Challenges or Opportunities? Straight from the business speak dictionary of ****! Sometimes things just don't go your way and how you ...
Challenges or Opportunities?
Straight from the business speak dictionary of ****! Sometimes things just don't go your way and how you respond is as telling as how you respond when you do get what you want...So this week we've been working on-site on the installation of some upstands (the Fixing Fixation article from last week highlights the special pin-drive fixings we made for this job). The upstands are 3m lengths of 50mm x 12mm aluminium and need surface preparation and installation. This should have been an easy job, it wasn't and now we're slightly behind but a patient client is a godsend sometimes.
Here's the problem; full-stave worktops made from wenge that despite being machined and installed per instructions have, and this is being polite, "settled" somewhat. Wenge is a fabulous, rich toned, dense grained African hardwood - in fact it's so hard it puts up a real fight against even the highest quality tooling.
Ok back to the "settling", what we're talking about is that one length appears to have been hewn from the extremely rare African wenge banana tree variant and the other features at least two staves that have had an argument and decided on a acrimonious separation. On top of that the surfaces have been finished with an extra special Danish Oil which is so fragile that even looking at it from the wrong angle causes it to mark.
This is a typical example of "creep" - we start with the original task; install up-stands and before we know it we're also refinishing the worktops, addressing the cracked staves and all this on the coldest weekend this year where using an outside space is essential (you really don't want to be surface finishing aluminium indoors).
Back to the business speak dictionary; "Any learnings?" well we always take something away from every job we do. We've never been so arrogant as to assume, believe, say we know it all. In this case we can tell you we've refined a very cool surface finish (more of this soon) for aluminium, we've seen the benefit of those hours put in to the pin-drive fittings and learnt that with wenge even P60 isn't aggressive.
Stop the talk, show me the pictures
We're close, we mean super close to releasing a significant upgrade to the Gallery on this site. We've never really been happy with it BUT we know just how important pictures are and although we link to project albums nothing beats clicking a button and seeing a screenful of images.We trialled a few options before settling on the one we believe will deliver just the experience we want for you. Keep an eye on the site this week as we're planning to launch the new look Gallery RSN (Real, Soon, Now).
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| It's coming.... |
That there house of the year thing
It was the penultimate week of Grand Designs showcasing the RIBA house of the year competition. Now this "pick" should have been right up our street being based, as it was, on the notion of craftsmanship, quality and attention to detail BUT as we drank tea and dunked biscuits during our morning post-mortem the collective opinion was (and sorry for this); meh.The eventual "winners" (these are the two houses of all those feature that go forward) were a house in Ireland and a home in London. Note the use of house and home because it's important.
The house in Ireland (Maghera) was fabulous to look at, externally it was a masterpiece echoing the surrounding farm buildings and presenting a decluttered exterior that really was quite fantastic and then they went inside. When we talk about design, interiors etc we tend to naturally think in visual terms but sometimes our auditory sense can be a useful clue or assessment tool. In this case the door opened, our brave host and house owners step across the threshold and as the dialog re-starts you hear it, you know what we're talking about, the reverb thing, the "shimmer" on each sound, not a full echo but definitely that sound effect you get in a church, cave, tiled bathroom.
What does this mean; it's really simple it means too many hard surfaces, not enough furnishings (of any type) and commercial scale spaces. We love modern design, the move (back as it happens) to the notion of large mixed use open spaces is a great fit with the way many of us want to live but this doesn't mean you need to live in a cave, you can have modernity and soft-furnishings, you can have clean lines and gray paint without ending up with a bed overwhelmed by the size of the room it sits (lies) in.
The other "winner"? now that was/is a bit special Levring House in London. An exterior featuring bronze clad surfaces leading to an interior well furnished, colour and texture enjoyed and explored and a sense that it wasn't just the architect who had some vision.
Read more about the competition and see the short and long lists by clicking here
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| Maghera - a nice house on your left. Levring - a beautiful home on your right |
This Week's Obsession: Mixology
Crystalware! A throwback to an older generation? Memories of display cabinets with a decanter and a cheesy label hanging from it? Trying to get that ringing sound by running a wet finger around the rim of the glass? Parents using the phrase "for special occasions"? That's how we looked at it and oh how we mocked then someone said "but have you seen the Mad-Men mixology collection at Waterford". We hadn't, we have now and now we're obsessed.Pop over to Waterford's website to see the full collection (feel free to send us an early Christmas gift).
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| Mad Men Mixology! |
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- Seven Days? You What? I mean, pardon?
- These posts give us a chance to recap on the last week at Bokoshoko and give you a glimpse of what's happening. Many of our projects take time to come to fruition or our customers would prefer we did not share so these posts also show we're not just sitting around!
