hardwood is hard work.

my dad started his career as phys ed teacher. and since it was the late 70s/early 80s there were a lot of short shorts, high socks and whistles around necks at our house. if you did things wrong you were told to return to the starting line and try again. shuttle runs were considered fun, and if he could i bet he would have installed a peg board and climbing rope in our house.

actor portrayal of my dad. 

i wasn't much of a gym guy in school, but i held my own at high school and junior high dances. i was a master of the close, but-not-too-close-in-case-there-was-activity-in-the-nether-regions, slow dance. to this day i can't hear guns n roses' november rain without starting a side-to-side hipsway.

this kid should be at least 9" closer. 

my wife on the other hand was a school sport phenom. somewhere in northern alberta she still holds records for all the quadruple-doubles she posted in high school basketball. i don't know what a quadruple-double is, but at starbucks it would cost a fortune, so it's got to be good.

with this rich history and connection to gym floors it seemed only fitting that we install reclaimed gymnasium hardwood. our designer had it installed in another house and we fell in love with the idea. add to the fact it was a way to re-use and preserve wood that would otherwise go to the landfill and it was a no-brainer. we were lucky enough to find a company in town who specialize in building materials like this and they had just completed a huge reclamation project with 30,000 sq ft of hardwood.

our wood comes from the talisman centre for sport + fitness. it travelled less than 5km to get to us.

the floor was taken out in the fall of 2010 when the talisman underwent a complete renovation. it's birds eye maple and was in pristine shape, having never been sanded. the wood was divide into 5ft x 6ft pallets and stored in a shipping container after being removed from the centre.

our crew went above and beyond to remove the hardwood from the subfloor. this involved pulling the individual pieces off the subfloor, without damaging them, and then removing the staples that had secured the hardwood to the subfloor. to say it was a hugely time-intensive project is an understatement. we owe them beers for years to come for the extra effort they put in.

after removing the wood and staples, the pieces were bundled together and moved to the rooms they would be used in. the wood was then laid out in place, and finally secured to our subfloor with a new round of staples.

we tried our best to preserve the lines and markings of the floor, but once the heat and friction of the sander hit them, the oil based paint spread and smudged. we were sad, but as my dad would have said, "stop your crying and get back out there on the court." so we carried on.

after a few passes of the sander to smooth out the bumps, we're left with beautiful, brand new floors that also have a history to them.

hopefully the perfect setting for buzzer beaters, new attempts at canada fitness testing, slow dances, impromptu floor hockey games or whatever else might happen after dinner.

bricks and mortar. and cement board and reclaimed wood. and industrial steel.

after 5 months of taunting and teasing the neighbourhood with plywood and moisture barrier we finally gave the people what they wanted - exterior materials.  

the sides of the house are hardieboard, a fibre-cement product we cut to into 24” rows and painted dark grey (as you'll recall from our interior, grey was a popular choice). 

the boards are bolted to the house using black bolts and feature a black metal drip edge under each row.

on all of the exterior walls we've incorporated sections featuring reclaimed and recycled hardwood flooring. this wood was pulled from our last house along with other homes in the area that were slated for demolition.

on the back of the house we cut the hardieboard into 6” columns and hung them vertically. we didn’t go with grey in the back…because that would be boring. for the north side, we chose a dark green. and for the south side we went with purple, because i love my wife and want her to always be happy. 

industrial steel edgings will be used on all the corners. these edgings will naturally rust and patina over time. 

and finally, the front of the house will feature brick walls along with the reclaimed wood siding. we chose harvard modular brick because we already had harvard-branded shingles, and it just seemed like a nice piece of cohesive branding to match the two. plus we liked the colour. 

all of the materials and colour palette were chosen to reflect the history of the neighbourhood along with the new developments that are defining bridgeland.  


up next, gym floors. 

grey vs gray vs off-black

let’s cut right to the point. there are way too many colours in the world of paint. we came to this conclusion when we started deciding on interior colours. it’s not that we’re against the vast selection. in fact we were quite happy to see how many ways we could slice grey. but it’s when we started looking at the names for these colours that we realized things had gone too far. if i was running the paint company it would be grey, a little bit greyer, much greyer, almost black, and so on and so on.

instead we went with tulle white and something esoteric silver. those are the main house colours. although I refer to them as grey 1 and grey 2. to the naked eye you can barely tell the difference. but if we ever do a magazine article or have particularly fancy dinner guests over we'll be able to talk eloquently about how grey 1 picks up the morning sun especially well at our latitude and how grey 2 reflects on the urban environment and our desire to help transform it. 

grey 1 picking up said morning sun. 

grey 2 reflecting the urbanism.

the upstairs rooms will each have some bright coloured feature walls to add some more fun. so far we’re leaning towards morning dewdrop and overripe eggplant. but you never know.