wood flooring if it works its way underneath.
Of course the two are mortal enemies; moisture can be insidious, and wood flooring reacts by swelling and cupping. But, what to do if a single board is damaged and a precision replacement is needed?
One thing that seems to be an undercurrent in the answer is that this is a tough job. And unless you’re a pretty seasoned flooring installer and repair person, it can test the limits of your patience a well as your skills as a DIYer.
So, if you’ve tried this in the past and found it difficult but got the job done satisfactorily, than you were probably doing it right! If you’re facing the problem now, hopefully Tim’s answer will point you in the right direction.
As I mentioned in my ‘about me’ video blog entry, when I first started here at BuildDirect three years ago I had a lot to learnabout building materials. But, this was kind of exciting to be in a position to learn a lot of new, and useful, histories, tips, applications, and methodologies.
Around the same time I signed on here, we were about to launch our lines of cork flooring, Evora cork. So, I had some reading to do, and some writing too. At that time, we didn’t have a blog, but we had our BuildDirect University section which I helped to create. After all, we figured that there were a number of people out there just like me; homeowners who didn’t really know much about flooring, yet knew what they needed that flooring to be able to do. So, my research was meant for everyone’s benefit.
In any case, cork flooring was very interesting to me for many reasons. And one of the most fascinating things about it was that it remains to be a popular material for the entire spectrum of life. By this, I mean that cork flooring is popular in nurseries and kids’ rooms on one end of the scale, but also for places like retirement homes and other interiors frequented by the elderly.
The part of this which caught my attention was that the popularity in these seemingly disparate locations is largely for the same reasons. Kids are still finding their feet, and being unsteady on their pins, this often causes them to take tumbles. The elderly are also concerned about falls. Cork flooring is often chosen in these areas for it’s cushioning properties, for falling objects, and falling people too. Even in between childhood and golden age, cork is a popular choice for exercise rooms frequented by all ages, where a impact absorption is a benefit for those working out.
I think it’s kind of cool that cork meets the needs of people at opposite ends of the age spectrum, as well as the years in between. In this, it’s easy to see why the use of cork has paralleled the course of human history so closely.
One thing which has come to light in traveling from Canada to China are the cultural differences. Some of these differences are pretty obvious and often well documented. For instance, some of our expectations of food are considerably different, in that what we would never dream of eating is quite often a delicacy in China. This is to be expected. More on that later, maybe. Yet, other differences come as more of a surprise.
Just by way of an example, let’s take a look at Rob Banks on his flight from China back to Canada after a week of touring the laminate factory. While making a trans-Pacific journey, what could be more natural than a series of group calisthenics while in one’s seat, led by the flight attendants? Let’s hear what Rob had to say about it, as it was happening…
To continue our series, this is the second part of how a bevel is added to a laminate floor. Rob Banks, BuildDirect’s Co-founder gives us an inside look at how laminate flooring is made, with lots of close-ups of the machinery involved. This second method of applying a bevel to laminate floor boards is a molding process. It’s a bit more involved, but ultimately produces a more desirable effect.
Take a look:
And here’s a second video, which shows you how the laminate wood flooring is cut from sheets into individual boards. Take a look:
To continue our series on laminate wood flooring and how it’s made, here’s another video of Rob Banks, Co-founder of BuildDirect who recently visited our factory in Beijing. This time, Rob takes a look at narrow board laminate flooring with a beveled edge. How do they make it? Well, take a look at this:
There’s more to come in this series, so stay tuned!
Recently, Co-founder of BuildDirect Rob Banks took a trip to China to visit our composite decking factory, and a few of our laminate flooring factories too. While he was there, he took some video footage, and asked some questions about how laminate flooring is actually made.
This is the first entry,in which Rob and factory manager Danny talks about how the paper layer of laminate floors are prepared to be permanently attached to the high-density fiberboard (HDF for short). Take a look:
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Similarly in the Midwest United States, another species of beetle - 
This is idea is what I picked up from this 
In any case, cork flooring was very interesting to me for many reasons. And one of the most fascinating things about it was that it remains to be a popular material for the entire spectrum of life. By this, I mean that 
