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Culture

La conspiration du Bien

Vous désirez infuser Montréal de vos pensées bienfaisantes? Rendez vous sur La Conspiration du Bien, un projet avant-gardiste qui a l’ambition de communiquer à la Ville puis au Monde entier un grand mouvement d’énergie positive. On en a bien besoin!!

April 29th, 11:51 AM | posté par luce | comment |

Eco Reno

Re-emerging from Moving Madness

It was probably doomed from the beginning, but I REALLY thought I would be able to blog all through my moving experience… alas, what with work and then managing all the minute (and not so minute) details of creating a new home, I have not been able to do it in reall time.

However! I have taken pictures all through the process and I will be posting about my experience very soon.

Don’t give up and stay tuned.

January 13th, 8:16 AM | posté par luce | comment (1) |

Eco Reno

Step by step

After going to the bank and signing the papers, I had to move out of my loft… and it was no small task. I had 5, sometimes 10 years of accumulated paperwork from 3 previous offices, books and magazines that had not been opened for years, knick-knacks that were hidden everywhere and of course: 0.7 cubic ton of recycling left over from the DÉTOURNEMENT experiment. As well, I’m moving from 1 450 sq ft to 950 sq ft. Yes, there was lots to get rid of.

If you plan ahead and are prepared, there is no ned to throw everything out. First of all: clear out the old paperwork. Get a few plastic recycling bins and get started. Be merciless! If you haven’t lookked at it, read it or used it in over 6 months, chances are you never will again. Why hoard it? Recycle it!

Next up were books… and I love my books. There are some I’ve read 5 or 6 times. I cherish them and would rather save them than my plants, if push comes to shove. But, again, be merciless: if you still have the complete collection of Little house on the Prairie from when you were 8, its probably time to give it up to somebody who’ll appreciate it (and is under 12). Same thing with all those not so great cookbooks: its all on the Web, so get them over to the Salvation Army or better yet: to a book exchange shop. someone will surely make better use of them than you.

Once I was done with paperwork, magazines and books, I already had about one sixth of all my boxes that were destined for a second life. That’s a LOT of stuff. But I wasn’t finished: I went through all my archives, my kitchen utensils, my clothes and my bathroom stuff. And guess what? Another 8 boxes went the way of the Salvation Army. All in all, I’m pretty sure I’ve saved 300 sq ft worth of breathing space.

Next up: finding an earth-friendly contractor!

September 24th, 9:03 PM | posté par luce | comments (2) |

Eco Reno

This is turning into an eco reno blog

As some of you might have noticed from my Facebook status interjections, I’ve sold my loft and recently found a new house that I’m about to renovate. And as my more “serious” blogging now occurs on the Perennia blog, I thought it might be a nice idea to share my journey into renovating in the most ecoresponsible way that I possibly can, within time and budget constraints.

So first tings first: the “before” pictures!

The goods:

• located 200 meters from a metro (which means I can continue to take public transportation)

• 10 minutes bike ride from the office

• a few blocks from parks and supermarkets

• built in 1953, has only had one owner (very rare)

• no structural work to be done

My personal design brief goes more or less as follows:

• keep as much of it as possible

• open it up, bring in the light

• transform the back yard into a food growing place, as well as an outside “room” for summer living

• use as much ecoresponsible materials as possible

• buy locally as much as possible

• ban all toxic materials

• when felling walls, do it in a way that the wood beams may be recycled

• pet project: try to keep the ‘70’s era bar as intact as possible, while upgrading it to suit my own tastes

All that carpet and tiles are coming off, and we’ll see how the original wooden floors are looking. For colors, I’m very tempted to go all out in very bright colors: mazatlan blue, coral, kelly green, etc (all in non VOC paints, of course). I also want to open up a large chunk of the kitchen and have a great big huge door to have seamless outside-inside living during summer months. I’ll need help with the garden, but a huge bonus will be the fact that I’ll be able to compost to my heart’s content and reuse that beatiful humus in my garden! I want to plant varieties that will be sturdy, local and easy to take car of.

So let’s consider this week one and see how it goes.

August 8th, 8:08 PM | posté par luce | comments (6) |

Billet

Article Studio + Perennia = Luce

C’est officiel! Depuis maintenant 3 mois, je travaille à temps plein au sein de Perennia, l’entreprise d’écodesign que j’ai co-fondée. Donc si vous vous demandiez pourquoi je ne blogue plus, et bien c’est pour cette raison! J’ai aussi arrêté de bloguer pendant un bout de temps, mais je reviens à la fois sous l’incarnation du blogue Perennia et de votre blogue rose préféré. Je vous suggère donc d’ajouter http://perennia.org/blogue/ à votre feed RSS.

August 4th, 3:04 PM | posté par luce | comment |