updated home design scrapbook

The storage limit increase at wordpress.com couldn’t have come at a better time!

I have just added over twenty more images to my home design scrapbook. All the images are thumb nailed to increase the page loading time. You can click on each image to view its full size. I do wish wordpress.com had an option for thumb nail size. The thumb nails would look better slightly larger than they are.

Polished Concrete

book recycling in manhattan

I enjoyed reading this N.Y Times article about entrepreneurial homeless people in Manhattan recycling books for profit. The system they have created is amazingly efficient and profitable.

Even in better days than these for books, the economy of publishing was bloated, based on guesswork, mercurial taste and the talents of people whose keenest interests rarely included making money. Book recycling in Manhattan is just the opposite, a perfectly efficient system with no fat at all: So many discarded books go from someone’s garbage to a scavenger to a bookseller and, often enough, land gently in someone else’s home.

It is a bit sad that, as literature increasingly becomes digitally distributed, these activities will cease to exist. I can hardly see these people walking around collecting unwanted digital books, full of DRM, on memory sticks and trying to resell those.

NY Book Recyclers

clichés

If you ever forget how bad clichés are, or if you want to quickly find a real crappy one, simply visit realestate dot com dot au.

Five real estate agent clichés that “shit me to tears”

  1. “Little on price, big on position”
  2. “Everything at your fingertips”
  3. “Real living starts here”
  4. “More potential than you can poke a stick at!”
  5. “Opportunities like this just don’t appear”

Read more 5ives

courtyard centric sunshine coast home

Yesterday’s Courier Mail had an article about a recently designed home at Tewantin on the Sunshine Coast.

I love the courtyard centric design, use of polished concrete and timber, raised lap pool (no need for fencing), high ceilings with mezzanine level, and the overall soft colour scheme. I personally would add lots of soft, rounded leaf plants, such as money trees, either in pots or surrounded by a garden bed of soft pebbles. Also, I would incorporate a large rain tank in the overall design.

The architecture was designed by Stephen Guthrie & Lindy Atkin of Bark Design.

Tewantin One  Tewantin Two

(Click images for larger versions).