Desire To Inspire

Cottagecore
Preparing to Lay Wood Flooring: 4 Tips
A room in the garden
A renovated 1970s villa in the South of France

Posted: 05 Jul 2022 09:05 PM PDT

“Warmth and charm were infused into this 1790’s farm by clearly defining the personality of every room – yet having small moments of connection to make the home feel complete. We worked with the home’s existing floor plan to maintain the historical character and updated all the finishes, paint colors and furnishings so it’s liveable but not too precious.”

A celebration of pattern and colour, bespoke and antique, this home is packed with personality and history. It’s about welcoming family and friends and overstuffed comfort for all, about cottage living mixed with modern conveniences. Historic Farm by Cameron Ruppert.

Photography by Stacy Zarin Goldberg

Preparing to Lay Wood Flooring: 4 Tips

Posted: 05 Jul 2022 01:57 PM PDT

Preparing to lay wood flooring is an extremely important part of the process of installing new floors. There is so much to consider including your dust control systems, the preparation of your subfloor and how much flooring you need to actually buy.

1. Work out how much flooring you need

One of the first things you will need to do if you are planning on laying wood flooring is to work out how much flooring you will need to cover the whole room. Use a laminate flooring calculator to work out how much of your wood floor you will need to purchase to fill up your space.

1. Remove your doors

Before you begin the process of preparing to lay your floors remove the doors to the room you are working on. Take the doors off their hinges but try to leave the hinges in place so that you can easily reattach the door once the floors are finished and ready. Keep the doors stored in a separate room with a blanket to prevent scratching or any other damage, and remember to keep all the pins from your hinges stored safely in a plastic bag or box so that they don't get lost.

1. Supplement the Dust Control System

Although most wood floor installers will make sure to implement a proper dust control system, it is recommended that you do anything you can to supplement these efforts. Seal off any rooms that won't be sanded with plastic sheets and painter's tape to avoid any excess dust from reaching inside the other rooms of your home, and install plastic sheeting around the perimeters of the worksite.

Make sure there is enough space clear for the workers to do their jobs easily, and tape some excess plastic over heating ducts and any other openings in your home to make sure that dust does not circulate your home through the ducts.

1. Prepare the Subfloor

It is important to note that if you are bringing professionals in to install your wooden floors it is unlikely that they will spend much if any time working on your subfloor unless you have negotiated this already as a part of the installation price. Because of this, you may want to do some work to eliminate any imperfections such as dips in your flooring and give the workers a perfectly flat and well-secured foundation on which to install your new wooden flooring. If your home's subfloor is particularly bad, you may choose to completely remove the old flooring and lay a completely new subfloor. If you don't want to go this far, you may choose to install a thin underlay made of plywood to smooth over the surface.

Overall, there are many things that you can do to help to prepare a room for laying wood flooring, it is all about having a smooth and well-finished subfloor as well as a proper dust control system. Make sure also that you have enough material to cover the whole floor so you aren't left with an incomplete room.

A room in the garden

Posted: 05 Jul 2022 11:24 AM PDT

I work and basically live in my greenhouse in the summer. I adore it but this space is pretty epic. Everyone needs a room in the garden. Trust me.

A Room in the Garden is part garden folly, part "other space". It is intended to relieve the congestion of the urban home and provide a space for family members to work, play, read, sleep or to enjoy a moment of peace and quiet. Packed with innovation, it is designed as both product and building. It is intended to be simple enough for self-build assembly and reassembly, coming as a flat pack kit of parts, fully fabricated on a CNC machine. The geometry of the architecture is an interplay of changing geometric forms. The octagonal wall structure rises to form a hexagonal roof which then frames a square skylight. The main timber columns that support the walls converge to form a truss like structure that supports the roof. In so doing they give a heightened sense of verticality and therefore both a greater sense of space and an aesthetic reinforcement of the underlying geometry of the structure. Designed by Studio Ben Allen.

Photography: Ben Tynegate / Structural Engineer: Format CNC cutting: Hub Workshop / Installation: Sullivan & Co / Landscape Design: Daniel Bell Landskap

A renovated 1970s villa in the South of France

Posted: 05 Jul 2022 02:44 AM PDT

Loving the modern and tropical, Spanish finca-esque vibes of this renovated 1970s home in the South of France. Another stellar project by the talented Baptiste Bohu.